Today, every business owner wants to take their business online. They recognize the power of social media as a game-changer for their business. But, not everyone succeeds in leveraging social media in the best possible way. And, of the key reasons behind that is, they lack a clear picture of their target audience.

A well-crafted audience profile not only forms the basis of an effective social media strategy, but is a vital component of any marketing activity. Defining your ideal audience is that essential first step, which if missed, can lead to poor and ‘budget-wasting’ outcomes.

So, if you’re looking to reap better results from your social media and marketing efforts, the first thing you need to focus on is building your ideal audience profile. I’ll explain how you can do that with this simple step-by-step audience creation process.

1. Identify your prospects

Who is your ideal audience? The first step is where you’ll figure out the answer to this question.

If you have an existing customer base/following, start from there. Pick 10-20 customers and collect as much demographic data as you can about them. If you don’t have customers yet, no worries. Think about the people who are likely to derive the maximum benefit from your product/service.

2. Create a rough persona

Now it’s time to create an axiom profile or a rough persona. Document everything you know about your existing customers or ideal prospects.

How old are they? How much money do they make? What are their interests, preferences, and buying behaviors? Which social media platforms do they use? Collect as much demographic data as you can and remember, the more specific you get, the better you’ll be able to craft your persona. For example, let’s say you’re targeting entry and mid-level marketing professionals, you could list down their most common traits and possible behaviors, such as:

• Aged 25-35 years
• Reads Forbes and digital marketing blogs
• Follows marketing influencers like Neil Patel, Gary V etc. 
• Attends marketing events and webinars 
• Active on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook
• Goals and challenges include lead generation, conversion, ROI creation, etc.

Alternatively, you could a simple tool as MakeMyPersona (by HubSpot) that allows you to create a rough customer persona in few minutes.

Also, Read Facebook Ads Strategies that drive 5X Percent Results

3. Understand the targeting options on social media platforms

Every social media platform has its own features and targeting options. And that’s one of the most important things to consider before you begin to craft your audience persona.

To do this, create ad accounts on the social media platforms that your audience prefers — these are the platforms you should be spending your money on. Get a thorough understanding of the ecosystem of those platforms. For example, as shown in the image below, you can narrow down your target audience on Facebook using a host of detailed targeting options such as a user’s educational and financial background, their work, interests, behaviors, and so on.

Similarly, on LinkedIn, you can sort out your ideal audience by their company, demographics, education, job experience, interests and traits (image below). 

Additionally, LinkedIn offers you the option to select audience templates, which are specific pre-made audiences that you can target for advertising.

I have just talked about two examples here. But the point is, all social media platforms have their own ecosystems that you need to explore before diving into creating ads and campaigns on these platforms.

Also, Read 6 Simple social media hacks to convert contacts to contracts

4. Segment audience based on common aspirations

This step is all about splitting your target audience into different groups based on their goals and aspirations. Because aspirations are what drive consumption and motivate people to choose a brand or business, this is a vital part of the process.

Start by listing down the possible aims and ambitions that will convince your audience to buy from you. For example, at Digitechniks, we offer digital marketing education to people who want to be educated in this field. Now, if I list down the common aspirations for people to learn digital marketing, I can come up with the following categories:

Category 1: People who want to build a career in digital marketing

Category 2: Business owners who want to learn digital marketing to utilize it for their business growth

Category 3: Marketing professionals who want to upskill or improve their craft to create better results for their clients
Then, I can go ahead and segment my target audience under these categories.

5. Define target audience using customer avatar variables

The final step is to put your segmented audiences under customer avatar variables like age, gender, education, professional designation, marital status, parental status, social media platforms, etc. (see image below)

Also, Read 5 Growth Hacks To Build Relevant Social Media Followers

Summing up

The beauty of this 5 step process lies in its simplicity. It starts with mere assumptions and rough estimations and with every step, it brings you closer and closer to your ideal audience persona.

Today, businesses of all sizes are flocking to Facebook with the hopes of boosting their brand’s reach and growth. However, many of those who invest in Facebook ads, fail to see a meaningful return. Why?

