How Well Do You Know Your Target Audience?

Know Your Audience, Market Smarter

If your marketing isn’t connecting, chances are you don’t have a clear picture of who you're trying to reach.

It’s not just about checking boxes, such as age or job title. You’ve got to understand what your ideal customer cares about, what problems they’re trying to solve, and how they go about finding answers. That’s where the real insight lives.

When you know your audience on that level, your marketing starts to click. Your content becomes more useful. Your messaging feels more relevant. And you stop wasting time chasing the wrong leads.

At Moore Than SEO, we treat audience research like the foundation it is. Whether you're launching something new or fine-tuning your positioning, the first question we ask is always: Who is this really for?

Why personas still matter

You’ll know how to market smarter and more effectively if you take the time to step through such an exercise for your business. Once you’ve identified some basic personas, it will be important to look at target audience segments for commonalities and differences. For example, it often makes sense to examine basic demographic data such as income potential, residential location, gender, college studies, or other factors. Many professionals recommend examining the psychographics, or interests, cultural perceptions, and opinions of a group. There are many ways to evaluate your target audience personas. Perhaps your target audiences are also segmented by niche industry or other specialized traits.

When you take the time to build clear personas, you can:

Speak more directly to your customer’s needs
Avoid vague, one-size-fits-all messaging
Pick the right platforms to show up on
Save time and money by doing less guesswork

Instead of a limited, one-size-fits-all approach to marketing, you’ll utilize a more granular path that has the power to appeal more to a greater variety of prospective customers with varying goals and needs. The slight differences between buyer persona segments will shed light on the differences that impact exactly how a service or product is pitched for the most successful outcome.

What to look for

Start by studying your best customers. Who keeps coming back? Who’s easy to work with, and who gets the most value from what you do?

As you spot patterns, break things down into useful categories:

Demographics – Age, job title, income, education
Psychographics – What they care about, what frustrates them, how they think
Geography – Where they live or operate
Industry or Niche – Their field, and what makes them unique within it

Think about your top-tier clients. The ones you enjoy working with. That’s who you want to attract more of.

Need a place to start?

Download Persona Planning for High-Impact Marketing.

A strategic workbook to help you define, understand, and connect with your ideal customers.

This practical, easy-to-use guide walks you through the essential steps to build detailed, actionable buyer personas—designed to elevate your marketing and drive better results.

This workbook includes a curated list of trusted tools and data sources to help you dig deeper into your target audience.

You’ll find links for researching:

Demographics (Google Analytics, Census, Nielsen, Claritas)
Psychographics (Persona modeling tools, social forums, internal interviews)
Geography (SSA, BLS, and interactive map data)
Keyword Search Behavior (Google Trends, Keyword Planner)

Need a more personalized strategy? Reach out to our team!

Is Your Company's Digital Identity Invisible?

What is your company’s online footprint? What makes your business stand out on the Internet? This is known as your digital identity, or how your company is perceived in the digital world. In other words, it is your online branding.

Factors that contribute to your online identity can range from your logo, your URL (website address), and even the style of fonts and graphics on your website. Social networking takes the temperature of how your company is perceived online.

With over 3 billion worldwide Internet users, your goods and services can’t afford to be invisible on the worldwide web. Build a digital presence for your business and you’ll increase sales and have power over your online reputation.

Here are 4 steps to creating your company’s searchable identity:

Take over the reins—When someone performs a Google search for the kinds of products and services you sell, your website and social media profiles must be on display. Get listed as a viable choice against your competition and don’t be invisible in the search results. Establish a powerful website for your business, and utilize best SEO practices to define your company in social media.
Use consistent branding across the internet—Develop the logo, graphics, and tag lines to brand your company’s representation on your website and on each social media profile you create. Discover the best keyword phrases that will lead people searching on Google to your company. Single out your company’s niche–Always include tags in your blog posts and META information on your website and blog pages.
Mingle, mingle, mingle—Don’t be a wallflower. Discover where your target customers converse online and make those social networking platforms your go-to places to schmooze. Post regularly, and include meaningful, interesting info that attracts readers to your website and blog. Reply to posts immediately to demonstrate that your company cares about the opinions of your customers. Join LinkedIn and Facebook groups that are relevant to your company’s best interests, and chime in on topics that are in your business wheelhouse. Online mingling, or social networking, drives customers to your website and strengthens your branding. It gives you control of what people are saying about your company.
Keep the discussion about business—Use social media as an educational forum, sharing information about the newest trends and how-to’s of your industry. Don’t use it as a carnival barker for hard selling your products, and don’t use it for posting what you had for lunch (unless, of course, you are in the food industry). Be professional and always take the high road to help potential customers find what they are looking for.

It takes time to build a successful online digital identity. It takes a delicate balance of website, blog, and social media finesse. The process is never finished—maintaining your digital identity is dynamic and requires constant updating, because the online conversation about products and services is never static.

