Know Your Target Audience – What to do, what to do? (Pt 3)

In today’s post, we continue, and bring to an end, our series on how important it is to know your target audience, with Part 1 here and Part 2 here. Based on the past few years’ experience, it's clear that consumer attitudes and preferences are shifting and realigning quickly.

As you work to develop and market your brand online in the new year, it may be time to pivot toward alternative tools and marketing channels. Here, rather than using the article we linked to before, we are offering data points and expected marketing tactics taken directly from HubSpot Blog's 2023 Marketing Strategy & Trends Report.

What Changed in Marketing During 2022

• More marketers have made pivots part of their plan.

• Data-informed marketing strategies have become vital.

• More brands aim to create content that reflects their values.

• Marketers increasingly use CRMs to track and organize data.

• Focusing on customer experiences bridges the gap between service and marketing.

• Social media DM strategies are growing in popularity.

• Building online communities around your brand is becoming critical to engagement.

It’s clear that there have been significant changes in marketing strategies by major marketing influencers as a response to the shifts in attitudes and preferences by consumers.

The Top Marketing Trends of 2023

The top trends marketers are currently leveraging are short-form video, mobile-friendly web design, creating content that reflects their brand’s values and using social media DMs for customer service. Not far behind are SEO, mobile messaging, influencer marketing, and selling products directly in social apps.

From the report:

• Short-form video will see the most growth in 2023.

• Influencer marketing will continue to grow its high ROI.

• Branded social media DM tactics are growing.

• Website SEO continues to shine.

• Marketers will continue to humanize their brands.

• Marketers will benefit from data in 2023.

• These data points illustrate the tactical shifts we can expect to see from marketers in 2023.

The Top 3 Marketing Channels of 2023

Finally, the report shares the most important marketing channels we will see being used this year, with social media marketing clearly dominating all marketing trends.

Marketers leverage an average of four different marketing channels in their role. Social media is used by over 42% of marketers, making it the #1 channel marketers are currently leveraging. It also has the highest ROI of any channel and will grow significantly in 2023. Additionally, one in four marketers say they use social media shopping tools.

The Top Social Media Marketing Channels for 2023

1. Instagram

2. YouTube

3. Twitter

4. TikTok

5. LinkedIn

Further, one in three marketers will be leveraging their own blog or website, as well as SEO, to land on SERPs. Meanwhile, 32% use email marketing.

Blogs, social media shopping tools, and influencer marketing are neck and neck for the highest ROI of any marketing channel.

Getting to know your target audience remains just half the battle. Reaching where they live, surf (and troll?) is paramount to building your brand and converting them.

If you suspect you need help with these strategies and tactics for 2023, Ted remains available for business consulting to the trade. Feel free to… Get in touch with TD Fall today.

Know Your Target Audience – The Challenges We All Face (Pt 2)

Today we continue our series on how well you know your target audience, using data and metrics from the HubSpot Marketing Survey for 2022.

In Part 1 of this series, we shared some depressing data about trends among marketers who lack solid information on the make-up and lives of their potential clients. This is data that is necessary for creating an ideal client profile of your perfect prospect, which would be used to direct all of your content creation.

As the article articulates, “The biggest challenges marketers face in understanding their target boil down to two main issues:

• New Data Privacy Measures: Data privacy regulations are reducing marketers’ access to the consumer data they need. At the same time, consumers are less trusting in sharing their personal data.

This results in marketers missing out on critical data on their target audience, from their shopping and media consumption habits to their basic demographic information.

• Evolving Audience Targets: Consumers’ lives have changed drastically over the past few years, and with a looming recession, their habits, attitudes, and preferences are likely to continue shifting quickly.

The two challenges above are difficult to overcome because they're actively developing as data privacy regulations tighten and unprecedented events that change consumer behavior continue.”

Overcoming These New Marketing Challenges

All is not lost, however. The HubSpot author, Maxwell Iskiev, provides us with a few steps we can take to moderate the negative influences of these outside sources.

Here are the answers to his question: “How Can Marketers Improve Their Data Strategy?

