How to find the right marketing channel for your target market
One of the most vital steps in a successful marketing campaign is choosing a marketing channel.
This means choosing the right platform to use to get your message to your target audience, whether it be print, radio, TV or a number of different digital marketing channels. It can mean the difference between an impactful campaign that resonates with your target market and a lot of money wasted on advertising that nobody sees or responds to.
Where to begin?
The first step to choosing a marketing channel is to define your target audience. Knowing the demographics of the audience you’re trying to reach, such as age, gender, interests and income level, can not only help you identify the correct marketing platform; it’s also vital for crafting messaging that will resonate with them on their preferred platform.
Next steps
Once you have identified your audience, you should already have an idea of which channel you should be using. For example, if you’re looking at an audience age of 18 to 24, you may look to target platforms such as TikTok or Twitch that are popular with that age demographic. Likewise, if you’re looking to market to sports fans, then sports-focused apps and publications would be the route to go. Stay-at-home parents may be more likely to engage with content they come across on their social network of choice, while corporate movers and shakers are far more likely to be active on networking-focused websites such as LinkedIn.
This brings us to the next consideration in channel selection: choosing a channel that’s appropriate for your product or service. This is very much a case of ‘the medium is the message’, and you should be careful not to let your desire to connect with an audience eclipse your brand’s identity or key value proposition. For example, if you’re advertising an innovative, technology-focused offering, print advertising is unlikely to demonstrate that your brand truly is innovative and tech-focused. Likewise, advertising a visually vibrant and exciting product via text-only SMS is probably not the best way to give your audience that experience.
Finally, once you’ve chosen your audience and the right channel for your product, it’s important to ensure that the messaging you’re using is appropriate to both. For example, this means understanding the different content types, such as video, text or images, that are utilised by specific social networks and creating unique content for each one that you choose to utilise. This is especially important for campaigns that are targeting multiple audiences or running across multiple channels.
Do you need to DIY?
The choice is up to you as a business owner, so whether you’re looking to make funds available to hire a marketing specialist or simply want to learn as much as you can about strategies to grow your business, we’re ready to support you through our BizConnect portal and innovative business banking products.