Marketing Automation Archives - Page 7 of 10

7 August 2015

There Are Non-Human Visitors In Your Google Analytics Reports!

Go ahead and panic – there’s a ‘referral spam’ invasion underway!

Actually, there’s no need to panic, but this is certainly an issue for anyone who relies on their analytics to make business decisions.

What’s Referral Spam?

Referral spam is the result of spammers creating computer-generated footprints that simulate actual visitors to your website. This causes the number of visitors that Google Analytics reports to become artificially inflated. These fake numbers creep into your Audience reports and your Acquisition reports making them less accurate – in some cases much less accurate. Referral spam is most evident in the Google Analytics Referral report, which can be located by following this path: Acquisition > Overview > All Traffic > Channels > Referral. Here, the referral spam presents itself as being sources of traffic to your website, but their domains will likely seem strange to you.

Why Are They Doing This?

They’re trying to trick you into visiting their spammy websites. If you go to one of these URLs, you’ll either get directed to an online store, a marketing scam, or a website that will infect your computer with malware.

Is There A Way To Combat Referral Spam?

Yes, however you may never be able to get rid of 100% of the referral spam. There are several strategies for combating referral spam, each with its own degree of effectiveness, so implementing multiple strategies is the best solution.

You can attempt to block referral spam from visiting your website in the first placed by either adding code to your website’s html, or by using WordPress plugins. These strategies, however, only help with part of the problem and they could cause unintended issues, for example: blocking beneficial bots, like those who discover your content and share it with others.

The other way to go about combating referral spam is to filter from within Google Analytics. This can be done because there are some telltale signs that reveal them as fake. For instance, there’s a portion of referral spam that claims to be triggering your Google Analytics code from a website other than your own. Therefore, a good step towards reducing referral spam is asking Google Analytics to only report on traffic to your actual domain. Another sign that that a reported visitor may be a result of referral spam is seen when a visitor’s screen resolution is reported as “(not set)”. These visits can be filtered out as well. Finally, if you still see referral spam after implementing the first two filters, you’ll need to do hand-to-hand combat with the remaining offenders. This is done by individually adding them to another filter you create.

Is There A Way To Clean Referral Spam From Past Reports?

Yes. Similar to using Google Analytics filters, which only effects reports after implementation, you can also create Google Analytics custom segments that reach back in time to help clean up your past reports. Again, these won’t be 100% effective at eliminating the referral spam, but they will go a long way towards improving the accuracy of your analytics reports.

What’s Google Doing About Referral Spam?

Google hasn’t implemented anything specifically to combat referral spam, nor have they announced they intend to. This is unfortunate. Hopefully they’re actually working behind the scenes to create a solution. Meanwhile, they do have an existing feature within Google Analytics that may, or may not, help. They have a checkbox which reads “exclude all hits from known bots and spiders”. This can be found in the Admin section, under View > View Settings > Bot Filtering. This, however, shouldn’t be relied upon to fix the problem because it seems that nobody at Google is adding referral spam bots to their list of known bots.

If You’re Going To Take Action, Beware

Please be aware that there are best practices that should be followed if you’re going to attempt any of these strategies, so be sure to do your research in advance, or consult experts for help. We, here at Prosar Inbound Inc., are available to assist you, so feel free to contact us.

29 July 2015

Fad, Fiction, or Fact?

The Internet is an ever-evolving place. Since the beginning of the week, Google has announced it’s rolling back use of Google+ and Instagram is boasting record ad sales projections. As a marketer, it can be difficult to know what to follow and what to write off as nothing more than empty promises and passing trends that’ll have no real impact on the media landscape.

Here are some tips on what to follow and what to take with a grain of salt.

Credit: iStock/Minerva Studio

Fads

Internet fads are fast moving targets that capture the wake of the Internet to the point of utter obsession, only to die out weeks if not days later. Unless you have the stars align and you can somehow seamlessly integrate yourself into the conversation, it’s best to leave these alone.

Usually, these are content based and spread around various channels. This can include obsessions over words (such as Taco Bell’s “Taco Bae”), hashtags, trending topics, or memes.

