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How to Define & Reach Your Target Audience on Social Media

define and reach your target audience on social media
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What is a target audience? Your company’s target audience is the people who are most likely to purchase your product or use your services. Further, they share common characteristics. Upon pinpointing those characteristics, it is easier to determine who your target audience is. 

How to Define Your Target Audience on Social Media

Before you can reach your target audience, you must define your target audience. This encompasses their demographics, geographics, psychographic, behaviors, and interests. To put it simply, you need to know their age, gender, spending habits, language, geographic location, pain points, and current stage of life. Knowing this information will help you reach and speak to your best potential customers. If you are speaking to everyone, then you are speaking to no one.

Before we jump into how to define your target audience, allow us to answer the question: Why does defining your target audience matter? Doing so will help your company:

  • Serve ads to your target audience which will produce more effective advertising 
  • Use your finances and resources to reach interested parties
  • Create a brand voice that is relatable to your target audience
  • Strengthen your advertising and social media marketing efforts

Let’s dive into how to define your target audience, as there are numerous ways to accomplish this. 

  1. Audit Your Current Followers – Check out your social media channels and look through the profiles of your current followers. Write down what they have in common, what pain points do they express, what are their needs – include factors that can help you define your target audience (listed above). 
  2. Check Out the Competition – Every business has a competitor. Go to their social media sites and see who is following their pages. What do they have in common with your current followers?
  3. Write Out Who Your Target Audience Isn’t – Knowing who you are NOT trying to reach is just as important as knowing who to reach. 

After compiling this information, create a 1 – 2 sentence profile of your target audience. For example, a pediatric group’s target audience profile may be: “20 to 40-year-old females and males who have children, care about health and the overall wellbeing of the family and are part of the workforce or stay at home.” 

Consider another example of a target audience profile for a hip, new clothing store for teenage girls: “13 to 19-year-old females who are interested in style, fashion-oriented, attends school, and lives in or near a metropolitan area.”

Now that you understand how to define your target audience and why it’s important, let’s jump into how to reach them.

How to Reach Your Target Audience on Social Media

To reach your target audience, you must create and share content that is relatable and engaging. One of the more well-known “rules” to refer to is the rule of thirds while creating content. A simple way to remember it is: Promote, Personal, and Share. 

  • 1/3 of your content should be promotional. Tell your audience why your product or service is the best solution to their problem! 
  • 1/3 of your content should be personal. No, not your personal beliefs and opinions, but rather the personality of your company and why it’s unique. 
  • 1/3 of your content should be shares. This encompasses sharing articles your target audience may find interesting, industry news, the latest happenings in your field, and the like. 

In addition to creating content that resonates with your target audience, it is recommended to implement targeted advertising. Social media platforms provide options to target your audience in detail; for example, you can run Facebook ads by choosing from a plethora of options such as age, gender, interests, demographic area, and more. To learn more about Facebook ads and social media SEO, check out two of our recent blogs: 

  1. Does Posting on Social Media Improve Your SEO?
  2. Are Facebook Ads Worth It? The Inside Scoop on Social Media Advertising

How M&R Marketing Can Help

You can have the best services or products, but if you can’t reach your target audience, your business will have a hard time succeeding. Good news – we’re obsessed with YOUR success. Give us a call to discuss what it would look like to partner with M&R Marketing for your social media advertising and management needs. We can’t wait to hear from you: 478-621-4491.

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