Kenny Waterson

People can overcomplicate social media and its purpose. What it is designed to do, in a business sense, is connect businesses with their desired target audience.

Lots of people miss this point and post things without considering who they might be talking to on their social media channels. But when you understand who you’re talking to, it makes social media a lot clearer and smooth sailing.

Below are questions to ask yourself when wondering how to define your target audience on social media. Or any form of marketing for that matter.

Target Audience Development Questions

Who are we speaking to?

What people or industry does your service/product appeal to the most. Is it the education industry, corporate organisations, parents, teenage kids? If your business serves multiple demographics then write them down. This is just the “heading” for the sub headings, delving into more detail, below.

Where do they live?

Where does your business service its main consumers? Is it locally, statewide, national or global? This might be a time where you focus on a certain area at first and then branch out further. But defining where they live will inform other aspects of your target demographic design.

What is their age & gender?

When building your businesses service or product, you will have had an image of whom it would serve best. Or historic data might inform who’s your most viable consumer. Is it males and females aged 18-24? Or is it males aged 24-35? It is helpful to identify these factors as it is a component to how much it will cost to advertise it, especially on social media. You can find more about how much Facebook Advertising costs via our recent article here.

What are their pains, weaknesses and threats?

Are they time-poor? Do they lack the capabilities in-house to execute what you can? Are competitors in the same industry going past them? Do people struggle to understand what they provide? Having a few big pains jotted down not only enables you to speak to that in the content you create for your marketing strategies. But it also helps aid the development of your services that you should be continually redefining and reflecting on.

What are their objections to your services? 

“This isn’t relevant to us right now”, “we have so much on our plate and it seems like a logistical nightmare”, “how does it help my business be more productive?” These are just a few objections you may have already heard or are going to hear when marketing your service or product. Having these detailed allows you to design your content messaging that it overrides their objections without you having to explain over and over again.

How do they think within their environments?

If it is the corporate world, productivity is of highest importance and similarly in the education system. When defining your target audience, it’s helpful to align your messaging with how they think within their environments. This can be different for even depending on the platforms you choose to advertise on. For example, LinkedIn is a professional network whereas Facebook and Instagram are more relaxed and creative platforms.

Who is important to them? 

Sticking with the corporate organisations, the most important thing to them is probably their family and providing for them. Then you could assume it would be their staff and their bottom line. Defining this and implementing it into your content design and messaging is going to have a powerful impact.

How can our service help those pains, weaknesses and threats?

Once you’ve identified the pains, weaknesses and threats of your target audience. With careful consideration of the above components you can connect, like a dot-to-dot, the main points that your service or products provide to aid them.

Conclusion

Once you have answered all of these questions, you will have a detailed definition of your target audience for social media. Doing this should clarify all of your businesses social media endeavours moving forward. Helping you connect better with your audience on these powerful platforms.

We understand that social media can be a complex task for most businesses as there are so many moving parts.

Here at This & That Media we hope this gives you a better understanding of how to utilise these powerful platforms. We want to serve the community and our treasured clients as best we can.

For more general social media information you can schedule in for a FREE 20-minute consultation here.