The Psychology of Digital Marketing: Understanding Your Audience
I love plants. Growing them, taking care of them, and watching them go from a tiny little seed to a ready-to-eat tomato. There are so many aspects of plants and planting I love.
Even when I talk about link building or other aspects of digital marketing, I just HAVE to make some plant comparisons…
Because that’s just who I am.
The same applies for a Squarespace Web Designer — wanting to tell someone ALL the benefits and everything you can do for someone, how Squarespace can be the saviour for someone’s business.
You might even start adding technical jargon just because you get so excited about it all.
If there is one thing I really love, it’s people who are passionate about something. It honestly doesn’t matter if they are into fishing, Pokemon, or digital marketing.
Seeing that spark in someone’s eye is just like harvesting the first tomatoes of the season. :)
So the “me,” “I,” “mine,” and “myself” is not a bad thing; it’s actually a good starting point for understanding your audience.
The “ME, ME, ME” -> you know who you are…
Who are you? Do some brand positioning
You might be wondering, “Is this not an article about understanding your audience?”
It sure is!
But in order to understand someone else, we first have to sprinkle some “me seeds” in our garden.
Okay… Spill the tea — why?
Because we have to work with purpose so we end up with a highly targeted digital marketing campaign.
Let’s go back to the example of the Squarespace Web Designer and start with the basics.
What projects bring in the most money?
What do you want to sell more of?
It’s important to be able to answer these questions so you work towards creating a connection that makes financial sense.
The concept of brand positioning is an article in itself, but the key here is to understand (and to be able to answer):
1) What are you all about?
2) What makes you unique?
In order to get someone’s attention, you need to know who you are.
And this one may seem a bit obvious, but understanding should really go two ways.
You want to understand your audience, but they also want to understand what you are all about.
So… what is a target audience and why does it matter?
At this point, you know who you are and what products and services you want to sell more of. Now what?
Who are you going to target with your marketing efforts?
“Target audience” is a term that has been used to death and it doesn’t sound very “human-like.”
But let’s sprinkle some psychology over it and see what we get! :)
To soften things up, I’d like to start with this question:
“Who are the people who identify with your brand?”
Instead of ending up in the never-ending maze (side note: my maze is trying to get along with the flower hydrangea… We will never happen…) of what we believe they are.
One way to avoid entering the maze is to look at data on the marketing channels you are using at the moment.
Let’s start with Google Search Console.
If you are not already using it, please install it — you get so many good insights from it.
There are so many great features that I could go on forever, but that’s not the scope of this article.
What sort of insights can you get from Google Search Console?
Find what keywords and URLs generate clicks.
Know which URLs are performing well.
See the keywords you are currently ranking for.
Based on 1-3, try to come up with topics your audience is interested in.
This is proper market research!
BUT, It’s not the absolute truth, so we have to look a bit deeper.
What digital marketing channels are you using at the moment?
Whether that be LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and/or Facebook, look at the people who engage with you.
If someone is willing to engage with you, that means they care.
A person who cares could be a target of yours.
So:
Look at who follows you
Look at who likes and comments on your posts
Analyse what kind of content someone likes and comments on
Based on 1-3, try to come up with topics your audience is interested in
If there is little or no data available, look at 5 competitors (that sell the same products or services that you do) and see what sort of content they produce, what their (your!) audience seems to care about.
What gets attention, what makes people engage with them?
Reddit threads, Quora - anywhere where your target audience hangs out is a great place for you to be and gather data - to understand what problems they have.
How did we end up here?
In a perfect world, people would just magically find your company and drop you an email or give you a call, and two seconds later you work together…
But it’s important to draw some attention to the concept of ‘customer journey’.
If you can understand what stops there are on the way BEFORE someone picks up that phone and says ‘HEY, let’s do business together’, you will win.
The stops in this case are the questions that need to get answered before they press the ‘GO’ button.
It can also include other elements, such as a person’s wish to see who is behind a company (and to connect with a real human being!), reading reviews or other factors.
The point is that it’s so important to understand what the stops look like - for all marketing channels.
Because most likely not all marketing channels are used the same, with the same purpose.
If you can map out and look for patterns of how people are searching - and where they are searching - you can also see and gather valuable information on where you should put in a little bit of extra effort.
This also helps with delivering your message.
Build relationships and continue to grow… (plants)
Sorry (not sorry) but I have to keep bringing up plants, because that is such a big part of who I am.
When you know (and understand) who you are - it’s way easier to build real relationships because you can then connect the dots and you can build a bridge between who you are and your target audience.
With a curious mind, a sprinkle of both ‘me’ and ‘target audience’ in the garden, you can continue to grow your brand garden, regardless if you are a Web Designer, Pokemon lover or into fishing.