Understanding your audience is certainly not a new, novel concept. From print to radio to television and more recently social media, knowing who is viewing and/or engaging with your brand can be some of the most valuable data any marketer can get their hands on.
Before we get into how to go about researching your social media audience, let’s put things into perspective. Sure, you could cast a giant net to try and get your content in front of as many people as humanly possible. But this can get real expensive, real fast. Plus, you’ll run into folks who couldn’t care less about your message. For example, you might want to leave an older demographic out of your target audience if you are trying to grow your baby products brand, and focus on the population where your brand will resonate.
Studying the demographics of your followers and those who engage with your brand can not only cut costs, but improve KPIs across the board. It’s important to speak the same language as your audience, making them more likely to interact on social media, develop brand loyalty and ultimately purchase your product.
Your social media target audience should be highly specific and detailed. That way you won’t implicitly leave people out who might be interested in your product. Ultimately, a social media target audience will help you market your product effectively, and prioritize who you’re targeting.
In the digital world of today, we can adjust on the fly, pushing or pulling different levers almost in real-time based on performance. More than ever, people expect to receive personalized and contextually-relevant content from the brands they engage with on a regular basis. For marketers, personalizing content is critical to delivering successful customer experiences across devices and channels.
Personalization has emerged as a key content marketing tactic. Just how much of a difference can it make? Research confirms that higher investments in personalized, insights-driven content can go a long way when it comes to securing and nurturing relationships with loyal customers. According to Accenture, 58 percent of consumers are more likely to make a purchase in-store or online when a retailer provides recommendations based on their past purchases or preferences.
Of course, the only way to know how to personalize content… is to know your audience. How do you talk to them? What tone of voice makes the most sense? And it’s okay to have more than one type of persona – especially if you have multiple products or a wide-ranging audience, such as a sports franchise or athlete.
Nearly all marketers (96%) agree that personalization advances customer relationships according to Evergage’s 2019 Trends in Personalization Survey Report. And 80% of the respondents say they saw a measurable lift in business from their personalization campaigns.
There’s nothing more frustrating to a marketing team – from the creatives to the strategists and everyone in between – when a campaign flops. When you add up the hours and money put into the creation of a campaign (big or small), there’s no room for that to happen.
So how do we learn about our audiences? Every platform you use is a little different when it comes to those following and engaging with your content. Something you post on Instagram may not resonate the same way on Twitter or LinkedIn. Tweaking content for each social media channel is just another layer on top of understanding your general audience. Once you have an understanding of who your audience is, figure out where they’re hanging out online. You have to identify if your community is even on each separate social media platform.
Let’s take a look at some of the insights each platform provides in order for you to be successful.
Every word, photo, video and follower can have an impact. Twitter Analytics shows you how your audience is responding to your content, what’s working, and what’s not. Using this data will optimize future Twitter campaigns and get better results.
Twitter’s audience is passionate with a variety of interests, and being able to target audiences based on a number of parameters – interests, demographics, brands they follow and a slew of other variables – means your content is targeted to the right people.
It’s become a focal point for so many brands – corporate and individual alike – and for good reason. Perhaps one of the most engaging social media platforms, targeting your ideal audience is made easy with the audience insights provided by Instagram.
Not only can you get the standard demographic information, such as top locations, age-range, and gender, you can find out when your followers are most active, from the day of the week to time of day. Scheduling your content to coincide with these data points can increase target KPIs may be for a specific post or campaign.
Facebook Audience Insights gives you information about two groups of people – people connected to your Page and people on Facebook in general – so you can create content that resonates and easily find more people like the ones in your current audience.
Facebook combines relationship status and location to tell you about the types of people interested in your business. Algorithmically, diving deep into all of the Facebook demographic information can be the key to unlocking organic success, while providing valuable information for better-performing Facebook advertising campaigns.
Known more for its prowess with B2B marketers, what works on LinkedIn is not always identical to the likes of Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. LinkedIn Analytics focuses on three main areas to track metrics: Company updates, Followers, and Visitors. Whether you want to use the platform to build up your team, your client roster, or increase brand awareness, you can do it.
It does require you to utilize different strategies and to create very different types of content than what you’re used to posting on other platforms, even if it’s just the style that’s changing. Because these differences can range from small to significant, it’s important to figure out what’s working for your LinkedIn audience and why.
Learning as much as you can about your ever-evolving audiences can oftentimes be the missing piece of the giant marketing puzzle. Whether it’s creating more engagement organically with your followers or figuring out who to target with your ads in order to increase your numbers, you’ll see a lift no matter what your goals may be.