Sometimes, particularly new and niche social platforms fall under this category. Often, they vanish without a trace in a few years. However, if they end up being fact, becoming an early adopter of these networks can pay off long-term. Deciding to pursue these potential winners will depend on your strategy objectives and the resources you have available for social media.

Fiction

Usually, when somebody makes a prediction, it’ll end up wrong. This is the nature of the Internet, where it’s simply too fickle to make any solid prediction of what will be the next big thing. A lot of buzz around new breakthroughs are nothing but hype, and should be treated accordingly.

Keeping an eye on predictions can help inform your social media strategy, however. Predictions are usually a result of some change in the media landscape. They’re not a signal to jump on the bandwagon, but predictions can help inform your strategy for potential new directions. While the predictions might not pan out, analyzing why those predictions were made and why they failed can give you a deeper insight in the market.

Fact

Where consumers are going and staying. As is often the case in marketing: you want to go where the people go. That goes double for social media, where its lifeblood is people using it.

When you start seeing proven statistics for longevity, for strong trends or stability in numbers, for consistent use… these are signs a phenomenon is here to stay. While it could vanish the next day— the Internet is fickle, after all— the likelihood of it staying (at least for a little while!) is high.

These are the channels and tactics you should incorporate into your social media strategy. When people are flocking to a network and consistently clicking on a certain type of content, it has somehow hit a sweet spot that people want and need.

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While it can be useful to follow trends and hop on the bandwagons early, sticking with the facts means you get the most bang for your social media buck. Good luck separating fact from fiction or fad!

15 July 2015

What to Consider When Writing for Web vs. the Page

Multitasking businesswoman at work with a laptop

Is all content created equal? Our team has done a lot of writing for clients over the past couple decades. When PROSAR first started, we wrote content primarily for printed material: brochures, magazines, posters, ads, reports, even a national literacy program for students. Now, most of our content is used online: website, e-newsletters, banner ads and CTAs, whitepapers, and infographics.

In the early 1990s, when we focused on keywords (a term which we didn’t use at the time), we were looking for words that were evocative and would illicit a desired thought or action. We choose wording that would support the purpose and the brand while providing clarity, comprehension and conciseness. This hasn’t changed (or at least, it shouldn’t have changed), but some additional considerations now play a major role:

Writing for Search: strategic use of keywords in headings and paragraphs is important to alert Google of the relevance (and value) of your content. This may involve some testing and analysis to determine which keywords resonate with your target audience and which ones offer a probability of success. (Writing seemed difficult enough in the 90s, now it is layered with even more levels of research wordsmithing.)
Writing for a Multimedia Environment: I’m not sure if more people these days suffer from ADHD, but I do appreciate that we have far more stimuli and choice at our fingertips. So who has the concentration required to read an entire article without clicking, swiping, hovering, or simply glancing aside at the ads, email and texts competing for your attention? We look for snippets and sound-bites (or bytes?) to get the gist and move on to the next bit/byte.

Whether in print or online, each project has its own objectives, audience and tone or style; that does not change. But how your audience will be reading the content does impact how it may be composed. We tend to read more slowly and thoroughly when dealing with print, rather than a faster skimming of the content online. The printed word has a physicality and permanence that seems to give the text some added gravitas. Digital content, on the other hand, seems almost inconsequential; how important can these words be if you can swipe them away with thumb? (Put your thumb away and keep reading; you’re almost finished.)

The reality, is that many of us read far more from a screen than a page these days. So the art of successful writing is now to be as compelling and condensed as possible, while cramming sufficient keywords to encourage good search results.

What are your thoughts on the art of writing online?

9 July 2015

[Do Not] Insert Catchy Blog Title Here

Aka, why forcing content will never get you anywhere (at least long term).

Content creation has a lot of benefits. It drives SEO, gives prospects and clients a reason to revisit your site, and helps establish you as an authority in your field. However, this content has to have a certain amount of authenticity to it for people to really resonate. If you try too hard, your audience will notice— and stop coming.

Credit: iStock/Mark Airs

The Internet, as a general rule, hates marketing. Advertisements are met with sighs it’s a necessary evil, Adblock runs rampant, and branded content is met with a critical eye. This means that in order to have content shared, you can’t force it. You have to adapt to the internet instead of expecting the internet to adapt to you.