Because it’s easy to start pushing out Facebook ads. But getting the desired results from those ads? Not so easy!

Diving Right in With Facebook Ads is Not a Smart Strategy

Small business owners who are looking to get started with FB ads are often clueless about what are the things to be taken care of before getting started.

In my experience of working with SMB clients as well as even some bigger brands, I have seen them stumbling into the same pitfall. They jump on the Facebook ads bandwagon without doing the much-needed prep up.

There are two big issues with this approach.

Firstly, if you don’t take care of the essentials before putting your business out there on Facebook, you risk coming across as an amateur. So even if you’re a legacy brand which is in business for years, you might be perceived as a rookie brand in comparison to someone who is new but has taken care of certain important factors before launching on Facebook. If your audience does not take you seriously, they won’t buy from you.

The second problem is that a careless approach to Facebook ads is a wastage of your hard-earned money, time, and resources. You will keep pushing ads without getting the returns you desire and deserve.

Related Article– Facebook Ads Strategies that drive 5X Percent Results

So how do you prepare before diving into the world of Facebook ads? Here are some key steps you need to take.

1. Set up your Facebook business page

Before you can create your Facebook business page, you need to be logged into your personal Facebook account. But don’t worry, any information or activity on your personal account will not be publicly visible on your business page.

Once you’re logged in, go to facebook.com/pages/create.

2. Set your profile image

Next, upload the profile image for your Facebook page. It is critical to create a good visual first impression, so make sure that the photo you choose is of high quality and depicts your brand in a way that it is easily recognized by your prospects and target audience.

This is why I recommend you use your logo as your profile image, preferably in 180×180 px size.

3. Put up your cover image

A cover image also contributes towards making your brand more identifiable. The ideal size for a cover image is 640×360 px. As you can see from the image below, you can not only upload photo, but also video as your cover.

4. Fill out the ‘About’ section

A complete ‘About’ section of a business page speaks volumes about the company. Try to not leave out any information because Facebook is often the first place a customer goes to know more about your business, so having it all there is important.

Make sure to provide all the contact details a customer might want to know, including your phone number, website, and email. Also update your story, which could be a snippet of the ‘About us’ section on your website.

If you have a physical store or office, make your location correctly on the map. It’s also key to add the business hours. Make sure it matches the hours you have on your Google My Business (GMB) page as it appears in search results when someone is looking you up (here’s how to set up your GMB page).

Pro tip: Don’t forget to claim your username and vanity URL, as it is an important branding step and tells people where to find you on Facebook.

5. Configure the CTA button

Adding a call-to-action to your page gives you a lead capture opportunity that you shouldn’t miss. To add a call-to-action button to your page:

1. Go to your Page.
2. Click + Add a Button below your page’s cover photo.
3. Select a button from the dropdown menu and follow the on-screen instructions.
4. Click ‘save’.

You can choose from a bunch of options. Select what works best for your business.

Once the button has been created, you can test your button:

1. Click your button.
2. Select test button.

6. Get at least 500 fans on your Facebook page

This is for the simple reason that without enough social proof, your ads will fail to instil trust and generate interest in your audience. Without enough followers on your Facebook page, your prospective customers will hesitate to buy from you.

So how do you achieve this? Read our blog which offers 5 useful growth hacks to build your tribe on social media.

7. Have 5-10 posts on your business page

If your Facebook page’s timeline is a blank canvas, it reflects poorly on your brand as it gives an impression that either you’re a new business or an inactive one. Hence, it’s important to have at least 5-10 content pieces before you jump into advertising on the platform.

Pro tip: Make sure to have 30-40% of the content as live images or videos, instead of just having stock images and/or graphics. This gives your business an authentic feel, adds a human touch to your brand, and makes it more relatable and credible for your audience

8. Get reviews on your business page

Facebook lets customers review businesses and rate them 1-5 stars. These appear on the business page and play a vital role in shaping a prospective customer’s perception about your brand. According to a study, 80% of consumers prefer to buy from local businesses with positive reviews on their Facebook Page.

