Do You Really Know Your Audience?

Today’s myth: “I know my audience”

When you create a product or service, you must know your audience. That is self-evident.

If the goal of your service/product is to fill a gap in the market and solve a customer pain point that’s currently being ignored (this should be your goal at least), the only way to do this is to both understand the market you’re in and the customers in it.?

In my experience, however, most companies that claim to know their audience, actually don’t.

Typically, they will simply have a vague idea about the sorts of people that will be interested in their products or services, without a true understanding of their wants, needs, and expectations.

An online store that sells modern-style gym wear, for example, might identify their audience as health-conscious 18-35-year-olds. Whilst this knowledge is helpful as a broad framework for deciding what platforms to focus their marketing efforts on (e.g. Gen-Z responds best to TikTok), it does not get them any closer to ensuring that they provide their customers with a personalised experience.?

Whether you know it or not, the ultimate purpose of knowing your audience is personalisation. Uniquely tailoring what they see and how they interact with your brand is what will make them feel accounted for and special.

The result?

Customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, and sales.

But how do you create this personalised experience?

Well, first of all, you’ll never be able to provide a personalised marketing experience when you treat your audience as one giant block of mindless consumers.

That’s where customer segmentation comes in.?

I will use an example of one of our clients to illustrate my point. When this company came to us, amongst various other things, they wanted to run email marketing campaigns.

They had a huge database of emails just waiting to be targeted and we were happy to take on this responsibility.?The first thing we noticed, however, was that this huge list of potential gold dust was not even segmented!

It was, then, no surprise when we next noticed that the conversion rate was very low and the churn rate (the rate at which people were unsubscribing) was very high.?

Why?

You guessed it – a lack of personalisation!

Just think, rather than peppering every single one of your audience with the same emails about the same products and the same deals (most of them will not be interested), why not group them so each customer segment receives emails that are more relevant to them?

You should know the products that each customer likes/will be interested in because you will have all their sales order data. In turn, you could group customers that often buy from a certain product range and tailor their emails accordingly. T

his could involve sending more emails about that specific product range (e.g. candles) or similar ones that are also relevant (e.g. candle holders).

Equally, you should be grouping the customers that spend loads of money on your brand.

Put them in a “VIP” segment, reward them with amazing deals, and build customer loyalty. Remember, the consumer-brand relationship should be mutually beneficial.

Your customers should feel as if you care because you actually do. The great thing about keeping your customers happy is that it also happens to be good for business!

The key to understanding your audience – so that you can then personalise their experience – is to listen to them. Your worst enemy is assumptions – do not assume anything about your audience!

Ask them what they like, observe how they act, and then draw conclusions. Do not jump straight to the end of this process.

Here are a few ways to listen to your customers…

• Customer feedback: read reviews, send out questionnaires, and get valuable feedback on your customers’ perceptions and expectations of your brand.
• A/B testing: “I think my audience would be more likely to click on a CTA button which says “Download Now” rather than “Download Your Demo””. An assumption like this should never fuel any decision to do with your business. Why not conduct an A/B test with these two variations and allow your audience to choose which one they would prefer? Did one option produce significantly more clicks? Go with that!
• Session recordings: software like Mouseflow allows you to watch and analyse recordings of customers interacting with your site. If you, for instance, observe that many customers are adding products to cart but often not completing the purchase, it’s probably a good indication that your audience doesn’t like your checkout process. Does it need simplifying?

The data you gather from such research should inform the design of your website, your marketing efforts, and any other aspect of your business that involves customer interactions.?

Know your audience; personalise their experience.

Are there any marketing myths that you want me to debunk? Please feel free to comment or message me about a problem you are facing/have faced as a business owner or a marketer, so I can tackle it in a future newsletter.