Social media isn’t going anywhere. According to the latest report, 78% of organizations say social media tactics work for them.
What are these businesses doing right? They know their audience. By identifying where your audience hangs out online and narrowing that audience down into unique groups, you can provide the most relevant content possible and connect with the people who want to know what you have to offer.
Advertisers will spend over $76 billion on social media by 2020.
What is a targeted audience?
A targeted audience on social media is a group of people defined by specified behaviors and demographics. Brands offer content curated to their audience’s needs, and in turn, individuals feel more connected to the brand.
You should understand your brand well enough to know who your target audience is. These are the people who will resonate with your products and your company ethos the most.
How do I find my target audience with social media?
The people you want to reach are out there somewhere in the depths of the internet. The trick is to know who you’re looking for and use the right tools to find them.
Campaign Monitor has made it simple for brands to incorporate social media into their email strategy. It’s as simple as drag, drop, and customize.
Create personas to identify unique segments your target audience
Start by brainstorming about your target demographics. Who is your ideal customer? Get as specific as possible by identifying age, gender, education, work, income levels, where they live, interests, their aspirations, and whether or not they have kids.
Use the native audience insight tools on your preferred platforms
Once you get a general idea of who may use your products, you can start to look for them online. For instance, the Facebook audience insights tool offers endless research opportunities and most social media sites offer specific profiles for businesses who use their platform.
You can plug in all the information from the personas you made. You can also search for new audience demographics by searching for pages where your audience will also interact. Don’t forget to engage with your followers by commenting and liking not only on your content and theirs, but also look to interact with your potential audience on niche pages, too.
Send surveys or ask for preferences through email campaigns
Create email survey campaigns that ask your subscribers about their social media preferences. When new subscribers sight up for your email list, you can also ask them about their favorite social media platforms and invite them to join you by sharing your profiles, too.
Integrate your Campaign Monitor account with other tools
Campaign Monitor integrates seamlessly with countless apps that can help you analyze your audience inside and outside the realm of email. The Facebook Leads App, for example, automatically sends leads from Facebook to your Campaign Monitor account.
How to measure your social media reach
After you’ve narrowed down an audience into segments, you’ll want to make some content to target their unique interests.
Let’s say you’ve already created or curated some blog posts, videos, podcasts, images, and other content for specific segments. Now, you want to see how that content performed to ensure that you’re reaching the right people.
Your next step is to check out your engagement insights which will give you the most comprehensive look at your effectiveness.
Are more people signing up for your email list? Reading your blog posts? Sharing your content with their friends? Making a purchase (either while viewing a post or later)?
Remember that social media is also largely about brand awareness. Someone may see a post from you in their newsfeed and scroll past. Days later, they may search for your page or website to find the information or learn more.
Does it really matter?
Yes. Narrowing down your audience is a crucial aspect of effective social media marketing as you’ll have a better understanding of where you need to spend money and resources in order to connect with these specific people. That means you get the most out of your marketing budget.
Furthermore, if you don’t identify your audience, you won’t be able to create relevant and interesting content for them. In most cases, the content you make will be too general to spark much interest from your readers and you won’t get much traction or engagement online.
The key is to integrate your social media audience insights with other channels like email to create a well-rounded marketing strategy and gain a comprehensive understanding of your audience.
What now?
Once you narrow down your social media audience, you can create content to integrate your marketing efforts.
Social media is effective when used correctly, but you’re not in control of your audience. Instead of relying on platforms like Facebook—which gatekeep your followers—leverage your social media presence to build your email list.
With an email list, you have a direct line of communication to your audience that algorithms can’t take away.
Ready to learn more about using social media to support your email marketing efforts? Check out how to acquire email addresses through Facebook to start growing your email list and customer base.