9. Show off a minimum of 15 Google reviews

It is likely that people who have seen your Facebook ads and are interested in your product/service might want to research you on Google because it is often the first place a customer goes to when they want to look up a business online. This is when you can turn them in your favour with the help of customer reviews. The more positive reviews you have, the better.

Also, Read 6 Simple social media hacks to convert contacts to contracts
Wrapping up

Arming yourself with these prerequisites significantly improves your chances of success with Facebook ads. Follow these tips before you begin to advertise on Facebook.

You probably know that a digital marketing funnel is key to acquiring customers online and odds are that you might have heard of ‘tripwire’. Many have also started realizing that in order to run sustainable businesses and to gain in the long run, we have to be givers. And that’s where the idea of tripwires comes in. 

For those of you who may not know exactly what a tripwire is, what it does, and why it’s useful, let me give you a short primer.

What are Tripwires?

A tripwire is a low-priced irresistible offer, the purpose of which is to convert an audience into buyers. Because a tripwire is low in price, people are more likely to give it a try. Therefore, it allows your prospects to dip their toes in your business without having to spend big bucks. Then, once they see the value in that low-priced offer, they will be more likely to purchase the core product.

What a tripwire also tells you is that an audience is interested enough in your product/service to give you their contact information.

According to DigitalMarketer.com, “People who purchased tripwires were 10 times more likely to purchase their core offer.” That’s a pretty solid reason for including tripwires in your digital marketing funnel strategy

Related Article– 3 Step Digital Marketing Strategy for Customer Acquisition Funnel Validation

So, that’s the basic idea of tripwires that many of you might be familiar with. But do you know how to make it work for your business? What are the factors that you should consider when putting a price tag on your tripwire?

In my experience of working with digital marketers and business owners, I have seen most people making one mistake with regards to tripwires. And that is losing the sight of the money they spend on designing tripwires for their digital marketing campaigns.

Avoid the Most Common Tripwire Mistake

Most marketers play with tripwires thinking that they are not after making a profit at this point. After all, it’s okay to lose some money when giving away a low-priced offer to your audience because your plan is to encourage the customer to spend more money on your product eventually. Right?

Wrong. While you’re not looking to make a profit with tripwires, at no point, your business should give discounts by undergoing a loss. The irresistible offer should be given to the customer without harming the business revenue

So, how do you create a tripwire that doesn’t eat into your revenue? Let me explain in a step-by-step manner.

5 Steps For Tripwire Success

1. Create and collect

Design your lead magnet making sure it addresses few of the most pressing problems of your ideal customer and push this on social media. This could be in the form of a workshop, webinar, case study download, ebook download, a competition, or contest, to name a few.

Next, collect 100% of the data of the people who consumed your lead magnet or took any form of action. This data can be collected in the form of cookie or contact info

2. Set a rough discount

As a rule of thumb, the product/service you’re offering as a tripwire should be of a far higher value than the price you’re charging for it.

For instance, a Product or a Service that has a registration fee of Rs.10,000 can be offered at one fifth of its price at Rs.2000. Now that’s an offer that is hard to resist. 
However, at this stage, we’re not looking to decide on the final pricing. This is just to get the process rolling for you to evaluate and come up with better pricing that’s irresistible and doesn’t incur loss for your business.

3. Compare

Let’s say you sold X number of tripwires in the previous step and made some money. Now it’s the time to do a comparison of the revenue that you got in step 2 with your overall expenses (Ad Cost & Team Cost) in step 1.

4. Analyze

Evaluate if the revenue is 0.8 to 2X of the money you spent on ads to promote your lead magnet and tripwire, then the cost of the tripwire is fair. If the revenue is less than 0.8, you either need to increase tripwire price or tweak Target Audience or Business Model or Customer Acquisition Funnel. Do whatever it takes to get the revenue is 0.8 to 2X of the money you spent on ads to promote your lead magnet and tripwire.

5. Rinse and repeat

Go back to step 1 and make all the necessary modifications and repeat until the revenue generated from the process comes to 0.8 to 2X of your ad expense. When you hit a number within this range, you can be sure that your tripwire is priced correctly. It will attract your audience without driving your business into losses. 

