Being Smart About Your Market
Businesses today have a potentially unprecedented connection to their customers. With social media and the internet, anyone is able represent themselves and their interests online. The smartest of today’s businesses, therefore, are taking advantage of this data in order to provide the best service to the people who need it.
Understanding the target market is one of the earliest steps taken by businesses as they begin to plan how to reach out to them. Nowadays, recognizing your digital market is just as important as researching who is walking through your door. Reaching your online audience is increasingly more cost efficient than physical advertising. The fact that people are willing to share their likes, dislikes, statuses, and wants in a public forum means that modern businesses can not only find that information, but use it to efficiently and responsibly connect with the community.
The Precision Market Snapshot
Here at Letter 13 Creative, we have begun to implement what we call the “Precision Market Snapshot” in order to take advantage of the information available to us. By pinpointing demographic information through social media, we are able to see the total digital audience within a 10, 5, and even 1 mile radius of a business location. Then, from info gathered through mediums like the Facebook Data Center, we can zoom in on smaller portions of the total audience. Look for coffee lovers within walking distance of your store. See how many football fans who are interested in business are in the neighborhood. All within your wider demographic range.
On top of finding new clients, it is also possible to learn more about your current customers! Finding out what kind of interests are trending within your own client base allows you to reach out to them in ways that you can be much more confident about. Finding out if your customers prefer cats or dogs seems like a small piece of information, but it could be the difference between an effective and a lukewarm marketing campaign.
In addition, the reach need not be small. These Snapshots can be used on a city, state, or even nationwide scale. This is extremely helpful in terms of planning for the future. Big events such as opening a new location or planning a strategy for an out of town convention always require diligent market research, and this technique can certainly aid in very crucial ways.
Ultimately, this information is available and waiting to be utilized. Whether you are supplementing your current marketing strategy or starting from scratch, the use of methods like the social media Precision Market Snapshot can only increase your understanding of the people who may come in contact with your business. And the more you know about your community and potential customers, the more likely you are to get them through your doors and loving your business!