People Know What Forced Sounds Like

The internet is full of authentic content: offhand comments turned to tweets, blog posts about what people love, and Facebook statuses that are so strange they could only come from that person. People are constantly consuming stuff that sounds like a real person talking to them.

As a result, anything forced sticks out like a sore thumb. Even if you’re not actively selling anything, if you’re purposely going out of your way to sound funny, or clever, or heroic— people will be able to tell. They will click to the next piece of content because they have dozens upon dozens of pieces to choose from.

The Internet is Fickle

If you plan the latest Internet fad into your content, you will likely miss out on the trend as a whole. Even a few days can make or break whether or not you successfully ride whatever the internet is obsessed about this week, or become a source of ridicule among users who talk about how hopelessly out of touch your company is.

Even if you time it perfectly, you have to make sure you’re using the trend correctly. Forcing yourself somewhere you don’t belong is worse than not using the trend at all.

You Want to Build Genuine Relationships

If you’re forcing out content, people aren’t seeing your brand and your company. With the point of social media to build relationships and make your brand more human, trying too hard is the exact antithesis of that.

Social media use needs to reflect your audience’s general habits, not what’s hot this week. You want to become a part of your customer’s day-to-day life, not jump from one meme to the next (especially when your audience might not even be interested in that meme) and gain temporary followers who drop away once you’re no longer following their preferred trend.

Keep your social media authentic, and you’ll find the quality of your followers increases dramatically.

3 July 2015

3 Important Considerations for Engagement

There are certain words related to social media that people tend to use without really knowing what they mean. Working within an international setting these days, I have come to realize that certain words can become unclear or lost in translation. ENGAGEMENT is such a term

We all want to engage our community, we want to increase our engagement online, or what about that engagement statistic on Facebook, what does that mean?

And what does engagement represent?

Will it drive more sales?
Will it create a community of loyal customers?
Will they spread your brand and promotions like wildfire?

The short answer is probably not. But… why not?

Although I am a strong believer in social media, engagement and community, I have come to realize that other factors need to be considered in order to build the right strategy. Here is my list of critical components: Your Customer, Your Offer, Your Goal and Your Industry.

Your Customer

Let’s be fair, not every customer will be the ideal profile to engage online.

Although age is only a number, their Internet behavior will help you better position your engagement.

Overall in Canada, more than 35 million people have home access to the Internet. Out of that group, 86% of 18-34 year olds have a social profile and 62% of 35-54 years olds. Very significant numbers that should be considered in an overall strategy.
From a channel perspective, Facebook remains the strongest with 59% of users but an interesting study from Forum research shows that Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn can be better channels for your customer base depending on their education, location and finally, your own objectives.

Your Offer

I believe you can create engagement around any topic but the nature of your offer will help you determine how much effort it might take. For example, if your business is customer service driven it might be easier to start a dialogue with your customers online. But then you have to be prepared to foster engagement by offering a quick response and have content ready for a diversity of questions and feedback to nurture a dialogue.

Another example could be that you have a new product and want to get feedback from your audience. In that case, you might offer a free sample, use a social network like Facebook to create a forum, or ask your audience to spread the word by sharing pics on Instagram.

Your Goal

if you are in the service business, you, no doubt, use your online network to share info about and promote your service. However you may not be seeing any return. And that is often becauase ther isn’t a clea objective to shape your strategy. Evaluate what you want from your network and how will you leverage the information you gain.Engaging for the sake of engaging will not serve your end goal. Here are a few options to start your thinking process:

You want an engaged community

You will need a dedicated Community Manager that is interacting with your community on a daily basis. This person will be building your community, increasing your followership, posting relevant content on a high frequency to determine what are your community’s preferences and pain points.
You will need to provide content to your community. Get your employees in the habit of sharing their daily activities, their best moments and customers highlights.
You will need to create a discussion. The concept of “build it and they will come” does not apply here. Work hand-in-hand with your Community Manager to find discussion topics, questions to ask and elements for which you would like feedback.
Remember, this will take time and effort to create but once it is built, it will become a powerful marketing tool!

