In digital marketing it can be easy to get caught up in the technical side of things, however, digital marketing is, ultimately, marketing. Because of this digital marketers need to make sure that traditional marketing is properly integrated into their campaigns.
But, what is marketing?
According to the Chartered Institute of Marketing their official definition of marketing is:
Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.
With this in mind, knowing your customer or audience is extremely important in working towards identifying, anticipating and satisfying them and there is no reason why this should differ in digital marketing.
How to get to know your audience
Audience profiling is a vital part of getting to know your audience and putting them into clear profiles can help you target them effectively. It’s important not to over complicate your audience profiling by splitting them too specifically. However, if you don’t segment your audience enough then targeting them effectively can be equally as difficult.
There are a lot of tools and methods that you can use to help you with your audience profiling, both online and offline. Using these methods you can get a good general idea of who you need to be targeting in your marketing activities.
One online tool you can use is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is brilliant for getting information on who is using your website and when. By setting up the demographics on Google Analytics you are able to get a general idea of the age, gender, location, and interests of who is visiting your site.
Social media is another great way to get to know your online audience, both through the analytics available and by looking at and talking to the people who follow your social profiles. Social media will give you access to your audience that can give you insight into what they think and feel, so it’s important to make sure that you make the most of this data.
Another tool you can use is surveys; they can aid you in getting to know more about your audience. However, this can sometimes be time consuming and not always get a high response. Although, you can tailor your surveys to ask whatever questions you want which makes the data harvested from them specific to your needs. You can distribute your survey online through your website, email marketing, and social media to make sure you get your survey in front of the correct people giving you the opportunity to better understand who they are.
How to use this to your advantage
Being able to build audience profiles can help to give you an edge against your competitors. By understanding your audience better than your competitors you can target them more effectively and give them a better service and experience.
Also, by targeting specific audiences you can focus your marketing efforts in the right place. This will help you stay on budget, get better results, and anticipate and satisfy your customers.
