eCommerce continues to boom exceptionally, with estimates suggesting that by 2023, roughly 2.64 billion customers will have completed at least one online store purchase, as Adobe reported.
That’s approximately a quarter of the world’s population. The growth rate of the retail market is projected to increase by as much as 8% over the coming years.
However, as an online store owner, there are a lot of things that need to be taken into consideration. Coming up with an innovative offering, devising a solid business plan, and then marketing the product or service effectively are all part of the game. The most important thing is analyzing and determining the appropriate target market for your business.
With an eCommerce store, there is no one-size-fits-all formula. Personalization is becoming the essence of any formidable business plan. So, how do you identify the right consumers and target audience for your store? Here are some tips to help you target the right consumers for your business.
Could you define your target market?
Business dynamics have evolved considerably in the last few decades, and with the excessive competition that exists these days, focusing on a set target market delivers realistic goals for companies. For instance, electric vehicles such as e-bikes are becoming a trend, but there is no point in selling these modes of transportation to people who prefer regular bicycles.
Therefore, if your online store has electric bikes for sale, you will need to determine which age group, gender, and income bracket is best suited as the target market for the product. You must do the same for other products and services because you need to focus on achieving the best results. Here are a few parameters to locate your relevant market:
- Dive deep into understanding your product or service and its potential customers.
- Consider your current clientele’s profiles, such as their ages, how much they make a year, and their spending habits, and follow it up by conducting comprehensive audience research for the larger market.
- Investigate psychographic information (personality traits, values, attitudes, beliefs) and demographic insights (age, gender, area of residence).
- Establish key target audience segments.
- Analyze the competition, their business model, marketing techniques, and clientele.
Determining your target market will be the foundation for the rest of the business structure to rise appropriately.
You can find out the platforms that your audience prefers.
Over 60% of the world’s population is on social media today! That is the power that the internet holds. However, not all users prefer the same platform when they are online. The most popular platform in 2023 is Facebook, with 2.9 billion active users a month, and YouTube is next, with over 2.5 billion users. WhatsApp and Instagram are fast catching up, with 2 billion monthly active users each.
TikTok has 1.0 billion active users every month. Moreover, the average person spends about 146 minutes or nearly 2.5 hours daily on social media.
These statistics showcase the prevalence of these platforms and the diversity in preferences for an average social media user. Despite having six to seven accounts on different sites, users spend most of their time on just a few apps, viewing only a particular content format. As an online store, you need to determine the preferred platform and type of content your target market is considering to attract them more effectively.
I’d like you to focus on creating content relevant to your target market.
Once you’ve defined your target market and ascertained the platforms they are scrolling regularly, it is time to start approaching them. If your primary audience is younger and mainly in the teenage bracket, creating long-form blog posts may not help much. Short-form videos and exciting visuals, including pictures and infographics, will do the trick for your online store.
Having the right content forms a significant part of the equation for success that your business needs to solve. Work on understanding the issues that your target market has, what their needs are, the struggles that they face, etc. Use your content to address these factors, offer solutions, and integrate your product and service by defining how it solves a particular issue for them.
Invest in targeted advertising.
Operating an online store in a highly competitive market is more than just putting it out there and expecting people to find you eventually. It is more about getting the word out, telling people about your product or service, and convincing them to pick yours over the others already in the market. This is why you need targeted advertising instead of wasting resources on general marketing to people who wouldn’t even consider the item you are selling.
To engage your target demographic on the channels where they are active, use focused marketing campaigns. Advanced targeting options are available in social media and Google advertisements to help you connect with the right audience.
Your campaigns can be targeted based on your audience’s age, geography, digital pursuits, life stage, work function, and income, among other traits and behaviors. By doing this, you can ensure that only those who are most likely to be intrigued by your company and its goods.
You can focus on your SEO.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, has become the most prominent technique to reach relevant target audiences. With millions of search results for every keyword, positioning your store in a way that appears in the first few links on Google can be challenging.
However, that shouldn’t keep you from trying because, as they say, if you plan to hide a dead body, hide it on the second Google search results page because no one looks there. Use Google Keyword Planner to locate relevant keywords for your business, integrate them into your content, use strong backlinks, and add value for the reader to boost your SEO rankings.
Conclusion
Unless your online store is a one-stop solution for almost everything, targeting a specific market is the best way to achieve results and sustain the platform. It would be best if you focused on and directed resources toward researching and targeting the demographics you believe will be most interested in what you are selling.