You want to generate leads

You will need to provide incentives to your fans or followers: contests, prizes, free samples, rewards, etc. By enticing your community to register for something, you will be able to gather their email address and build a database of potential leads.
Your incentive can also be GREAT content. Think about sharing tips, how-tos on how to use your product, current news if you are in a news driven industry, education on using your service, etc.
As you grow your database, use your social media to continue to engage your customers. Once they are in the habit of coming to your page or account for contests, prizes and samples, continue to promote to them to generate referrals and eventual sales. For this purpose, you will need to adopt a CRM tool with automated marketing capabilities such as SharpSpring to maintain your newly built relationships.

Your Industry

Finally, take a look at the your industry. What are your competitors doing to create engagement with their users? Are there any best practices that you can leverage?

Important to note that this should not be the only element to consider. It is not because your competition is there that you should be as well. Take the time to really look into their content: are they doing any storytelling, or only sales driven promotions? And what is their level of engagement? Determine which channels will reach your target audience and fit your needs the most. If it seems overwhelming, an agency can help you answer this question and give you a full overview of your market.

30 June 2015

3 Best Practices for Online Lead Generation

Lead generation is a popular phrase in modern sales and marketing, and justifiably so. A number of traditional techniques such as cold phone calls or creative advertising can be used to focus interest and draw attention to a company’s products and services. Wrap a strong company or brand around that attention and interest and you have leads to pursue. Leads are the lifeblood in providing a continuous supply of new business to a company, as any sales manager can attest to.

Thinkstock/iStock

Cold calls and advertising can only reach a limited number of people. Many businesses hope (and expect) that their websites and social media accounts will expand their exposure and gather a greater number of leads for their sales pipelines. This can happen, but online leads are different than those gathered by traditional lead generation practices.

In the online world, interest is generally more focused towards your website and its content since the majority of online visitors are unfamiliar with you and your company. Many visitors don’t know you or care about you much – they want to check out your stuff, for a variety of reasons. Online interest in your website, blog or social media posts is not the same as successfully calling a business, asking some questions and getting an appointment. Initial online interest is not enough to take to the bank since most of these leads are not yet ready–to-buy.

1) Manage and Qualify Leads through Inbound Marketing

If most of the people who first visit your website are not yet ready to buy, how do you identify those that will likely buy later? This challenge is handled effectively by the methods within a structured inbound marketing approach. This approach will manage your website visitors and nurture many to a point where they are actual qualified leads, ready-to-buy. You need a process to manage it all – something with rules, structure and a degree of automation to manage your online traffic efficiently and effectively. Marketing automation is a suite of tools designed specifically for these purposes.

2) Assist the Buyer’s Journey

The online visitor is a different buyer than the traditional buyer of yesterday. The Internet has empowered modern buyers to inquire and buy on their own terms. People are less influenced by disruptive advertising and pressured sales tactics. We all do online research of the products and services we are interested in, checking out websites and online resources until we reach a point of interest and trust to engage with a vendor. This process is described, fittingly, as the buyer’s journey. Our job as an online resource is to guide this journey to a point where the buyer is ready to engage with us.

3) Sell to the Right People, at the Right Time

If we try to aggressively (and personally) sell to every website visitor we will run ourselves ragged for a disproportionate rate of return. Website visits and even online inquiries are a bit like a wild west shoot-out; lots of action from many directions and sources. A structured qualification process is needed to identify those that you actually have a chance to do business with. Your sales process is precious, as is your time, so give your sales people a break and give them qualified leads. Let them sell when qualified buyers are ready-to-buy.

25 June 2015

Why Marketing Automation?: Eliminate Blind Spots with Smart Lists and Lead Scoring

Your current situation: you have a database with your company’s contacts, leads, including past and potential customers. This database contains a bit of contact information about each one but, have you ever asked yourself: What do you truly know about them? In particular, what do you know about them that is meaningful to your company?

For example, what is their current interest (and degree of interest) in your products/services, and do they have the potential to ever be or should they be considered a qualified lead? These questions might leave you at a bit of a loss.

