Understanding Your Target Customer And How To Market To Them
When devising a marketing strategy it is important to know your target customer base as well as possible. There are numerous ways in which you can divide up the population to refine how you target your advertising, and one of the most commonly used, and highly successful, is age.
Breaking your audience up into generations is an easy means of categorisation, however, whilst useful, it is important to remember that there will always be some overlap.
Target Customer Generation Breakdown
There are some points of contention based around which ages fit into which generation, but, generally speaking, we can divide them up like so:
Baby Boomers – Born between – 1946 – 1964 Current Age – 57 – 75
Gen X – Born between – 1965 – 1980 Current Age – 41 – 56
Millennials – Born between – 1981 – 1996 Current Age – 25 – 40
Gen Z – Born between – 1997 – 2012 Current Age – 9 – 24
The above graph details the distribution of Facebook users worldwide by age and gender. This is useful information when making decisions on where you will post content, and where you promote online ads.
Facebook is the most popular social media platform, in terms of active users. However, a greater number of people seeing your advertising does not necessarily result in more leads being generated, let alone these leads being converted into sales.
For example, if your target customer base is females aged between 18 and 24, you will reach this demographic better on Instagram than on Facebook. This is evident in the statistics below.
The graph above gives us the same information as the one previous, but for Instagram. When comparing the two, we can see a similar bell curve to the Facebook graph, however there are still key differences.
Knowing that Instagram has fewer active users than Facebook, combined with the lower percentage of users who are 65+, shows us that if this is your audience you should perhaps avoid boosting ads here.
Using your advertising budget to boost Facebook posts to this demographic should result in more successful leads, and therefore more sales!
Influencers
Social media influencers have rapidly changed how many businesses advertise their products. These individuals can be helpful to not only get your brand viewed by a multitude of possible customers, but their endorsement of the product gives consumers added incentive to make a purchase.
Before you invest in this form of advertisement, it is important to understand the age groups that are most likely to be paying attention.
A recent white paper entitled Trust, transactions and trendsetters: the realities of influencer marketing, produced by Influence, reports that 60% of 16 to 24 year olds credit influencers for purchases that they have made within the last six months.
If this is your target audience, then influencer marketing may be a viable strategy.
It’s also important to consider the disposable income of your audience. Spending a large proportion of your marketing budget appealing to 16 to 24 years olds may be less profitable than targeting Gen X individuals who have more money to spend.
Know Your Target Customer
If we could emphasise one thing in this blog it would be the importance of knowing your audience.
Understanding who you are targeting means that we can show you how to target them.
Knowledge is power… and in this case, knowledge is profit.
Let Us Do The Hard Work
Here at Truly Content, we offer a range of services designed to have your business performing at its highest level.
To find out what we can do for you, simply contact us via our website.
Alternatively, you can call us on 01926 814547, or email us at info@trulycontent.com.