How can you effectively reach the right target audience?

Nothing is more important than choosing the right target audience. Effective communication will help you achieve your business objectives. Make sure you get this right, because the competition never sleeps.

Customers are fed up with ubiquitous advertising. Every day, they are exposed to around 5,000 advertising messages. The sheer volume of messages and the lack of relevance have led to people increasingly ignoring unnecessary information. Banner blindness is a real nightmare for advertisers, as it means that most messages fail to reach potential customers.

Personalising your communication is an effective way of reaching your audience. If you want your message to resonate with your audience, follow these useful tips.

What would you like to talk about?

Think about what you have to say. What would you like to tell your audience? What is the purpose of the message you are creating?

If you already know, you can move on. If not, think about it for a moment – for example, let’s say you own a new café for mums. So you want mums to find out about your business and come along with their children. Our aim is to let potential customers know that we’re here.

Who is your target audience?

When you say something, it is usually to another person. You communicate for a specific purpose, to a specific audience. A key element of communication is determining who you are speaking to. This will determine how you phrase your message and which channel you use to convey it.

In this case, it will be helpful to define a target audience (your audience). This way, you’ll avoid trying to speak to everyone. By defining a target audience, you’re profiling your customer – what they’re like, what they like, how old they are, where they live, what their social status is, and so on. The more detailed your description, the better. You don’t have to stick to just one profile; you can have several.

Choice of language for communication

You know what your aim is, what you want to say and to whom. The question remains: how? Or rather, in what words. You speak differently to a child than you do to a client or your husband. It’s the same in this situation. If you’re addressing a new mum, you’ll write a short piece that relates to her needs. The language won’t contain technical terms or youth slang. Remember to tailor the length, content, emotional tone and information to your audience.

Choose your communication channels

Not every communication channel is equally effective. You can talk to young people via Snapchat, Instagram or Facebook. Older people might not even know what these are. For them, an advert in a newspaper might be more appropriate. When choosing a communication channel, consider which one is best suited to your audience.

Once you know your customer – you know what they’re like. Decide which channel is best. You can choose several and combine them. For example, we’ll show an advert on Facebook to young mums (at a specific time and in a specific location). In addition, we’ll hand out leaflets at a children’s festival.

If we want to have a conversation, we need to know who we’re talking to, why, and what we want to convey. The same applies to communication between a company and its customers. Your message will reach the people your company is interested in if it is personalised.