Marketing starts with knowing and understanding your customer. Knowing your target audience and then creating the products just as they require (so that while using it, they feel like this product was specially handcrafted for them) should be the fore and foremost goal of business.
But the catch here is not just creating the product for your target audience but delivering the product to them. Whether big or small, every business spends a lot of time and money marketing their product to maximize their growth and profit, but not everyone succeeds.
No matter how ironic this sounds, this is the reality for many brands. Do you want to know why? The reason is That they failed to target their audience precisely.
You cannot just post or stick billboards with the same content over all platforms. Yes, you targeted the audience, but you also need to lure them in.
Let’s take an example:
We, as marketing firms, are doing many things wrong while targeting our target audience. I am further dividing this into two parts, the first being mistakes in general and the second being social media or online marketing mistakes.
General mistakes-
Wrong targeting is an old, fundamental problem that every firm and marketing agency struggles with. You think you know who your audience is, but actually, you don’t, or they are not whom you should target. Wrong targeting is why some products flop within a month of launch, and this can ruin your business if not taken care of at its earliest.
Solutions:
- Know customer’s journey
- Use precise marketing
- Segment, Research and analyze consumer market
- Be visible at right place
Poor product description-
There is a very high probability that defining your product is not how consumers perceive it. Your product description should be Not only straightforward but also descriptively correct. A bad or wrong description might cost you money.
Solution:
- Check spelling errors
- Provide a clear and suitable description
- When selling online, give product descriptions better than your competitors
Marketing strategy-
If you have an incomplete, complicated, and unplanned marketing strategy, it will cost you fortunes of money and time. Often, firms don’t work correctly on their brand value and get stuck between customers’ bad reviews and fewer sales.
Solution-
- Do proper segmentation
- Use inbound marketing
- Work on your brand value
Web marketing-
I can’t emphasize enough how many brands neglect their website traffic and unknowingly suffer loss by not being up to the expectation of the audience.
There are many tools for web marketing, and you must use them effectively to get a good response and reach your desired audience. Types of web marketing are SEO, PPC, content marketing, email marketing, etc.
Solution:
- Use mobile-friendly website
- Keep updating your site frequently
- Contact detail should be easily assessable
- Ask customers for their reviews
- Keep an eye on negative thoughts and work on them
Social media mistakes-
Social media algorithm-
By default, social media algorithm is the key to what your customer will see. They prioritize what content users will see first and like based on their pattern of interest.
Sounds simple, right? But I must tell you that it indeed is just as complicated as straightforward it sounds.
Algorithms keep on changing and evolving very rapidly, and you as a marketer must keep up with it; otherwise, you having an audience of 20K will give you a reach of nearly 4K only.
Solution:
- Engage more with your customers
- Reply and respond in the comment section
- Use relevant hashtags
Posting the same content everywhere:
Posting the same content around sure saves your time, keeps you active, and is hassle-free but just as any other bad habit, this might be doing more harm to you than benefit. For example, when we sleep more at night, we feel lethargic the whole day, that same is the case here, Same content everywhere will bore your customer.
Solution:
- Know where your consumer is. If your target is young women, use the Instagram platform, young boys-use sports channel/magazine, etc.
- Optimize content for each app.
- Highlights your unique selling point.
- Use social media influencers. By that, you will get a well-plated group audience.
Posting/Publishing frequency-
Maintain your social media activity frequency. Just being online won’t do, be available too. But you cannot overwhelm your customer with too frequent posts to get irritated.
Neither scenario is good for you.
The different app requires an additional amount of posts to be in the consumer’s feed.
Solutions:
- Understand algorithm, and do the math
- Post at peak hours when people use social media more like 9-12 pm
- Post once a day or five times a week.
Content of your posts-
What you are posting matters a lot. To better interact with the customer and get their positive response, your post’s content needs to be interesting, relatable, creative, and follow the most recent trend.
Take the example from Goibibo’s Instagram handle; they cannot be posting the change in their plane ticket prices. Instead, they post memes that are somehow related to their purpose of business and also follow the most recent internet trend.
This way, they are entertaining the consumer and engaging with them.
Solution:
- Go in the flow of trends
- Be more creative
- Don’t be persuasive of your purpose but never forget it.
Marketing is one of the most rapidly changing fields, which requires fast adaptation to changes, though most of the changes are analytical and statistical.
Understanding the can ultimately lead us to our targeted audience and reduce our chances of facing a downtrend in our business.
Published By- Satheesh Kumar
