When starting or even running an existing business and are attempting to reach out to your target niche or expanding into a new niche, often times we don’t really know what marketing channels our customers are located. Finding your optimal marketing channel(s) truly is a trial-and-error experiment for business owners. Some of the confusion can be solved by doing some research based on your industry, age generation(s) you are targeting and other related demographics of your target customers. Having an understanding of where your customers hang out, their demographics and how to connect with them can help you save time and money when reaching out to new potential customers.
There is a very helpful book resource named “Traction” by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares that provides a thought-provoking discussion on how to find the optimal channels for delivering your product message. As an entrepreneur, I went through and are still going through the trial-and-error process of finding the right channels and space to deliver my message and allocate my marketing budget. It’s important to think about demographics such as age (Generation), location, income, education, even whether not a potential customer is a parent. Tik Tok will not have the same audience as Facebook or YouTube.
It’s important to remember that there are typical 3 key areas to consider when developing your marketing message. Consider the Financial, Strategic, and Personal goals of the potential customer. Let me briefly speak about each of these considerations. Financial goals – Does your product or service deliver an ROI? Is it saving your customers time, money and other important resources? Strategic goals – Does your product or service address the problem(s) the user selected it for? Is communication easier with your customers target audience using your solution? Personal goals – Can your customers sleep easier at night using your product or service? Do they feel more confident in growing their own business or running their household being able to save $ using your product?
My own journey has been very enlightening in how to determine which channels, the frequency and the type of messaging resonate with my ideal customer. It’s important to develop a ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) to understand their journey and why they might seek out your product or services. The goal is to create awareness and eventually have a customer advocate that will happily tell others about your products and services. I’ve learned that YouTube, Facebook and Google are the optimal channels for Dealsby in creating awareness while TikTok and Instagram are not optimal channels. My underlying magic is to provide a referral marketing and customer engagement platform for small business owners in referral dependent industries that help them attract, retain and engage their customers on a higher and more frequent basis.
Trial-and-error and doing research using sources like Pew Research, Google and other relevant data sources to understand the market you want to engage. Nothing takes the place of getting out and talking to customers to find out their pain points and what they have attempted to use in the past. What has worked and not worked and if they are the decision makers and have a budget to pay for a solution.
A daily reminder that is taped to my refrigerator is “Business buyers don’t ‘buy’ my company’s products or services, they ‘buy into’ my company’s perspective and approach to solving their problems.
Don’t forget to know and understand your target audience, their buying habits and the channels that they frequent and hang out. Nothing is more wasteful than advertising in a channel where your customers don’t spend any time.
Dealsby is cloud and app-based Referral Marketing and Customer Engagement Technology that integrates referral code sharing technology, SMS, Email & popular social media platforms. Dealsby helps create brand awareness, brand exposure & new customer acquisition opportunities for our small business subscribers while helping consumers save money through referral reward discounts.
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