Marketing is crucial in acquiring new customers and enhancing business growth. However, some companies struggle to interact with their potential market and boost their profits. Employing an audience-focused approach is key to achieving these goals.
This page covers what you should know about audience-centric marketing. Read on to learn how to truly understand and connect with your target audience.
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Marketing is vital in business, not only for promoting brands but also for interacting with customers.
A successful marketing campaign results in customer engagement, lead generation, and conversions. This, in turn, promotes business growth and success.
Recently, companies of all sizes have invested in various online marketing strategies.
In fact, the global digital marketing market was worth $780 billion in 2023, potentially expanding at an 11.1% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2024 to 2032.
Source: MarkNtel
Online marketing trends come and go in today’s business landscape.
Popular strategies include search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), email campaign management, content marketing, and social media management. However, these tactics won’t work unless they align with your target market's needs.
Enter audience-centric marketing. It entails prioritizing your audiences’ needs and interests in every interaction with your business. In short, an audience-first approach.
Audience-centric marketing isn’t just a marketing strategy; it’s a philosophy of putting your prospects and customers at the core of your marketing endeavors. It’s about understanding and meeting their needs and providing them with the best product, service, and experience.
Case in point: Starbucks and its Reward Loyalty Program.
Source: Starbucks
This program provides various perks and benefits, like special discounts and exclusive deals, to regular customers.
For example, you could offer free coffee refills or free frappe drinks for those celebrating their birthdays. Even something as simple as allowing customers to order and pay before arriving at the restaurant can be very convenient.
The numbers don’t lie: Starbucks claimed its rewards program accounted for 40% of its total sales in 2019. Forbes even reported that loyal customers using the Loyalty Program’s app were 5.6 times more likely to visit a branch daily. See how customer-focused marketing can work wonders for a company?
In the next section, learn how to identify and interact with your target audience.
Marketing is supposedly about engaging with your target market. But did you know that most marketers don’t know their audience? How can you interact with them if you don’t understand them at all?
The Hubspot survey revealed that only 42% are aware of their target audience’s demographic information. Also, less than half know their interests, hobbies, shopping habits, product preferences, purchase history, and consumed content.
Source: Hubspot
Simply put, audience-centric marketing entails understanding and connecting with your audience. However, a series of steps happen in between. That said, here's how to implement customer-focused marketing:
Start by performing due diligence for your business. Harness the power of market research for data-driven digital marketing. This will help you identify your target market and understand consumer needs.
Sturgeon Christie, CEO of Second Skin Audio recommends conducting market research before implementing any marketing tactics.
Christie argues, "How can you target your marketing strategies to the right audience and provide real value if you don't know who they are and what they need? Extensive market research doesn't only let you examine your industry and competitors; it also helps you unravel the consumer problems and offer real solutions."
You can identify your target customer through extensive market research in a sea of online audiences.
Ian Sells, CEO of Million Dollar Sellers, suggests employing lead generation and segmentation. Sells recommends identifying the target audience based on the following:
After performing market research and identifying your target audiences, create a buyer or customer persona. A persona is an ideal representation of your prospective customers. They are the people you will target for marketing and build relationships with.
Roman Zrazhevskiy, Founder & CEO of MIRA Safety, recommends creating different personas for your business.
Zrazhevskiy explains, "Develop various personas and sort each based on demographic and psychographic factors. Doing so will help you employ marketing tactics that are aligned and relevant with each and every persona."
Customers prefer to do business via multiple channels in today's digital landscape.
About 95% of marketers know the importance of multichannel marketing; However, only 73% have a strategy in place.
Volodymyr Shchegel, VP of Engineering at MacKeeper, emphasizes the value of multichannel solutions for business and marketing. Shchegel recommends interacting with customers via the following communication channels:
Digital marketing comes in several different tactics.
However, optimize your strategies with the see, think, do, and care (STDC) framework. This framework reflects the various stages of the customer journey to identify the current needs and tailor marketing tactics accordingly.
Sturgeon Christie, CEO of Second Skin Audio, underscores the importance of online marketing in today’s digital landscape. Sturgeon suggests the following strategies:
Source: Geniallyblog
There’s no denying the power of storytelling in business and marketing. It can connect with the right people by triggering their thoughts and stirring their emotions. Hence, creating a compelling brand story is best as it resonates with the target audience.
Brooke Webber, Head of Marketing at Ninja Patches, suggests incorporating storytelling into your marketing strategies. But how do you go about doing that? Webber recommends the following:
The feedback loop is a cyclical process of interactions between your business and customer via multiple channels. It seeks valuable insights from customers to make informed decisions for your business.
Unfortunately, 63% of consumers believe companies should listen to customer feedback more.
Source: Qualtrics
Andrew Pierce, CEO at LLC Attorney, suggests creating a feedback loop as part of the marketing process. Pierce recommends the following communication channels for the feedback loop:
Audience-centric marketing doesn’t stop with connecting with your target audience. It’s about building consumer trust and establishing long-term relationships with them. That results in customer loyalty and business profitability.
Tim White, Founder of milepro believes in building customer relationships. White gives the following recommendations:
Digital marketing proves beneficial in attracting, winning, and keeping customers.
However, employing an audience-centric approach is key to business success. This strategy entails understanding prospects, engaging with customers, and building long-term relationships.
That said, consider the practical tips for audience-centric marketing recommended above.
Start by studying your target market and end with building customer relationships.
Also, leverage multiple channels, such as your website, email, and social media, and implement online marketing tactics, such as SEO, PPC, and content marketing.
Additionally, don’t forget to create a persona, use storytelling, and set a feedback loop. With all these tips and steps, you can connect with your target audience, provide real value, and achieve business success.
Anthony Martin is the founder, CEO, and owner of Choice Mutual. He has been a licensed insurance agent since 2010. Currently, Anthony holds an active insurance license in all 50 US states, including DC. He was the #1 top-producing agent for simplified issue life insurance with Mutual of Omaha in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. Additionally, Aetna recognized him as their #1 life agent for 2020. Since 2017, he has been a qualified non-member of MDRT, the most prestigious life insurance trade organization in the USA.