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.

Being an Expert Can Interfere with Your Messaging

While it’s not especially flattering to admit, we all tend to seek approval from others. Being an expert in a particular niche, that sort of confirmation will most commonly come from others in your field. Yeah, so?

So, it should come as no surprise that those with similar interests find comfort and support by associating with each other. Educators tend to associate with educators; online coaches tend to hang together; website designers and marketers are often most comfortable with others of a like mind and profession. Whole industries can become exclusive and the subjects of discussion among experts can frequently climb to higher and higher levels.

In fact, this is the very reason industry-related associations exist.

The danger with such insular relationships is two-fold: first, that our view of the world can become dangerously narrow, and second, that we may forget who butters our bread – those with less knowledge.

Why Messaging is So Critical to Online Marketing Success

We’ve written about this before, but it seems important enough to mention it again. The reason for this redundancy in our messaging should be obvious by now. It is that not everyone “gets it” the first time around (or maybe even the second). That is precisely why well-crafted messaging is so critical to your online marketing success.

Receiving support from other experts is rewarding, but what happens when you're thrown together with a group of laypeople; or just one, a potential client?

Both clients and prospects will commonly voice a desire but, because they lack the base of knowledge to make it happen, they search for an expert. In the “information age”, they’ll jump online to search for solutions but will surely need more.

That is where you come in. And that is where your experience, your respect for them, and their efforts to learn, will enable you to deliver a message that will resonate with them – and help you close more clients.

While you obviously can’t “know too much” about your area of expertise, you must always be mindful that most of your clients and prospects will know far less than you. It’s your job to help them learn what they need to make an informed buying decision.

When you're able to use being an expert to help them, the fact that you're the one who did so should take care of the rest. (That is, closing the sale.)

Need Help with Your Expert Messaging?

If you still have questions, we can help with that too. Well, Ted can. With more than 25 years of experience in the trade, he offers business consulting that includes messaging for designers and dealers. For more… Contact TD Fall today.

For Client Retention, Video Marketing is a Massive Asset

In the world of online marketing, the value of client retention (or working with repeat clients) has grown exponentially. The reason for this is simple: retaining existing clients offer the potential for a much better  ROI than focusing on getting new clients. With this in mind, we would like to explain how video marketing can help you re-engage with old clients more effectively than other methods.

Why do we say this?

According to the latest research, it can be up to seven times more expensive to acquire a new client than it is to keep or re-engage with an existing or past client. As we’ve said before (and will probably say many times again), 80% of your future profits will most likely come from 20% of your existing customers. These are just a couple of the reasons that creating customer loyalty is critical to the ongoing growth of your design or furnishings business.

Considering those stats, doesn’t it makes sense for you to make the effort to keep the loyalty fires stoked? And, by incorporating videos into your messaging, it’s not as hard as you might think.

Re-engage with Past Clients Using the Power of Video

When you think of past clients or old prospects as business assets that have become dormant, their potential value becomes clear. The reason you should think of them as assets is that they’ve already proven their value:

• They know who you are and they already like you.

• They understand what you have to offer and they know you provide value.

• They have paid you before – which increases the likelihood they will pay you again!

If these aren’t enough reasons to re-engage with past clients, here are a few more:

• More than 90% of marketers are using video content in their marketing campaigns.

• The word “video” in an email subject line increases open rates by 19%.

• The word “video” in an email subject line increases click-through rates by 65% and reduces the number of email unsubscribers by 26%.

When considered separately, these are very significant reasons for using video marketing to re-engage past clients. When you combine them, the idea that you should begin to use video messaging as part of your client retention strategy becomes truly compelling.

Nurturing repeat business is a vital step in the long-term success of any business yet, those of us who generate a substantial portion of our business online often struggle with retaining clients because of the inherently impersonal nature of the internet. A simple “how you doing”, “what’s new”, “here’s the latest” video campaign that is designed to nurture and reengage past clients may be the perfect tool for doing so – keeping your business growing and thriving long into the future.

Looking for more about the value of client retention, help with your online marketing strategy, or email marketing ideas? Get in touch with TD Fall today.