In a world of seven billion people, figuring out how to reach your target audience can be daunting. You could have an incredible product or provide flawless service, but that won’t matter if you can’t pitch it to the right people.

This article is going to show you how to find out who your customers are, where they are going, and how to reach them on the sites where they are most active and interested. More specifically, we’ll be looking at how to reach your target audience on social media.

For many people, social media is an intrinsic part of their daily lives. Your customers will often expect and welcome the chance to engage with your business on popular social networks. With some proper marketing tactics, we can start to gain more traffic and improve visibility for your brand.

Getting to know the social media networks

Before we explore ways to reach your target audience, let’s do a quick rundown of some of the most popular social networks.

Facebook

The social media giant Facebook continues to be the most widely used platform. With five new profiles being created every second, your potential audience on Facebook is growing exponentially. A vast and growing majority of users log onto Facebook daily. This makes them an active and consistent audience for your marketing efforts.

Take note that 29.7 percent of users are aged between 25 to 34. This is a prime target demographic for many businesses, making Facebook the ideal place to engage with customers.

Instagram

From food porn to puppy photos, Instagram is a network used by many to brighten their day. If you’re targeting teenagers and young adults, it may be a good idea to include Instagram in your social media strategy. In fact, users aged under 25 spend around 32 minutes a day on the photo-sharing platform, which increases the likelihood of your brand getting noticed.

Studies also show that Instagram is the ideal place to engage with your female customers. Instagram is used by 38 percent of women in the United States, and 26 percent of men.

Twitter

With a mostly even mix of both male and female users, Twitter is a good place to connect with your young audience in 280 characters or less. Interestingly, Twitter usage drops as age increases; 36 percent of American users are aged between 18 and 29, compared to 22 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds, and 18 percent of 50- to 64-year-olds.

Twitter itself claims that 80 percent of its users are “affluent millennials.” Create compelling tweets to influence buying decisions and capture a mobile audience.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a slightly different playing field in the world of social media. Widely regarded as the world’s largest professional network, LinkedIn is ideal for your B2B marketing strategies. If your brand is looking to target business professionals and distribute premium content, LinkedIn is the place to do it.

Keep in mind that over 130,000 posts are shared on LinkedIn every week. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you’ll need to bring valuable content to a specific audience. We’ll look at how to reach that target audience in just a bit!

Pinterest

Pinterest continues to grow in popularity as an interactive search engine and shopping platform. While women dominate the app (around 45 percent of women online are Pinterest users), usage among males is growing. Pinterest reports that 40 percent of new signups are men.

People use the platform to create a “vision of their ideal self” — a powerful concept for business marketing. Include Pinterest in your brand strategy to engage with millennials. Additionally, this platform is ideal for connecting with well educated, middle-aged people with above-average income.

Snapchat

Despite being the youngest of the six mentioned social networks, Snapchat has quickly established itself as one of the major platforms. This is particularly true among young users aged under 25. In fact, 47 percent of US teens prefer Snapchat over Facebook, and 24 percent think it’s better than Instagram.

Over 64 percent of brands now have a Snapchat account. Do you want to engage with young customers? Try to reach your target audience by maximizing the app’s unique direct messaging characteristics.

 

How to Reach Your Target Audience on Social Media in 5 Simple Steps

There is an old saying that goes: “Knowledge is having the right answers. Intelligence is asking the right questions.” When it comes to learning how to reach your target audience, you should take the time to ask some questions and get to know your audience. Here are five questions you should consider when you get started on your social media marketing plan:

1. Who is my existing audience today?

Before you seek out your target audience, you first must identify your existing customer base. What age groups do you reach? Are your customers male or female? How much money do they make? Are they local to your business, or do they live across the world?

There are a few different ways that you can obtain this information.

Analytics — Tools like Google Analytics will enable you to view demographics and information about who is visiting your website.

Audience insights — Check out the analytics for any of your existing social media accounts. Facebook Audience Insights, for instance, will allow you to learn about the demographics and purchase behavior of the general Facebook population, people who follow your page, or custom audiences. You can obtain similar information with Pinterest Audience Analytics, Twitter Audience Insights, and so on.

Survey information — You don’t need to rely solely on backend statistics. Try sending a simple survey to your customers to obtain direct information. You can ask for basic details (age, gender, and location), as well as questions like:

• What do they do on the weekends?
• What is their favorite social media website?
• Where do they like to shop?
• Why do they like your business?

Once you have developed some detailed buyer personas for your existing audience, we can consider our next step.

2. Who do I want to attract to my business?

Picture your perfect audience. Maybe the people who are currently buying from your business are not your ideal market. Perhaps you’d prefer to engage a younger or older customer base. Or say you have an idea to release some new premium products — your ideal audience may then need to consist of people with higher incomes.

Knowing your existing audience is a crucial first step. But as you look to the future, you also need to have a clear picture of who your ideal customers are. This will guide our marketing decisions as we determine where and how to reach your target audience.

3. Where is my audience going?

When it comes to content marketing, you want to invest in the right channels and media. Where does your target audience spend the most amount of time? Are they on Facebook? Are they on LinkedIn? What about websites — do they purchase directly from a business’s private site, or do they prefer commerce sites like Amazon? Are your customers more likely to interact with an email or a pamphlet in their mailbox?

Like the first two steps, figuring out where your customers hang out will require research. Identify what your audience is doing online and where they are going. This will help you to more accurately reach your target audience on the channels that suit your brand and budget.

4. What message will resonate most with my audience?

When it comes to video content, messaging is crucial. Sure, production value is essential for making some good-looking content. But when it comes to producing engaging videos, the message is what matters most.

What is your unique positioning? Are you trying to inform, entertain, or persuade your audience? What do you want your audience to understand or do? Define the key message that you want to convey to your audience. Knowing your message will allow you to choose the best form of communication to reach your target audience.

5. How do I most effectively get that message in front of them?

Using all that newfound knowledge about your target audience, you can now start to tailor your marketing efforts to the people and channels that matter most. Here are a few different ways that you can more effectively get your message in front of your audience:

• Use SEO tactics — Improving your search engine optimization (SEO) is a vital step for all website owners. Effective SEO techniques will help to boost your rankings and get more traffic to your site. And the more people who arrive at your site, the stronger your reach will become.
• Try guest blogging — Engage with other websites and businesses in your industry and propose a collaboration. Writing a guest blog post is a great way to improve your brand awareness and get your message in front of a new audience.
• Invest in paid advertising — Once you have a clear idea about where your audience is, you should consider investing in some paid ads. Organic reach is one thing, but paid advertising on social media gives you complete control over your audience targeting. You can ensure the people most likely to convert are the ones who see your ads. Plus, you can set a budget that suits your business, and scale your input as your business grows.

Conclusion

Social media is a great place to target and engage with your customers. But you don’t want to stretch yourself too thin by trying to create content for audiences on every social network out there!

Ask yourself those five questions, and start getting to know your ideal customers. If you want to reach your target audience, you need to connect with them on the sites they care about. Social media is a part of life, so do your research and launch the social accounts that are best suited to your brand and your following. You can establish an online presence, improve your brand awareness, and promote ads to turn followers into leads.

If you’re looking for a helping hand with your marketing, check out Viewership’s management service. We can help you come up with a killer video marketing strategy and grow your business online!