So, you have been identifying the target audience and learning about your ideal customer profile. But do you have a clear strategy on how to reach the target audience for marketing your products and services?
In this article, I’ll go over some practical tips on how to be discovered by the decision-makers, with the help of the right content and channel.
If you do not know the target group or who you want to reach with your sales and marketing efforts, I recommend that you first read the blog post about how to create buyer personas and find your ideal customer.
What many people think of when they want to get their message out to the target group is using traditional forms of marketing. It is also called outbound marketing, i.e., advertising through trade fairs, direct mail, etc.
But what happens as consumer behavior changes and more people in B2C and B2B segments do their own research online?
In the following sections, we’ll get into some practical steps that you can take for finding your target audience and attracting them to your website. I’ll also give you some ideas to ensure that your content is seen and discovered by your ideal customers or buyer personas.
How To Attract The Right Decision-Makers Of The Target Audience For Marketing
Most companies are not aware of the amount of traffic they are losing every day.
It is partly because their visitors do not convert to leads to the extent they had hoped for. It is also because the content published on the website is not adapted to the target audience. Therefore, the key people in the target group do not find the company’s website.
Far too often, you can see company websites that look like a product catalog or brochure that describes the company’s products, services, or history. These kinds of websites may work with people who:
- Already know the company and are looking to find more information
- Know the products, tools, or services they need
- Are interested in buying and getting in touch with the seller
That in itself is not wrong… the problem is just that your visitors for the most part do not consist of those people.
Creating Content Specific To Demographic Target Audience
By creating content that is tailored to the challenges and problems of your ideal customers, you can attract people to your site who need your expertise rather than your products or services. They just don’t know how to solve their challenges or the risks involved with not taking any action.
These are visitors who:
- Do not know your company
- Do not see the problems because they have not identified the risks
- Have not selected a product, service, or supplier… yet.
So, in addition to search terms for your company name, products, or services, complement your content based on keywords that your buyer personas actually use for their research.
Create content that inspires, educates, and provides a sense of security and confidence in what you can do for them – not just on what you want to sell.
It is a great way to impart knowledge and to help and guide your visitors through the entire buying process. This is called inbound marketing (as opposed to outbound). If you do it right, the traffic will increase, which will result in more inquiries and booked meetings.
Getting To The Decision Makers Of The Target Audience For Advertising
In B2B marketing, it is common to have a small profile of target audience that consists of a few companies. You may be familiar with them and might even know who the decision-makers are.
Often these are people who work for your competitors’ customers but who have not yet discovered the benefits of hiring your company.
You may know who they are and the companies they work for. Then why would you market your company to an entire market when you can actually go directly to them?
By applying targeted advertising and the principles of Account-Based Marketing, you can direct your sales and marketing efforts toward the people and companies you want to reach.
With ads that are primarily shown to the key people in the companies, you can show them your company’s knowledge, expertise, and content. This creates more interest that could result in building new relationships.
Segmenting Target Audience
Instead of spreading thin and collecting a large number of leads from companies that are irrelevant, your sales and marketing departments can focus on engaging with a few selected companies.
This way of segmenting target audience is possible with social media channels like LinkedIn that lets you select parameters such as company name, industry, size, number of employees, roles in companies, etc.
It helps to make sure that the information displayed for each person is relevant to exactly what he or she is working on and the problems they are trying to solve. This increases the chances that they see your business in their feed and choose to take a closer look at you.
It is also quite effective if you combine this form of advertising with different types of events or activities.
Your sales team is probably already focused on getting these customers, so might as well have your marketing team do the same. Together, this would create significant synergies or revenue opportunities.
But what about those that you have not targeted?
The great thing about starting with your ideal customers is that it makes it easy for you to capture the companies that are similar to them.
They can also see your ads (if you choose) and resonate with the issues you write about. The only difference is that you won’t be shooting in the dark. You start with the best match and let the others on the market find you instead of you trying to chase them.
Scale Up Your Social Media Content For Marketing To Target Audience
Now that you have the attention of your target audience, how do you make the most of it?
If you post content on social media that is inspiring and helpful, you get more opportunities to demonstrate your knowledge than if you were to talk only about your products or services.
You could do the following:
- Write a blog post
- Record a short video
- Record a podcast
- Host a webinar
- Create a guide
- Post quotes
In addition, you can share information from a different perspective and reach decision-makers based on their roles and interests.
For example, you could cover the following topics:
- Financials – How much do we risk losing? How much can we win? When can we expect to see the results?
- Strategy And Growth – How much can we grow? What happens if we do not take action? What are the others doing in our industry? How do we stop from lagging behind?
- Technology – How does this work? What components/ processes are involved? How do we know if this is the right technology to use?
- Risks And Security – What happens if we continue to use our existing solution? How secure is our current solution for the future?
As you can see, there are many options to share your knowledge through valuable content. The more relevant and useful the information, the higher the chance that your buyer personas will discover your company.
To make the content relevant, map out how the decisions are made by your ideal customers. Find out who:
- initiates the process of change within the company
- decides on the purchase
- signs the agreement
- advises the company
- becomes your primary contact
Using tools like HubSpot, you can measure the engagement of your contacts and target accounts. You will be able to track and improve your relationship with them.
Convert To Contacts – Not Directly To Sales Leads
As I had mentioned earlier, the majority of visitors to your website are not ready to contact your company or talk to a salesperson. Usually, over 95% of the site’s visitors leave without taking any action.
So, what can you do about it?
You can increase engagement by creating content that your visitors would benefit from. Then using call-to-action, landing pages, forms, or chatbots, you can turn your visitors into contacts.
With the help of marketing automation and a streamlined process that aligns your sales and marketing team, your company can guide these contacts to make the right choice and business decision.
But what if they do not want to buy?
Inbound marketing requires a lot of patience. Remember that you are trying to build trust and eventually a relationship.
The problem is not necessarily the leads not being ready to buy or being sold to. It could be that you are quitting too early.
Inbound marketing is an early phase of the sales process, and your sales team needs to approach the new leads with a helping mentality instead of trying to sell them something.
What your sales team may consider poor quality leads can in fact be contacts that need guidance and expert advice. And when they follow someone like you in the industry that has credibility, you would be on top of their mind when they need one of the services that you offer.