You have just launched your online store, or your new app and you are excited to see those sales / downloads coming in. In order to get those results you want, it’s time to launch some digital marketing and ad campaigns! When you do launch your campaign, it’s important to find the correct target audience for your product, otherwise your time, resources and budget will not realize their full returns. So how do you go about finding that target audience?

Here are 4 tips to help you get started:

1. Breakdown Audience Batches

As you start building out your content and your digital presence, try to map out different batches of audiences.

Batch 1: the audience you believe you would be marketing

Batch 2: the audience you see who are following your competitors

Batch 3: the unknown audience who may be the ones that boost you to success

Whenever you start selling some products or releasing an app, it’s easy to feel like you know who your core audience is going to be, so try to break them down. This will be the first group of people you will run ads for. However, you need to beware, capturing the attention of any audience is difficult. The audience you think is right for your product may interact with your content, but might not convert to a sale or a daily active user (DAU).

That’s why your next step is to do some research on your competition and find the audience that interacts with them. You may be able to get a glimpse of who your competitors are targeting this way. You may be surprised to see what that audience looks like!

The final batch will be the most experimental. It may bear no fruits right away, but it will help tie together a complete picture of your audience eventually. There is always a wildcard audience out there that’s either untapped or just volatile. That doesn’t mean they aren’t valuable once you reach them. The quality of your product and your digital content will help capture the attention of this unknown audience, and the best way to find them is to analyze the results you’ve had so far.

Review the ones interacting with your content, go over your analytics and find groups of anomalies. Use a small portion of your budget to advertise to that audience. They may be a dud or they may bring more value than you’ll realize, so this is one of those high risk high reward scenarios.

   2. Be the Audience

When you map out the audience that is following your competitor, try to learn more about them.

You will get more conversions if you understand an audience better, and the best way to understand your market is to follow their online footprint.

Join the communities they are a part of and share your message with them. This will also help in the direction of new content you can use to target an audience.

   3. Be Ready to Budget, Be Ready to Pay

Ads add up, it isn’t easy to find your audience right away, and you need to be ready to test out different campaigns.

The 3 batches we mentioned should act as a starting point – a way to find the best combinations of targeting in order to get the highest number of conversions. In order to get there, it means you need to be ready to take on the costs of those campaigns.

Set a budget for your product, and break out the campaigns. We recommend putting a heavier chunk of the budget towards the audience you believe you will be marketing to and the audience you see who are following your competitors, and putting a smaller amount towards the experimental unknown audience.

Of course, every product’s strategy may vary – some products have more generalized audiences and others already come with a specific niche audience – but it’s always good to have the budget for multiple campaigns ready.

   4. Give Time & Analyze

It is very important to give your campaigns time to train and reach your audience. You should not expect to see results within an hour, and even if you do, you should give it enough time where you have results to properly analyze and compare all your campaigns.

It is very important to not only analyze the results of each individual campaign, but also make sure you compare both the interaction and conversion rates of all of the campaigns against each other.

We recommend keeping a record of all the campaigns you ran, with the different audiences, so you can start utilizing the past results and experiment with new ones. It may be the most tedious process, but it will bring out the best results!

IDENTIFY YOUR AUDIENCE - INCREASE CONVERSIONS

Targeting your audience is similar to a science experiment. You have your hypothesis (who you think is your audience), your research (who follows your competitors content), your experiment (finding new audiences, trying out different campaigns) and your analysis (reviewing your campaign results), all of which will lead to your final conclusion (raking in the high conversions!).

Starring: Cost, Quality & Time

It is 1999, I am waiting in a doctor’s office and see one of those whimsical wooden signs (you know the ones that always have some sort of life lesson or moral on them) which reads “if you want your appointment to be fast and cheap then the service won’t be good; if you want good service and a cheap bill, then you will have to wait a lot longer than you think; if you want fast and good service, it won’t be cheap!”

I am immediately concerned why bad service is even an option at the doctor’s office. I am also so bored while waiting that I sit there trying to figure out a way to have all three. Maybe if I solve this riddle and present the answer to the doctor I will win free healthcare for life!

Cut to 2019, I am still paying (a lot) for healthcare.

As a business owner and a service provider (like the doctor) I realize that there is serious love triangle happening between Cost, Quality, and Time. Cost is usually always in the center. Since we are a development shop I will use examples of the challenges business owners face when trying to create their own websites, web applications, mobiles applications, software, etc. These challenges though can really apply to any industry or business strategy.

Developing a mobile and web application requires a significant investment to get started and build your base. This investment will be a part of your ongoing operational cost as your business progresses; you will start to add on new features, make changes to existing functionalities, change your mind, release updates based on user feedback, change your mind again, upgrade your infrastructure to accommodate your growing audience, etc.

Usually when a business approaches a development shop they have set a deadline in mind for when they would like to launch their app, have a huge list of features and ideas to create, and….. a missing budget. Believe it or not, even though we are in the golden era of technology most people are unfamiliar with the processes and costs of development, design and maintenance. The pricing structure of development companies also vary significantly due to differences in style, quality, project management, skill level and resources.

Business owners must define their budget, analyze their business strategy to determine how they will get a return on investment (ROI), create a rollout strategy with timelines that align with their market, and determine what quality and product they will be satisfied with and how they plan to continue improving it. But even if you have all of these written down, business (any business) is always in a state of change. Budgets will fluctuate, timelines will be moved up or down as priorities shift, and quality will change to incorporate feedback, new directions, new collaborators and many other factors. There will never be a perfect synergy between the three because they are always changing. This is the Budget Love Triangle.

