“Everyone is not your customer.” This quote by the marketer Seth Godin is a lesson for all businesses. Knowing who you serve and how to reach your target audience effectively makes a big difference in your overall marketing strategy.
Knowing who you’re talking to helps you tailor your message and make it relevant to your audience. “80% of marketers have said that target audience-tailored content on social media is more effective than non-target audience-tailored content.” data from AngelFish Marketing states.
Let’s discuss the step-by-step process of reaching your event’s target audiences.
Definition of Target Audience
Target audience refers to the specific group of people your business or event aims to reach or appeal to. The age, gender, income, job, location, preference, and psychographics define the target audience. The more the event organizer understands the target audience, the better it is to deliver engaging events.
Is the term target audience the same as “ideal client” or “niche”? Event experts and marketers say it’s different.
The ideal client refers to the most profitable segment in your target audience group. An ideal client can have specific traits from your target audience. Develop a customer persona to understand and define your ideal client. Use data to help define what an ideal customer is for your event or business.
Niche, on the other hand, is the problem your business or event is solving. However, it is not limited to a specific group’s problem. Instead, a niche can also be the group of people with a specific problem or whom you offer a specific solution for.
Importance of Reaching Your Target Audience
Understanding your target audience is important but can be easily overlooked in the marketing strategy and event planning process. When you know your target audience, planning for engagement is easier and your marketing efforts do not go to waste. The events you plan can be relevant when it is efficiently tailored to your target audience.
Furthermore, reaching your target audience can improve brand loyalty and advocacy for your brand and event. When you truly understand and have your target audience in mind when you plan for your event, your attendees will be satisfied with their event experience.
How to Know Your Target Audience
Now that we’ve established the importance of knowing your target audience, it’s time to learn how to know your target audience persona.
Here are some ways you can do to know your target audience:
Conduct Research
Run quantity and qualitative research. This is where customer feedback, reviews, surveys, questionnaires, focused group discussions, and analytics come into play. Ask relevant questions or open-ended questions as you get to know your audience.
Audience Demographics Questions:
What is your age range?
What is your gender identity?
Where do you live? (City, state, country)
What is your level of education?
What is your occupation or industry?
What is your income range?
Are you single, married, in a relationship, or other?
Psychographic and Lifestyle Questions:
What are your hobbies or interests?
Psychographics and Lifestyle Questions
What are your values and beliefs?
What motivates you in your personal or professional life?
What are your goals and aspirations?
What are your pain points or challenges in your daily life or work?
What sources do you trust for information related to [industry/niche]?
What brands or influencers do you follow or admire?
What social media channels do you use most frequently?
Behavioral Questions
How do you typically research products/services before making a purchase?
What factors influence your purchasing decisions the most?
How often do you shop online or in-store?
What content formats do you prefer (blogs, videos, podcasts)?
How do you prefer to communicate with brands (email, social media, phone)?
Purchase-related Questions
What problems or needs lead you to seek [product/service]?
What specific features or qualities are important to you in [product/service]?
Have you used similar products/services before? What did you like or dislike about them?
What would convince you to choose one brand over another in this category?
What would make you hesitant to purchase [product/service]?
Create Buyer Personas
A Buyer persona is a detailed description and semi-fictional representation of your target audience. It should be able to give a basic profile of your target audience like demographic, psychographic, and behavioral traits. Businesses use a buyer persona to make strategic decisions to meet the needs of their target audience.
There are a lot of free templates available online that can help you in your creation of a buyer persona.
Do Social Listening
Social listening is another way to discover your target audience. Check the profiles of people who engage with your posts or content. Look for patterns, if any. Forums like Quora, Reddit, and Facebook groups are some of the places where one can look for insights about your target audience’s sentiments.
Check Existing Data
If you have data on previous event attendees or event registrations, you can review them to have a starting point in your research. Utilize customer relationship tools to track previous engagements with you. Review website analytics and visitors to understand their path to purchase.
Attend Industry Events and Networking
Observe firsthand and personally talk to people to understand their sentiments and desires. Attending events in person makes it easier to be authentic and build relationships. Nothing beats actual relationship building and relationships in getting to know your customers.
Target Audience Examples
Target Audience can be divided into industry or niche. The common description for the target audience can be described as the following:
- Age groups
- Gender
- Psychographics
- Desires
- Geography or Location
- Problems
- Behaviors
- Income level
- Occupation and Industry
- Family status
- Values or Beliefs
- Social Circle
- Media Consumption Habits
Try to answer all that information to get a detailed picture. A target audience example can be: “Individuals of college-age students who have searched for Valentine’s Events”
You can discover the answers by conducting qualitative or quantitative research, data analysis, competitor analysis, and A/B testing.
