Want to Grow Your Small Business? Identify Your Target Audience!

Learning the finer points of online marketing for your small business takes time and commitment. While it’s tempting to get lost in all the different digital marketing techniques like SEO, social media, and PPC, it’s important to remember that every effective marketing strategy begins and ends with your target audience.

If you don’t understand who your target audience is, your marketing messages will be uninspired and scattershot, and your campaigns will be less effective. Smart WSI Marketing is an Edmonton-based internet marketing company that can help you identify profitable markets for your small business in order to customize your digital marketing efforts to customers most likely to buy what you offer. Contact us today to learn more.

Why Defining Target Customers Is So Important

When you have a clear vision of your ideal customer, you significantly increase your business’s chances of success. Buyer personas give you insight into who your customers are and help you:

• Determine if there’s enough demand for your products or services.
• Tweak your business plan to best meet your potential customer base’s needs.
• Tailor your products and services to better meet customer demands.
• Target your marketing efforts to reach the most promising potential buyers.
• Craft your marketing messages using the right tone and attitude to appeal to your best prospects.

Do you know who your business’s ideal customers are?

How Buyer Personas Extend Your Reach and Boost Your Bottom Line

Most small business owners believe they know who their customers are and how to speak to them. A lot of the time, though, they miss the mark. That’s because many business owners make a common misstep: they don’t start with their own marketing position.

Your business’s marketing position answers the question, “Why are we the best company for this customer?” setting the stage for clearly defining who you serve. For new businesses, this information comes from any data you’ve collected about your ideal customer. Established businesses can start with past customers. In either case, what you discover may surprise you.

No matter how well you think you know your customers, creating buyer personas makes it much easier to develop an online marketing strategy that attracts customer attention, gets them to buy, and keeps them coming back. Fortunately, you don’t need to do all the legwork yourself. An internet marketing agency like Smart WSI Marketing can help you create customer profiles that serve as a solid foundation for all your marketing efforts.

How to Create Buyer Personas

Based on data and research, buyer personas are fictional but realistic representations of your ideal customers. They help you focus your marketing efforts on qualified prospects and guide product and service development to suit your customers’ needs.

The goods news is buyer personas aren’t that difficult to create. It’s all about how you perform your market research, obtain customer data, and present the information within your business.

Gathering Information

You can create buyer personas using research, interviews, and surveys from existing customers, leads, and partners who align with your target audience.

1. Analyze your contacts database to identify trends in how leads and customers find and consume your marketing content.
2. Talk to your sales team about the leads they’re interacting with most. What can they tell you about the types of customers who most need what you offer?
3. Solicit feedback from current customers and likely prospects to learn what they like about your products or services.

You now have a lot of great data you can use to identify patterns and commonalities to develop several personas, each of which should contain:

• A name, photo, and tagline so the customer “feels real.”
• Demographics and psychographics like age, education, job title, location, and hobbies.
• Dreams and goals, or what motivates the person to invest in your product or service. What are they trying to achieve?
• What obstacles the person faces that precludes them from achieving their goal?
• How your product or service can empower them to overcome any roadblocks.
• A summarized story that puts the potential customer in context without referencing your offerings.
• What reasons the person gives for not buying your product or service.

How many buyer personas do you need to create? Some businesses only need one, but many marketing experts believe two or three is ideal. One ideal customer persona is helpful in meeting customer needs immediately, but one or two more can help you develop new products or services that expand your reach and grow your company.

Keep Your Buyer Personas Relevant

Nothing is more critical to your online marketing efforts than staying relevant to the people you serve. Keeping your buyer personas up to date ensures you understand what drives your prospects today and that your marketing campaigns are successful. Smart WSI Marketing is an Edmonton digital marketing agency that can help you build actionable buyer personas that are timely and relevant and align with your small business’s current goals. To learn more about all the digital marketing services we provide, contact us today.

Lynne Motkoski, Digital Marketing Strategist

Specialty: Digital Marketing Strategies
Education: MA Communications & Technology, BComm [U Alberta]
Author: The Online Marketing Handbook for Busy Entrepreneurs (coming soon)

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Lynne is known for her strategic approach to marketing communications, technologies, and lead generation. She has a passion for education, keeping up with current marketing trends and practices, and helping clients keep ahead of their competition.

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