BLOG
One highly effective advertising tactic that every company should utilize is targeted advertising. Targeted advertising is a form of digital marketing that focuses on the specific traits, preferences, and habits of a consumer, advertising your product or service to the demographic that’s most likely to purchase it. Identifying a specific target market for paid advertising allows you to focus your marketing dollars on a specific audience that is more likely to convert to paying customers. This means that your money is being used more efficiently and with a better overall result. However, before you get started with targeted advertising, it’s essential that you take the time to find your target demographic. Here are some tips on how to find your audience for targeted advertising.
Analyze your customer base
Look closely at your current customer base and identify the characteristics that are the most common. Do most of your customers have similar age, location, gender, income, or any other identifying factor? Which product do they buy most? How often do they come back? Consider all aspects of your customer base and their purchasing habits in order to better understand which types of people could most benefit from your product or service and would be most likely to buy it.
Analyze your competitors
One way to gauge who you should be targeting is to look at who your competitors are targeting. Who are their current and most populous customers? How do their ads look? What differentiates your product from theirs? You shouldn’t duplicate their approach, but using them as a starting point can be helpful. It can also help you determine if you can target a niche market that they have overlooked or aren’t suited for.
Choose specific demographics
The most important thing to remember when creating your target demographic is that it needs to be highly specific. Think about your target buyer’s age, location, gender, income level, education level, marital status, occupation, ethnicity, nationality, and more. It’s not enough to just target women in California. A more effective target consumer profile would be a woman between the ages of 35-55 with an income of more than $100,000 in Orange County, California. The more defined your target audience is, the further your dollar can go when purchasing targeted advertising.
Consider your target market’s psychographics
You can further refine your target audience by considering their psychographics. Psychographics are the personal characteristics of a consumer, such as their values, lifestyles, behavior, interests, and hobbies. This can be more difficult to determine, but doing so will result in a much more effective advertising campaign. Pinning down these psychographics allows you to identify how (or whether) your product or service will fit into your consumer’s lifestyle. It can help you find potential customers that will be searching for and will value your product more highly than the average consumer.
Defining your specific target market can be difficult, but it’s an investment well worth the time. Having a clearly-defined demographic will benefit you in all aspects of your business, especially paid advertising. Once you find your audience, you can save money and get a better return on investment with paid advertising campaigns month after month. If you need help getting started with paid advertising or translating it into real results, give IDG Advertising a call today. Our SEO & digital advertising team will be happy to start you on the road to success.