Let’s clarify the steps further with the help of a case study.

At Digitechniks, we offer a free webinar on “Social Media Strategy and Planning“. That’s our lead magnet. 

The next step is our social media coaching program, which is our tripwire. The program is originally priced at Rs.30,000. When we started the program, we offered a 90% discount on its pricing to gauge the acceptability of the program and the response of our audience. When we compared our revenue with the money we were spending on ads, we figured that we weren’t breaking even. That’s when we increased the price of our tripwire to Rs.3999.  

Thanks to high demand for the program, today it is priced at Rs.5999. And, we won’t be surprised if the program continues to attract our audience even if its price goes a few notches higher in near future.

That’s the beauty and the utility of a well-designed and value-driven tripwire. 

I’m sure there are many tips and tactics to take away from this article, but I’d like to point out one thing that’s sure to help you create successful tripwires. Remember, the quality and substance of the tripwire should, in no way, be less. It’s the price that you’re charging for it is less. 

Ultimately, the objective of the tripwire is not to make money; it is to gain the market share. And, you’ll be able to accomplish that only when you create a tripwire that’s irresistible not just in pricing, but also in value that it provides to your prospects.

Also, Read Why Businesses Should Not Invest In Content Marketing For Branding Process?

Time and again, I hear people complain about how their search marketing strategy isn’t bringing them results. Are you one of them?

If yes, this blog is for you.

Today, everyone wants to launch their business on Google. Search Engine Marketing or SEM (also called as Pay per click Marketing) offers one of the fastest ways to do so. That’s mainly because search engines are a demand-fulfillment platform, which is used by the prospects to discover a business by searching for keywords specific to that business.

But that’s not all, when people want to make a buying decision they rely on the results they see on the first page of Google. In fact, 75% of people will never scroll past the first page on a Google search. This is where SEM as a part of your digital strategy can fetch you the coveted top spots on SERPs. Done right, it can get you the highest quality leads without having to wait for organic growth.

Yet, there’s a huge chunk of businesses that pour money into SEM campaigns that are destined to fail.

Why Your SEM Campaign Isn’t Working

Many marketers struggle to demonstrate ROI of their SEM campaigns and their SEO activities. If that sounds like your team, then most likely your campaigns are heading in the wrong direction.

WHY? Among a dozen of possible reasons, one of the most common is they probably don’t know what key performance indicators (KPIs) or Key Result Areas (KRAs) they should be looking at in order to gauge the success of their Search Engine Marketing efforts (PPC and Organic Search advertising). They either waste time and resources tracking the wrong KPIs or simply go by the ‘set and forget’ attitude.

Related Article– Step by Step Guide To Develop a Search Engine Strategy for Your Business

In other words, they start running campaigns without knowing what factors they need to track to see how well something in the Search Marketing strategy is or isn’t working.

Poorly Performing SEM Campaigns are a Drain on Your Budget

While it’s critical for businesses to feature on the first page of Google, it is an expensive exercise. Growing your ranking organically is time-consuming and cumbersome, which is why it’s also resource-intensive. Paid efforts, on the other hand, cost you money.

Therefore, whether by organic means or paid strategies, ranking on top of SERPs turns out costly either in terms of the time involved or money spent.

This is why you can’t afford to invest on poor SEM campaigns. As the CEO/CMO of your organization, you would want to make sure that your business can leverage search engines to get a positive digital ROI. To achieve this, you must have your team focus on the pre-defined KPIs and KRAs.

That said, let’s dive into how to properly measure your campaign performance by setting the right KPIs and KRAs for your SEM team. 

KPI #1 Identifying the search behavior of customers

People discover you on the internet by searching for the type of products/services you sell or businesses similar to yours. So the first thing your SEM team needs to do is find all the possible searchers that are using search engines to find companies like yours. How? By gathering all the possible keywords your target customers might be using to search for your business online.