Steps on How to Reach Your Target Audience Online
If you’re tasked to promote your event to your community, here are some step-by-step guides to help you reach your target audience.
Step 1 – Identify your Target Audience
As discussed earlier, your marketing campaign will start once you identified your target audience. This first step is crucial because the more accurately you define your audience, the more effective your message is. Divide your target audience into audience segments according to the audience’s interests, consumer behavior, etc.
When you identify your specific target audience, you can look for where they spend their time and direct your marketing efforts there. A tip in choosing your target audience is to make sure it is measurable, large enough, stable or growing, and reachable in your marketing strategies.
Step 2 – Refine Your Marketing Messages
Focus on the audience segments or persona that provides the most value to you like building connections, the most profit, or what you are going for.
Choose a marketing distribution channel where your customers are spending their time. Your content should adapt to the type of content that works best for the marketing channel. Study out-of-home advertisements, print, radio, social media platforms like TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, X, Facebook, search engine optimization, influencer marketing or collaborations, and more.
Understand how your Event or Business can Serve them
Knowing your target audience is not enough. You have to also understand how your event or business serves their needs. Your messaging should paint a picture of the experience they can expect from your event and their expected transformation from it.
Attract your target audience by showing networking opportunities, entertainment, solution-oriented discussions, exclusive offers, inspiration, and more.
The Importance of Content Marketing and Clear Messaging
Your content is the medium on which you can reach your target audience. An audience’s first impressions and purchasing decisions are largely determined by the content they see.
Quality content can build trust and credibility. Even without a big following, you can start an audience from scratch with an effective content strategy.
When your content gives value to your target market, people will follow you voluntarily. With a strong community, you can easily create messages that your audience can easily subscribe to.
It is important to note that different target audiences respond to a message differently. Constantly test your messaging and iterate your message to your audience segments. See what’s working and stop what’s not working.
Furthermore, create content pillars that resonate the most with your audience. Content pillars serve as a content category to make content creation easier.
Use these examples of content pillars depending on your event’s target audience:
Educational
Content includes How-to guides, Tutorials, Seminar Clips, Industry Insights and Courses. Educational content is a great way to attract new potential clients from your target audience. Create valuable content that is actionable and that showcases your expertise.
Relatable
Share content that makes your target audience resonate with you and your content. This is where knowing your audience becomes handy. Use language that they use. Quote trends or pop culture that they are familiar with to get their attention.
Testimonials
Show the transformation that people can expect from your event or business. Post about case studies, before and after, and visualizations for your target audience.
Product / Event Feature
Don’t forget to share the important details about your event or product. Understand your audience’s objections and address them in your content when selling your product or event.
Another strategy you can use when it comes to creating marketing messages is to do your research. Check the top creators in your industry or what your target audience is interested in. Learn from them and apply them to your content strategy.
Step 3 – Use Partnerships and Influencer Marketing
Partnerships and Influencers can serve as part of your word-of-mouth marketing. When you’re a starting business or a new event, you want to make sure you gather interest from your target audience. When you get an idea of who your audience follows, you can reach out to them for a sponsorship. Additionally, you can reach out to media organizations for exposure to your event.
Step 4 – Optimize your Event Site
Understand what your audience is searching for and optimize your event site. To rank on the search results, you have to deliver a good experience on your landing page. Customize your site to give answers to what your customers are looking for.
Step 5 – Use Paid Media
If you have a marketing budget, you can invest in running paid ads to reach your target audience. Ads managers on different social media platforms have targeting options to make sure you get value for money. Do paid advertising once you have tailored your content and have an optimized landing page in place.
Step 6 – Tracking success with your target audience
Finally, track the success of your marketing strategy by cross-checking the results with your initial assumption of your target audience. There are different ways to track your results. Here are the different areas event planners or marketers monitor:
- Website Analytics
- Event Registrations
- Post-event surveys and questionnaires
- Content Performance
- Sales and Revenue results
Make Successful Events with Event Espresso
Whatever your target audience is, you need an event site for your business. Event Espresso is a WordPress plug-in to sell tickets and accept registrations and payments for your events. Customize your event registration forms to fully get to know your audience before your event.
Create successful marketing campaigns for your target market with Event Espresso. Check out our live demo now.
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