• Gather First-Party Data: A great solution to increased data privacy regulations like Google’s planned phase-out of third-party cookies is gathering your own first-party data.

Since first-party data comes directly from your customers, it offers high-quality insights about your audience and allows you to create a personalized experience for them.

• Use a Single Source of Truth for Marketing Data: Only 27% of marketers say their marketing data is fully integrated with their systems and tools, and as we saw earlier, data not integrating well is a top challenge for marketers trying to understand their target audience.

Disconnected marketing data is problematic because you don’t have the full context needed to make data-driven decisions. On the other hand, a single source of truth offers a holistic view of your target audience by connecting all the data points you have.

A single source of truth also improves efficiency by making marketing data more easily accessible for marketers and their collaborators.

• Keep Your Data Fresh: We talked about how consumers’ lives are changing rapidly, and marketers need up-to-date data to keep up.

The interests, habits, and attitudes of your target audience probably changed several times over the course of the pandemic. And with a recession looming, your audience will likely change again – so whatever data tracking method you use, make sure your data is regularly updated to keep a pulse on your customers in real-time.

Plus, you need up-to-date information on your target audience so you can pivot your marketing strategy and message in response to the changes your customers are experiencing.”

Stay tuned for our next post in this series, in which we will share tips from the article on how to adapt and enhance your marketing strategy in response to these challenges.

Statistical analyses of data are fine as far as it goes. However, if you continue struggling with ways to get to know your target audience, Ted is available for business and marketing consultation. With more than 25 years of experience in the trade and an exceptionally empathetic approach, he is sure to find ways to help.

Just click here to… Get in touch with TD Fall today.

Know Your Target Audience – Where Too Many Marketers Fail (Pt 1)

Are you among the few online marketers who know your target audience well? We ask this question only after reading a recent article from the SEO and Marketing Mavens at HubSpot that claims you probably don’t!

It should go without saying, yet must be repeated often, that developing an ideal client profile of the types of people you most want to work with is critical to your success when marketing your business online. Yet, a staggering percentage of businesses lack even the most basic information on their target audience. Without this and other important data, developing such a profile for targeting your online content becomes difficult, if not impossible.

To quote the opening of the article, “In our annual survey of over 1,200 marketers, we found that just 42% know the basic demographic information of their target audience, like their name, gender, and location.”

What Does the HubSpot Marketing Study Tell Us?

Unfortunately, the numbers from this year’s HubSpot study are not in your favor. Although all is not lost if you heed their warning and respond positively.

For example:

• “A whopping 82% of marketers say having high-quality data on their target audience is important to succeeding in their role – but more than half of them say they're missing key information.

• Fewer] than half of the marketers surveyed know their audience’s interests and hobbies, shopping habits, the products they are interested in buying, their purchase history, and where they consume content.

• Only 31% know the online communities their target audience is a part of and even [fewer] know the challenges they are facing.

• Just one-fourth of marketers know the social causes their target audience cares about - a huge, missed opportunity when it comes to expressing your brand’s values, especially when marketing to Gen Z and Millennials.”

As you can see from the image below, in addition to lacking basic data, just 29% of the marketers surveyed claim to know their potential client’s pain points! Further, just 41%, know where to reach them online!

Data Can Inform but Rarely Offers Solutions

These are dismal numbers. In fact, they are so bad, we can’t help but wonder how it is that any of these marketers reach their target audience at all.

So, now that we’ve depressed you with these data, and made you wonder if your marketing efforts coincide with them, we’ll end this post here. That is not to say we’re finished with the subject, however. It’s just that we believe there is too much data to unpack in a single blog post.

Take the time to digest this information, then return for our next post in this series where we will dig deeper into the metrics and, eventually, offer ideas on improving your marketing strategy. We’re talking about things that actually work!

Statistical analyses of data are fine as far as it goes. However, if you continue struggling with ways to get to know your target audience, Ted is available for business and marketing consultation. With more than 25 years of experience in the trade and an exceptionally empathetic approach, he is sure to find ways to help.

Just click here to… Get in touch with TD Fall today.