Lastly, how do you avoid wasting company time on a long list of contacts (by sending out generic bulk emails or cold-calling, for example) that might not be ready to buy, and instead identify and refocus most of your attention on those with the greatest potential?

Credit: iStock / Rawpixel Ltd

Forget Cold-Calling:
Use Smart Lists and Lead Scoring to Automatically Gather Meaningful, Actionable Information About Your Contacts’ Interests and Behaviour

Lead Scoring and Smart List are two features offered by many marketing automation platforms that help you to automatically and dynamically collect valuable information about your contacts’ online behaviour (e.g. what they click on, pages they visit from an email you send, forms they fill out etc.) resulting in actionable information for you and your company. Among other things, Lead Scoring and Smart Lists can let you know who is ready to buy, when they are ready to buy, and will provide you with the information you need about a contact’s behaviour and interests so you can tailor the appropriate message to close the deal.

And, if they’re not ready to buy, lead scoring and smart lists are a part of the marketing automation process that will help you (and the marketing automation platform) identify where they are in the buyer’s lifecycle, so those with potential can be moved closer to a sale.

How it Works

What is a Smart List?

A Smart List is a dynamic list of contacts and leads that self-populates and automatically updates over time based on “rules” you assign to it. If and when these “rules” match any of your contact’s or lead’s behaviour, they are added to the smart list. For example, you might include the following “rules” when setting up one of your smart lists: “Contacts in this list: have visited landing page ‘X’ on my site less than a week ago, and have visited my website’s pricing page less than a week ago.” Now, you can watch the list begin to populate with any contacts who have exhibited these behaviours! Depending on your current relationship with a contact or lead who appears on this smart list, their behaviour might indicate to you that they’re a hot lead who deserves more personalized attention. Armed with actionable information you wouldn’t have otherwise that will help you tailor your message (such as: their interests and stage in the buyer’s lifecycle), you might choose to give them a call or send them a personalized email to check-in on them.

Crucially, Smart Lists will keep you updated on: who you should invest your time in, when to act, and what the message should be, helping to increase the likelihood of closing a sale.

What is Lead Scoring?

Lead Scoring is a points-based system that allows you to automatically rank your contacts and leads based on variety of factors, including:

• Fit – How well a lead aligns to your target audience and ideal customer

• Completeness of Contact Information

• Engagement – # of page visits, # of clicks from emails sent to them, # of forms is filled out

• Specific Page Tracking – If they visit a specific page(s) on your website

You can then assign each factor any positive (+) or negative (-) number value you choose; depending on how important each is to you and your business (e.g. +5 for each webpage page visited, or -20 for people not living in Canada). The total is automatically calculated and updated automatically to make up each individual’s lead score.

You might then create a smart list that will only include people (a) with lead scores over a certain number and (b) who have visited your website less than a week ago.

In this way, lead scoring in combination with smart lists can help you keep track of and sort your “top” contacts and leads – helping you to focus your energy, time, and money on those who are most likely to result in a sale.

Eliminate Blind Spots, Waste Fewer Resources, and Make More Sales by Using Lead Scoring and Smart Lists

Both smart lists and lead scoring help to eliminate “blind spots” you might have in regards to your contacts’ and leads’ behaviour. This previously unknown data empowers you and your sales team to make informed marketing decisions that increase sales and waste less time and money.

Lead scoring and smart lists are just a couple of the powerful features offered by many marketing automation platforms like SharpSpring. Follow the PROSAR Blog to learn more about inbound marketing and marketing automation.

Recommended Related Reading:

5 Reasons to Choose Marketing Automation for Your Inbound Marketing Business Solution

How to Find Your Ideal Client

Get Notified with Inbound Marketing

23 June 2015

The ABCs of Tone

“Tone” is an abstract but critical concept for marketing. Just like perfect pitch is rare in singing, perfect tone is equally rare. In general, tone refers to how you’re delivering your message to the audience, and it’s important to understand the importance of the right tone. In the end, tone is the reason people keep listening.

While it’s impossible to create a sure-fire formula for the perfect tone every time, there are considerations to improving your tone across all platforms. Just remember ABC and you’ll be well on your way to better marketing.

