Most people or businesses, when asked what their social media goals are, would say, “to get more followers.”  Have you heard the phrase, “if you try to market to everyone you’ll end up marketing to no one?”

Collecting more followers without understanding who you’re attracting is not the key to social media marketing success.  More followers makes your account appear “cool” and popular, but if your goal is to sell children’s toys and only 10% of your followers have children, then you’re putting a lot of time and effort into running social media campaigns that simply won’t pay off.

Everyone should care about what kind of followers they’re getting.  Are you seeking out people who are going to actively engage in your content?  Are you seeking out followers who have the personal finances and lifestyle to purchase your product?  Are you aware of who your brand is attracting and resonating with the most?  Does your content cater to those people specifically?  From an Instagram standpoint, the newest algorithm launched in January 2018 considerably favors all accounts that garner engagement from their followers.  Instagram can be the most powerful social media marketing tool if you’re utilizing it correctly, but if nobody is liking or commenting on your posts, you’ll end up showing up on fewer and fewer feeds.  Now more than ever, it’s crucial to be targeting your correct social media audience.

Many brands see a good number of people making purchases through their social media accounts and tell themselves they’ve done it!  They’ve nailed their target market!  Unfortunately, there’s always more work to be done.  Honing your target market is an ever-evolving project, and there are endless ways in which you can tap into better marketing results.  Say you are a business that offers three different products with three different price points.  Upon some simple data analytics, you find that most of your social media followers are opting to purchase your lowest priced product.  You are building an audience and creating content that appeals to a type of clientele that is not your goal clientele. Your goal is to have most of your social media followers opting to purchase your highest priced product.  You need to reassess your social media strategy if you are not achieving your goal, even if you’re seeing some level of results.

Having a higher number of followers means nothing to your business if they aren’t the ones who are purchasing your product, engaging in your content or resonating with your brand in some way.  This isn’t to say that you are isolating or excluding certain people from your brand, it just means you are focusing your marketing efforts and dollars on a specific group of people who are more likely to spend money on you.  This is intentional and intelligent.

The more targeted your niche market is, the more successful you will be in appealing to them.  There are billions of niches within consumers, so figuring out yours takes some time and potentially some trial and error.  Don’t get complacent in thinking that you know who your brand appeals to.  Tapping into your target market is an ongoing, ever-changing and full-time project, and one i’m happy to do for you!

There are a couple of articles on this topic that I really dig, so if you’re nerding out on this stuff like I am then check these out…

https://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/target-market

https://www.inc.com/guides/2010/06/defining-your-target-market.html