Rely on the content experts at Moore Than SEO to curate and create the social media posts and profiles, blog articles, and web pages that attract attention and make your company a rock star in your own niche. We’ll help you create and maintain the digital identity that makes you shine against your online competition.

What is Branding and How Does It Rock Your Sales Efforts?

Humor us for just a moment. Think of the other kind of branding, cattle branding. The practice of marking livestock to identify ownership goes back to ancient Egyptian times. And the Romans believed that when brands included “magical” symbols, they had the power to protect animals from harm. Nowadays, as branding is under the scrutiny of animal welfare groups, the brand has shifted to the logo, signage, and letterhead for many ranches, standing as a beacon to spread the indelible message of a company’s practices and reputation. Just with the brand image, livestock customers know what a particular brand image stands for.

As a marketing term, what is branding?

The business application for this word can be defined as a process to create a consistent name and image in a customer’s mind. As in Roman times, this modern application of business branding conjures up magical powers. The brand image carries the power to attract buyers to your retail doorstep and retain their loyalty.

Branding can also cast an evil spell when it is mishandled, making your company appear invisible or even making you appear substandard against your competitors. A poor brand image can tank a company’s reputation.

Branding is not only a process—It is the result of what you convey to your customers. What do your customers expect from your products and services? How do they compare you against other businesses in your field? And finally, can your customers believe in you and trust you to deliver exactly what you promise?

Your branding strategy is your game plan for planting the seeds of positive recognition. What do you want to convey to your customers from the get-go?

Business goal soul-searching is required to create a successful brand strategy:

Define how your company and products are different and superior in the marketplace with your mission statement. Take the time to walk through a SWOT (Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats) Analysis of your business. You will gain critical insights.
Describe the benefits and features of your offerings, zeroing in on resolving your client’s needs. First, measure your customer’s needs. Then, start writing to formulate your digital identity.
Research your current customers’ opinions of your company. And when you are just launching your business, research what they think of your competitors, their products, and their services.
Determine the qualities and benefits of your company that customers should recognize. See how you fulfill their every want. What do you want your target customers and your loyal customer base to think of when they first glance at your logo, your letterhead, your storefront, your business cards, and your promotional collateral?

Here’s the bottom line—Branding is about creating the best first impression of your company.

It’s not about convincing with words and facts. It’s about your customer base instantly viewing your company in a positive light without any hard-sales effort on your part.

How do you get there?

Digital (online) branding is the way to go. Consider that over 51% of smartphone users discover new products or companies while performing searches on their smartphones. Particularly for industrial manufacturers, B2B customers are increasingly using mobile devices for product research and purchase activities (42% use mobile, a growth of 91% over the past two years). (Source of stats: Google) Regardless of your industry, you simply can’t afford to ignore digital branding.

Apply with your initial brand strategy research for digital placement:

Create a brand logo. Your logo is the visual statement of your promise to your customers. Hire a professional digital designer to develop your brand style guide to ensure consistent application of your logo and tagline to online and offline marketing messages. Transform their existing traditional brand into a digital expression, adapting your logo to animation, reformatting to fit various size requirements per platform and social media profile. Your digital graphic designer helps you discover the best logo size and placement, color palette, fonts, photography styles and images, and more for each marketing opportunity.
Develop a tagline, a succinct, memorable, and meaningful statement that captures the true essence of your company’s brand. Place it wherever your company information appears. You’ve hit a home run with your tagline when customers see your logo and instantly recall your tagline.
Formulate your brand’s voice. Emotion sells, even for highly technical products and services. Hone in on the “why” for your audience to buy from you. Maintaining a consistent personality that resonates with your core customers translates to trust. Is your voice conversational or factual? Is it traditional or modern? Partner with experienced content writers who take the time to learn about your business offerings, especially for tech marketing. They find the perfect words to address and answer your customer’s pains, and most importantly.
Build a simple and clear brand message to communicate to customers exactly who you are. Utilize your brand voice to describe in just a couple of sentences what you offer and why customers should pay attention. Don’t list what your products do—Address specific items that are important to the customer. Your brand message is a key building block to gaining quantitative results your content marketing.

Spread the word about your company by inserting your brand image into every aspect of your business. Wherever your company appears, your brand message, logo, tagline, and voice must act as a siren song for customers to click onto your website links, visit your blog, contact you for more information, and of course, make purchases. Formulate a stealth brand message, spread it wherever your target customers roam online, and you’ll see an increase your profit margin.

Online branding requires a thorough understanding of how to put your company’s best foot forward in the digital marketplace. Rely on experts to get it right the first time—Our Moore Than SEO team accumulated years of knowledge and experience executing technical, and non-technical content design, writing, and marketing. Contact us for your free consultation to rock your sales efforts at (559) 978-4096.