Image credit: kadirkaba / iStock / ThinkStock

Audience

As always, the more you know about your audience, the better your marketing message will be. Age, gender, relationship status, and more factors impact what tone will work best. However, do not focus on stereotypes and supposed best practice attempts (especially for groups such as millenials). Research your particular audience segment in depth and, preferably, read content generated by the target you want to hit. That will provide a better understanding of how to tailor your tone to your demographic.

Learn where your audience spends their time, what marketing messages they resonate best with, and the language the audience already uses. Once you do that, your message will go further.

Branding

Your own company’s brand guidelines should influence how you speak in advertising. Depending on the type of product and how you want to position yourself in the market, you could stick to terms like “informative” and “friendly,” or be more detailed about exact wording whenever you discuss the product or service. No matter what you do, keep it consistent throughout the marketing. It’s jarring to encounter wildly different tones within the same company, making consumers less likely to stick with your company.

Make sure your brand guidelines allow for the same general tone to translate across all channels you’re using.

Context

Each media channel out there has its own norms and best practices for effective language. While companies often go for similar messaging but different wording between traditional media channels— shorter, snappy headlines for outdoor and entertainment value for radio— they very frequently they fall flat online. How often have you seen a tweet copied from Facebook, or a blog post that looks like it comes straight out of a magazine? You should be adjusting your tone to the environment you’re putting it in, which includes how people use the channels.

Learn online media as much as you learn traditional media. You cannot simply copy/paste your traditional marketing tone on the web and expect it to work. Take the time to adjust, especially considering how much of your audience is online.

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Remember A, B, C, and you’ll find tone is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

18 June 2015

Add Your Website to Your Sales Team with these Steps

Organizations have come to realize that websites are not static, however many continue to treat their websites as a passive, though pretty, information piece. Your website is always available to anyone with Internet access. Wouldn’t it make sense to treat your website as your virtual salesperson, always at the ready to engage with any viable prospect who browses by.

Expect More From Your Website

Is your sales team directed to dress well, talk knowingly about the company, and then walk away from a prospect? I suspect your expectations are much greater. Salespeople are trained to ask questions and learn about the prospect, their goals and pain points, and determine how your company can help them. Then they are trained to ask for the sale. A salesperson must go beyond informing in order to make the sale. Why not include business development as an online goal and add your website to your sales team?

If you already have a well-functioning website that talks about your organization and has plenty of pretty photos and pithy marketing statements, then you may already be doing a decent job of supporting your brand. But that is still wasting what could be your organization’s greatest sales tool. Engaging with your market can certainly start with marketing-oriented positioning statements, along with photos and videos that highlight benefits of dealing with your organization. But that engagement can be moved through your sales funnel with the goal of nurturing a new customer. And that’s where inbound marketing comes into play.

The most effective route would be to subscribe to a structured inbound, or automated marketing software solution. There are many options and some are more suited for a specific size or type of organization, so do your homework. PROSAR deals mainly with SMEs; after our due diligence we partnered with and recommend SharpSpring. Regardless of which software you chose, there are inbound tactics that you can employ to make better use of your website.

Some Critical Steps to Make Your Website More Effective

Here are some basic, yet critical, steps to turn your website as an active and productive sales tool:

Determine goals and a process for your online sales nurturing
Develop a keyword and SEO strategy to guide your content and online efforts
Include (and continue to add) relevant and informative information targeted to your primary audience
Make sure that your site is accessible and AODA compliant (good for SEO and broadens your audience)
Support your online presence and drive website traffic with appropriate social media activity
Engage your audience with rich content (images, videos, interviews, infographics, animated presentations, etc.)
Provide additional, gated content and value-added resources (gather contact info and permission to contact)
Monitor website and online behaviour of your qualified leads
Develop automated email workflows to further engage and nurture your qualified leads
Determine the specific needs and pain points from your qualified needs, and demonstrate how you can help to address them
Include special offers and “sales asks” for leads as they progress through your sales funnel
Personal follow-up to gain more detailed information, hone your solution and close the sale (Yes, it typically still requires a person to make the sale.)

