Defining your social media target audience can be difficult. With over 5 billion social media users worldwide, it’s tempting to think you can reach anyone without trying.
Given the abundance of social media networks, it's essential to invest your time and resources wisely. Focusing on platforms where your target audience is active will yield the best results.
Identifying your social media target audience will produce more relevant campaigns, leading to a loyal customer base and a greater return on investment.
In this article, you’ll learn what a target audience is, why you need it, and how to find and reach yours on social media.
A social media target audience is a defined user base segment that shares common characteristics, interests, and behaviours.
It's about identifying individuals most likely to resonate with particular content, products, or services. This segment forms the core of your client’s online community.
Here are several key characteristics of a social media target audience:
By understanding and defining this audience, you can create content that resonates, engage in meaningful conversations, and, ultimately, achieve your goals on social media.
With billions of people online, you might wonder, "Why bother defining a target audience?" It's a valid question. The answer is pivotal to your client’s social media strategy. And it can be summed up in one word: relevance.
Here are some compelling reasons why you need to define your target audience:
Your or your client’s resources are limited. You can allocate these resources more efficiently by focusing on a specific audience. Your marketing and content will be more targeted and, as a result, more effective.
When your content speaks directly to a specific group's interests, needs, and pain points, people are more likely to engage and respond.
Understanding your target audience and catering to their preferences will increase your chances of building a loyal customer base.
Defining your target audience sets you apart in a world where competitors are vying for the same digital space. It allows you to offer a unique value proposition that appeals directly to your audience.
Targeted marketing campaigns have a higher ROI because they are more likely to convert leads into customers. Your marketing efforts become investments with tangible returns.
Defining your target audience enables you to collect valuable data and feedback. You can use this data to refine your strategies and make informed decisions.
Defining your target audience is not about excluding potential customers. It’s about prioritising your efforts and crafting a strategy that speaks directly to the people most likely to benefit from and engage with your client’s brand.
Now that you understand why it's crucial to pinpoint this specific group of people let’s get to the five steps that will help you do just that.
Market research is the foundational step in defining your social media target audience.
Over half of marketers say they lack the right information to identify their audience. Market research makes the difference.
In market research, you gather and analyse data about your customers. The goal is to understand your industry, competitors, and, most importantly, your potential customers.
Here are four tactics to use to conduct market research.
By conducting thorough market research, you'll gain a comprehensive understanding of your client’s industry, competitors, and potential customers.
It's the critical first step to social media success and will be useful in the other 4 steps.
Want meaningful data?
Go right to the horse’s mouth–your customers! Technically, conducting surveys is an aspect of market research. But it’s a large enough category, so we made it a step of its own.
If you aren’t familiar with surveys, here are four key elements to remember.
Image source: Jotform
Surveying your current customers can be a powerful tool for understanding your target audience.
It allows you to align your social media strategy with the preferences and expectations of those who have already chosen to engage with your brand. This personalisation can lead to higher engagement and greater customer satisfaction.
You can create buyer personas based on your market research, including customer surveys. These are ideal representations of your ideal customers. Crafting these personas is crucial in defining your social media target audience. They provide a clear picture of the people your client wants to connect with.
After you’ve gathered your data and searched for trends and themes, here’s how to create detailed buyer personas.
Image source: HubSpot
Creating detailed buyer personas is like crafting a clear image of the individuals you want to engage with on social media. It helps personalise your marketing efforts and ensures your content is directed at those most likely to become loyal customers and followers.
One effective way to identify and understand your client’s social media target audience is by examining who your client’s competitors engage with.
This analysis can offer valuable insights and help you identify untapped opportunities.
Some of these insights were likely discovered during your market research. Here's how to effectively analyse your competitors' audiences.
Analysing your competitors' audiences can help you gain a deeper understanding of your industry's landscape. It’s a simple but strategic way to refine your social media targeting.
Once you've conducted market research, surveyed current customers, created buyer personas, and analysed competitors' audiences, it's time to refine and validate your social media target audience.
This step involves fine-tuning your understanding. Here's how to do it.
Refining and validating your target audience is an ongoing process. But it will ensure your social media strategy aligns with your overall goals.
You have your target audience.
Now what?
It’s time to develop content and engagement strategies tailored to your refined and validated target audience. Your social media efforts should now be finely tuned to address their preferences and needs.
Here are four tips for engaging your client’s social media target audience.
Craft content that educates, entertains, or solves problems for your audience. Valuable content keeps them engaged and coming back for more.
Remember, the key is understanding your audience's needs and interests to provide content they find genuinely valuable. Tesco, the largest grocery chain in Britain, has a poppin’ Instagram feed.
Source: @tescofood
Experiment with different post formats, headlines, or visuals. You’ll learn what resonates best with your audience. A/B testing helps you fine-tune your content strategy by letting data guide your decision-making. For example, try using different images and captions on links and see which post performs better.
Image source: Social Tradia
Incorporate trending and industry-specific hashtags. This will expand your content's reach and connect with a broader audience.
Research and choose hashtags thoughtfully to ensure they align with your content and target audience. Think creatively here. Your market research may reveal a hashtag you had never considered, which could be a key to unlocking a world of new followers.
Engage with your audience by promptly responding to comments, messages, and mentions. This fosters a sense of community and shows you value their input. Consistent interaction can lead to higher engagement and brand loyalty.
Sendible is a social media management tool predominantly made to help you with all of the complex backend management of your social media channels. As such, it includes a few handy options that allow you to better target your audience, improve conversions, and finally track the success of your efforts.
Sendible continuously learns and adapts optimal times based on evolving audience behaviour and engagement patterns to help you optimise your posting schedule.
Social SEO is constantly evolving, so using the right keywords, whether in copy or as hashtags, can be a true game changer when it comes to targeting your audience. With Sendible, you can save groups of hashtags related to your topic cluster to the Content Library and then easily add them to your posts through Smart Compose Box.
Customising captions and posts to each social media channel is a must. But sometimes, you might get overwhelmed with details and forget to communicate the right information. This is why we have created Custom Tags. You can pre-save and then easily add relevant text, links, or any other information, ensuring all of your posts communicate the right message.
Leverage AI Assist to create compelling copy that resonates with your audience, and ensure a unified brand voice across all platforms.
You might have multiple social media target audiences. But how do you track which one is converting the best? Dissecting your social media analytics can take a lot of time, so we at Sendible came up with a handy solution. Simply label your posts with a Campaign and then get a report on the performance of these posts. This easy solution will enable you to stay on top of your efforts and experiments and make data-driven decisions.
Leverage Sendible’s extensive integrations to create, schedule, publish, and engage with your posts seamlessly.
