Imagine you’re trying to shoot an arrow at a target—blindfolded. As you release the bow string, you can only hope it gets in the general area of the bullseye, but you have no idea whether it will hit the target at all. That’s what it can be like when you send out a marketing postcard without a custom mailing list.
Before you can contact customers, you first need to determine your target audience. Here, you’ll find more explanation about what a target audience is, why it’s crucial to find it, and how to do it.
What Is a Target Audience?
A target audience consists of people who are likely customers and who share certain demographic descriptions, such as age, race, socioeconomic status, education, location, gender, and more.
Yours may differ from other companies’ target audiences, even within the same industry. For instance, while another general dentistry practice wants to bring in more families to treat, perhaps you would like to appeal more to adult patients with higher income. Thus, your target audience, and therefore your marketing approach, may be different.
Why Is Finding Your Target Audience Important?
As much as you may wish you had an unlimited marketing budget, the truth is that most businesses only have a finite amount of money dedicated to attracting customers. As a result, you want to get the most out of what you do spend, and sending postcards indiscriminately to everyone is not the most efficient or cost effective approach.
When you take a little bit of extra time to identify your target audience and their addresses, you can refine your focus only on those who fit your ideal customer’s description, increasing your chances of conversion.
How Do You Identify Your Target Audience?
Before you can reap the benefits of directly reaching your target audience, you need to know who and where they are! This process is actually fairly straightforward. You need to follow these steps:
- Look at your past and current customers and find similarities about them.
- Purchase mailing lists that target the demographics you’ve identified.
While you could manage to do these tasks on your own, in many cases it makes more sense to hire a marketing team to do the legwork to discover trends in your current customers and identify possible target audiences. Then, this team can also help you develop a direct mailing campaign with a custom mailing list, helping your business grow by attracting the right customers.
Ultimately, when you can clearly see who your target audience is, you can spend your hard-earned marketing budget more wisely and reach people who are more likely to choose your business. Taking advantage of custom mailing lists enables you to get your brand in front of more customers and to bring in more revenue.
About Strategic Marketing Solutions
As a full-service marketing company, Strategic Marketing Solutions can help you with online as well as direct mail marketing. From PPC campaigns and call tracking to designing and creating custom mailing lists, we assist small businesses exclusively, making their marketing budget stretch and getting an exceptional return on investment. If you would like to get a custom mailing list from us, you can contact our team online here.