These are implemented via a content generation plan including regular blogging, calls-to-action, effective landing pages, dynamic email campaigns, ongoing website monitoring and assessment, and an over-arching strategic plan to guide the whole process. (A process which is structured and manageable with a good software solution.)

11 June 2015

How to Find Your Ideal Client

Or, perhaps more to the point, how to make sure your ideal client finds you. All organizations face this issue, and it can be especially challenging for small businesses. But done right, online inbound marketing puts you in the driver’s seat – you just need a roadmap for success.

a smartphone with a maps app overlaid on top of a map with a compass and pen — Oleksiy Mark/iStock/Thinkstock

In the same way that not everyone who walks into your physical “bricks and mortar” store is actually going to be a client, not everyone who visits your website or your social media channels will be a client either. So, how do you drive the real clients to your website? And once you’ve achieved that, how do you find them amid all the other site visitors? Is there a way to not only identify them, but also to separate them out for closer attention? There is… and it involves two terms: Segmentation and Target Marketing.

Segmentation and Target Marketing Defined

The online Business Dictionary defines market “Segmentation” as: “The process of defining and subdividing a large homogenous market into clearly identifiable segments having similar needs, wants, or demand characteristics.” This dictionary goes on to say: “Its objective is to design a marketing mix that precisely matches the expectations of customers in the targeted segment.” Which brings us to our second term…

Target Marketing involves breaking a market into segments and then focusing your marketing efforts on one or a few key segments so you can concentrate on understanding the needs and wants of that particular market intimately. The bottom line is that Target Marketing is about attracting customers who will buy what you’re selling.

Who is your Ideal Customer? The Art of Buyer Personas

If you’re going to target your ideal customer, obviously you need to know who that is. Before you try to identify specific people, groups, or organizations, take some time to define your ideal. What characteristics does your target buyer have? Go beyond just demographics such as age, gender, location, marital status, education level, and income bracket. What are some key personality traits that might make them a good fit for your products and services? What might their interests be? What motivates them? What might they be trying to achieve that your offering could help with? The more information you can determine about your ideal customer, the better you will understand them and the more effectively you will be able to tailor and deliver your messaging to them.

Use this information to develop one or more buyer personas. According to SharpSpring, a buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. Be as detailed as you can. Give each persona a name – Frank the Farmer, or Connie the Coffee Connoisseur – and have some fun with personality traits. Done well, buyer personas help to focus your marketing content and hone in on the right audience to reach out to with your message.

The Advantage of Online Marketing

Working online using inbound marketing tactics gives you more power over your marketing efforts and outcomes. With an ad in a newspaper or magazine, you have no way to determine who has seen it, nor do you have any way to follow up with those who have. By contrast, online marketing allows you to discern who has seen your banner ad or other digital marketing content. Not only are you able to collect information about people who visit your ad, site, blog, or social media page, but you are also able to track that information over time, use it, and act on it:

follow up with a thank you for downloading an article,
respond with an email message or an offer, or even,
have a complete automated campaign set up that guides your prospect through several steps, providing gradually more detailed and more targeted information about your products and services.

You might start with an ad on social media or in an online publication, then provide a useful checklist that your buyer would find helpful in reaching their goals, and follow that up with a more detailed white paper on a topic they’ve expressed interest in during your interactions. This progression gives you more information about what they are looking for at the same time that you are leading them through your sales process and propelling them towards a buying decision.

Multi-faceted Results

If you do the following:

develop strong buyer personas
use these to define a relevant target audience
streamline your online marketing message for this audience
provide progressively more detailed or tailored content to meet the audience’s needs

You will see positive results on a number of different fronts:

Efficient use of time and resources
Cost effective marketing activities
More sales, increased revenues, and improved profit margins
Improved customer relationships and happier customers
Measurable progress and results throughout the entire customer engagement cycle

An important part of the mix is including smart SEO to help attract the right audience. Your content should follow and support your customer’s journey (for all target audiences). As a small business, it can be difficult to set aside the time needed upfront to establish solid buyer personas, to clearly define your target audience, and to create content that will resonate with them. However, experience tells us that these efforts will pay off in spades.