Where are they?
Answering some of the questions above will help you understand the habits of your target market. This will help you determine when they are more likely to be browsing through their favourite social media channel.
You can even nail down your ideal client/customer even further and give him/her a set of characteristics that typify your target market. You can even give your 'avatar' a name.
Let's say you've chosen Carol as your perfect avatar. If you want Carol to buy your products you will need to know three important things about her so you can determine when to post your videos.
Where she lives.
What’s Carol’s favourite social media channel? If she spends most of her time on Facebook that’s where you need to be. There’s no point posting on Instagram if Carol prefers Facebook. If Carol is in her 50’s there’s a pretty big chance she won’t be browsing Tik Tok or Snapchat. In truth, Carol may live in two or three places at once. But if you know where she hangs out you can go and knock on her door ... providing she's in of course.
When she’s in.
Let’s say Carol doesn’t work and looks after a young family. What times will she be busy? If you post your video at 8am there’s a high chance she’s going to be running around like a headless chicken packing school lunches, shouting after her children and getting ready for the school run. She certainly won’t have time to scroll through Facebook. However once she’s dropped the kids off she might sit down for a nice cup of tea. Now that could be a better time to get her attention.
By understanding your target audience you will understand their behaviours and this will determine when it's best to get their attention.
What she needs.
Of course it's not enough to know where she lives and when she's at home. You also want to be able to say something that she's going to be interested in. What’s going to attract Carol’s attention? What problems does Carol have that you could help with? What questions is she likely to post in Google that you have a solution for?
Penetration ... not a naughty word (not in marketing anyway)
In order to penetrate the lives of your target market you will need to know as much about them as possible. Knowing where they are, when they’re going to be in and what needs they have that you can help with.
In fact social media makes this easier than ever before. Remember those days when marketing meant having thousands of flyers printed that went into a whole bunch of letterboxes? Is it any surprise that methods like that often returned a very small success rate?
If you’re running a business page on Facebook or a business account on Instagram for instance, you will have access to insights that clearly tell you when the majority of your followers are active on the channel. If your followers are within your target market, then that may be the best time to get their attention.
A BIG BUT (rather than a big butt - now that is naughty)
Please, please please make sure you populate your pages with followers who fall into your target market. This is paramount. If your followers are not your ideal customers, none of the above will work very well because...
- Your followers are not behaving the way your ideal customer would.
- Your followers may not be interested in your product/service to begin with.
- Your insights won't give you the information you want.
I've prepared a whole page about this mistake because it's a BIGGIE!
Click here to read more.
Learn to avoid the mistakes
Finding your target market is the difference between success and failure. It will drive every single decision you make during your marketing campaign. But it can be a bit of a tricky process to get right. We know … in actual fact it’s a bit of a science.
If you’d like more advice on finding your target market and building a successful campaign that will reach them please get in touch.