Marketing can be seen as and confused for sales. In most cases, the subject matter for the indicated audience is often broad in language and has a one shoe fits all persona. The trap many companies fall into is confusing the basis of marketing: Introducing and connecting your product/service to your target audience.
Sales, like marketing, is communicating with your customer. The key indicator that separates sales from marketing is the intent to sell. Sales ends with a sale, while as marketing can have many different end goals. One of those being brand awareness, which brings us back to our target audience.
The target audience is not everyone. In the medical field it can sometimes be mistaken that most consumers fall into your demographic because, as they say, everyone gets sick. However, you will find that this is not the case. The target audience is whoever has bought or intends to buy your product or service. It is the specific group of consumers who are most likely to want your product or service.
How do you find your target audience?
The proof is in the numbers. Using data analytics insights is your best tool to find your target audience. The recently updated GA4 is the principal data analytics tool at your fingertips, it’s also free.
In GA4 under your User Attributes, you will find a wealth of knowledge. There you can find the demographic details of everyone who has visited your site from the age range, sex, country, city, language, and even interests.
What’s more, you can find out what they buy, when they buy it, and what page they were on when they did so. GA4 has many avenues and it does take time to fully understand the data it collects; but once you find what you’re looking for, you can move on from there. For example, if users have a high bounce rate on a certain page, they’re not finding what they are looking for, update the page so that they are. Furthermore, upon collecting data and scrutinizing it, you can find the individuals who have actually bought your product or service. Those are your target audience.
You found your target audience, now what?
You’ve found your target audience through data collection and now you’re wondering what to do with it. The best measure of tact is to create user personas based on your unique selling point, the target audience needs, and interests. Then you can update your marketing efforts using your collected data and personas.
This could mean updating your website so that it now caters to the target audience you now know wants your service/product. This could include updating your brand statement, web banners and graphics, meta tags, alt texts, key words, and SEO strategy.
Your advertisements are also going to change. One of the first things you’re going to do is change the target audience you have for your advertising strategy. This means narrowing it down, and at first the users coming to your site will also decrease. However, the bounce rate and conversion rate on your website will also improve because the users who are visiting your website are interested in what you have to sell.
Once you have accomplished establishing your true target audience and marketing to them efficiently, you can move from mid-funnel to outer-funnel. There you will be able to increase your brand awareness and obtain more potential customers to your company and/or website.
The purpose of creating a strong target audience, especially in the medical field, is to indicate and market to the best potential consumer of your product or service. When marketing is confused as sales, the target audience and market strategy can become muddled and unclear. The medical field can be very precise in its practice and services that it carries out. That is why it is essential to have a clear target audience. Whether you are a pediatrician or a manufacturer of medical devices, the best practice is to know exactly who your target audience is.
By Marina Flores, Marketing Manager at Ceragem International