Is Your Business Speaking to the Wrong Audience?

Even if your marketing content has a broad reach it’s not likely to help your business and sales goals if the message is not tailored to your target audience.

It is also possible to direct relevant material toward the wrong crowd, which will result in wasted effort and marketing dollars.

If you find that your marketing content is not reaching the desired audience there are several factors that could be influencing your results. By examining and tackling these elements it becomes possible to align the performance of your marketing material with business value.

Signs Your Material is not Relevant

The content you are producing may be driving traffic to your website but the quality of that traffic needs to be assessed.

For example, in the call tracking industry it is painfully easy to bring in the wrong type of traffic. Call tracking services for marketers and businesses are often confused with cell phone tracking for monitoring call and text message activity. Even though the keywords are similar, the audience is looking to fulfill very different needs.

A few of the signs that indicate your content is not matched up to your ideal audience may include:

– Excess Time Spent Filtering Leads – If the majority of the prospects you are sending over to the sales team are confusing or unqualified it is a strong sign that your marketing campaign is too broad.

– A Longer Sales Cycle – While some conversions involve a lengthier sales process this shouldn’t be the case for the majority of leads. If sales team members have to spend most of their time educating prospects rather than selling the product or service it is an indication that your content is not appropriately focused.

– Low Conversion Rates – The average percentage of conversions will vary by industry but if your conversion rate is well below the norm you may want to evaluate the relevance of your marketing content.

The amount of visitors your content brings in is important but the quality of the traffic you are receiving is much more significant. If your visitors are failing to convert there are several ways to tweak your content and improve results.

Fine-Tuning Your Marketing Content

Publishing focused material that resonates with your target audience may not produce as much traffic, but the visitors that you receive will be much more likely to convert. The following points outline some methods of achieving this:

– Clear Buyer Personas — A thorough understanding of prospective buyers is essential for producing content that meets their demands and expectations. This can include customer pain points and other useful and informative material.

– Topic Selection – A narrower focus is almost always going to result in more qualified and educated leads. Specific topics give you the opportunity to provide in-depth information that is geared toward your ideal audience.

– Integrated Sales and Marketing – When the sales and marketing teams are engaged in a cooperative process it enhances the ability to create successful marketing material. This will also cut down on the need for the sales team to educate prospects and give marketers a better understanding of prospect needs.

– Publishing in the Right Places – No matter how relevant your content is it will not help your business goals if it never reaches your target audience. Determining the websites, publications, apps and social channels that are frequented by the individuals you want to reach is critical for an effective campaign.

Defining your target audience and generating content that is specifically geared toward their needs allows you to save time and resources. It also creates the opportunity for deeper engagement as you position yourself as an authority in your industry.

This will require a dedicated effort to monitor developing shifts and trends within your industry. This makes it possible to adapt your marketing efforts to keep up with dynamic prospect needs and strengthen business influence.