People need to know about you. The right people. No matter how great your business is at what it does, you will never find the success you deserve if your potential customers have no idea who you are. And for them to know you, you have to know them first.
Developing your audience is a critical, foundational step for any business. Too often, it gets skipped or approached carelessly. When that happens, it can undermine any marketing plan, no matter how creative or clever it is. Fryed Egg will ensure that never happens. We work with our clients to identify the audiences that matter most to them and then help them connect with those audiences in an impactful way. Through this crucial process, we help you maximize your marketing dollars and build a resilient customer base that sticks with you and fuels your long-term growth.
Defining your audience
At Fryed Egg, when we work with you on a marketing project, one of our first questions will always be, “Who’s your audience?” Audience development starts with developing a clearer view of your customers and prospective customers. What makes them a good fit for your products or services? What distinguishes them from other people? That means narrowing your scope to consider a variety of demographic information about them -- from age and gender to geography and income -- as well as assorted other characteristics, such as interests, behaviors and preferences.
Identifying key segments
Businesses often need to speak to different audiences for different products and services. For instance, a health care system will have very different audiences to reach for pediatric care versus knee replacement surgeries. Tiered, nuanced audience development is often the best course of action, meaning identifying the audience segments who will be most interested in your message. This keeps you from wasting time and resources on a broad approach when a more tailored effort will get you better results. The more focused you can make your audience, the better you can connect with them. Microtargeting, in some cases, can be especially powerful -- reaching 500 people who are a great fit for your message and likely to embrace and even advocate for your brand offers more promise than reaching 5,000 mildly interested potential customers.
Finding your audience
Once we’ve identified your audience, we have to determine where we can reach them. You don’t expect them to come to you. You have to go to them and find them in their natural habitats, whether that is social media, traditional media, online shopping, or driving down a particular street. For instance, if you’re looking for an older audience, you may find that the local newspaper is a reliable way of capturing their attention, while a younger demographic may be better found on social media. Then, there’s room to dig deeper: Which section of the newspaper? Which social media platform?
Building connections
Once you know your audience and understand where to find them, you have to figure out how to communicate your message to them in a way that feels comfortable. For instance, outreach on social media platforms requires fluency on those platforms and an understanding of how people use them. Otherwise, your efforts will seem out of touch and fall flat. No matter the outlet, through customized, consistent messaging you can form natural, enduring connections with the right audiences, resulting in active customer engagement and a growing audience for your brand.
Integrating to build the brand
The development of your audience on various outlets should fit within a broader, holistic marketing strategy rather than being handled on a piecemeal basis, which would lead to disjointed, unfocused messaging. Often, your efforts will be some combination of traditional advertising, earned media, digital targeted ads, events, and community involvement and sponsorships, and every component should support each other and your overall goals.
Fryed Egg can help build a new level of brand affinity for your business, identifying and engaging the audiences most important to your growth. If you want to learn more about how Fryed Egg can help, contact us at (813) 478-0494 or [email protected] or visit www.FryedEgg.com.