So how do you run a business in the center of this love triangle? By understanding that there will be different couples at different times.

Sometimes budget and time will be the It couple; budget is constrained and a deadline cannot be changed or loss will occur so quality will have to be adjusted until additional funds are secured. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Adjusting quality doesn’t mean delivering bad products it means you will have to prioritize what you need versus what you want. For example: you are building an e-commerce website for sofas and you think it would be cool to add augmented reality so people can see what the sofa looks like inside their living room. Right now, you just don’t have the budget for it and the longer you wait to make the website live the more sales you know you’re missing. So, although you want augmented reality, right now all you need is pictures of the sofas. Once you get your website started and sales start coming in and your budget expands you might be able to add augmented reality to your online store (but it will probably take time….new couple alert).

Sometimes you will need to deliver something on time and the quality has to be amazing in order to ensure long-term business so your budget and spend ends up having to match that requirement. For example: you have a great idea for a mobile application, investors are ready to throw their money at you but want to see a working prototype in 2 months. If you believe strongly in the potential of your product then you have to be willing to make the monetary investment to produce an impressive prototype by the given deadline. Time and quality are the current couple but once you get those investment funds a new couple might take over.

Everyday in business is like The Bachelor or The Bachelorette. There will always be a love triangle (Cost, Quality & Time) and usually one couple prevails….until the next season.

It is important to have good content on your website but the purpose of an elevator pitch is to first hook the listener in before you get to tell them your whole story.

The same goes for your website. When a user lands on your site you need to hook them in before you get to tell them more. So make sure your landing page immediately and easily communicates these 3 things:

What you do? — whether you sell products, have a personal blog, run an online community or publication, it has to be clear to anyone that lands on your website what it is that you do. Why are you online? Why does this website exist. Make sure that you communicate that well.

What do you provide? — think of why a user has navigated to your website. What do you think they are looking for? Are you providing that? Are you making it easy to find and understand what it is?

What is your “call to action” — your “call to action” is very important. You can almost say its your measurement of success for your website. What is it that you want the user to do on your website? Do you want them to buy? Do you want them to donate? Subscribe? Sign up for a newsletter? What is the call to action and is it clearly labeled and visible on your website?

Example of common mistakes: A non-profit will have an entire site built around their work, their mission, their team and their story but the Donate button , which is their call to action , will be listed at the bottom of a secondary page or too small and hard to find. This makes it difficult to accomplish the conversion the non-profit wants to happen on their website.

You have to make sure your call to actions are placed strategically and are clear and visible.

You might already have a website — but want to redesign it.

Will your website ever be DONE, DONE? No. You will constantly be updating content and changing up design as your business and the market evolves.

It is important, whether you are building a site from scratch or redesigning your existing site, to evaluate whether your website is serving its purpose for existing.

What do you want? — set clear goals and objectives — The purpose of my website is to…. Sell clothes / create a loyal audience for my blog / display my portfolio and get clients / etc.

What do you need right now? — if your budget is becoming a restriction it helps to have your wants vs. needs mapped out. Think about what is absolutely necessary for you to communicate and achieve through your website and what you would like to have as additional value but don’t necessarily need right now. That way when you grow and have more funds you will be able to implement what you wanted. Your site will NEVER be done and as you grow you should be prepared for your site to reflect that growth.

What’s working / not working? — If you are making the site yourself or working with a developer (like us!), knowing what you think has been working for you and what you think hasn’t been working for you will help with structuring your site. Whether it’s building something new or redesigning, you will be able to develop your site and your story in a way you think will achieve your end goal. You will know what content to keep, what language works best, and what tone to set.

Check out your competition — it helps to see what others are working on for reference on things you like, don’t like, and how to differentiate. You can see what is working for them and what isn’t working for them. They are your competition but you can also learn a lot from observing what they do.

So, who are you talking to? What is your message and who is your audience for your website?

Going back to the elevator pitch — what is the key message you want to communicate about yourself/ your business? This should be clear when a user lands on your website regardless of whether they are your target market or not — it should be clear what you do and who you are to everyone.

Who is your target market/audience? Who is your message intended for?

Ex: You own a makeup company. Your target market/audience might be makeup influencers, celebrities, people interested in health and beauty.

Make sure your site is set up in a way that effectively communicates to them. What do you think they are looking for when they land on your site? Have you provided that solution to them? Can it be found easily on your website? Do you have engaging content? Why should they spend time on your site versus your competitors?

Make sure your website tells a story — but that story needs to be interesting, engaging and not too long. Too much content can overwhelm a visitor — attention spans are short as is. Uninteresting content can lose a visitor — there are so many options out there so you have to stand out and be memorable (especially if you want repeat visitors/customers).

Too much content also makes it difficult for the user to find things. The website should make their life easy not add more work. If the user has to work they are more likely to abandon your website.

Finally, if you’ve decided that building the website yourself is just not your cup of tea, then find a developer (like us!). Have a solid mission statement and tone prepared for your brand. It helps to know who you are when a developer is building out the visual and experiential aspects of your website. Also, you will be more inclined and connected to your venture if it truly reflects YOU.