For example, people find me by using keywords like “Digital Marketing trainer,” “Digital Marketing Consultant”, “Digital Marketing certifications,” “Digital marketing workshops” etc. Even more specific search queries would be “Digital Marketing certifications in Bangalore,” “Digital Marketing workshops near me,” or “Digital marketing consultant for SMBs in Bangalore”. These specific keywords perform better than the generic keywords mentioned before. So when I use these keywords to analyse, I can tell the intent of the searchers and who have better chances of turning into buyers.

So my tips for this step would be:

• Think of the most relevant specific and long-tail keywords instead of generic ones
• Use tools like Uber Suggest, Google Keyword Planner, SEMRush, and Spyfu to help with keyword research
• Focus on less popular keywords as they offer greater scope of positioning you on the first page and your pay per click will be less

KRA – Your key result area to focus here is to find 100% of the keywords for your business and market.

KPI #2 Keyword segmentation

For the second KPI, your team must segregate the keywords as transactional, informational, and navigational keywords. Let’s see what these are.
Transactional keywords – These keywords are also referred to as “know” keywords and they are used by people who have already done their research, made a purchase decision, and are ready to buy.

“Digital marketing certification in Bangalore,” “Digital Marketing workshops near me,” and

“Digital marketing course fee in Bangalore” are some examples of transactional keywords that my prospects use in their search queries.

As you can see, these keywords are more specific and they may describe the intent of the searcher more precisely.

Informational keywords – As the name suggests, these keywords are used by people looking for information before making any buying decision.

These keywords typically contain words like “what”, “where,” “when,” “how”, and so on.

Some examples are “What is digital marketing”, “how to set up a Google ad”, “how to create a Facebook ad” etc.

These keywords have high search volume, but they aren’t much helpful when it comes to direct conversions.

Navigational keywords – People that use these keywords are aware of your brand and searching specifically for you. They must have interacted with your content before and found it helpful enough to search for more information. Some examples include keywords like “Digitechniks blogs”, “Digitechniks webinars”, “Digitechniks course”, etc. that people use to reach my services on my website.

KRA – The key focus here is to achieve a clear-cut distinction between transactional, informational, and navigational keywords.

KPI #3 Create blogs using informational keywords

Informational keywords serve to target people who are just beginning to realize their need for a product/service. These keywords are used by them when they are searching to know more about a topic, a problem, product, or service.

Therefore, the best way to leverage these keywords is to create blogs that answer the “how”, “what”, and “ways to” types of queries. When you use informational keywords having high search volume to write blogs which answers the problems or queries of your potential customers, they will start seeing you as trustworthy, become your loyal fans and begin to take or recommend your products or services whenever they require.

KRA – Your main focus in this step should be to increase the blog traffic by 10-30% every month.

KPA #4 Start ranking your website Services and Product Pages for transactional keywords immediately

Once you have the list of transactional keywords, take action on them immediately. To do that, you must start using a paid strategy like SEM or PPC to rank in the top three positions in SERPs for all transactional keywords, right from day one.
Because these are intent-driven keywords, if you wait for months to rank for these keywords, you lose out to your competitors.

KRA – This is where your efforts should be able to put your website on the top three positions on SERPs.

Related Article– 8 Steps to Develop a Google Ads Strategy for Any Business

KPI #5 Put systems in place to collect data

In this age of data, collecting data of customers and prospects must be a top priority for businesses. This step is critical in order to get a steady supply of high-quality leads and improve the outcomes of your search engine marketing campaigns.

You can do this in a number of ways. You can use email capture or opt-ins on your website pages, landing pages, or blogs which will collect the visitor’s contact information. You can also set up pixel (Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Quora etc)  which can be used to collect the cookies. Later you can retarget or nurture the non buyers and convert them to buying customers.

Remember, the ultimate success lies in collecting 100% data for which you have spent on search engines.

KRA – Here you focus primarily on collecting 100% of data of your prospects and customers.

With all of this in mind, it’s important to ensure that your team uses all five KPIs to build an optimum performance measurement system rather than looking at each one of them in isolation. That’s because when you look at all of the KPIs and KRAs, it paints a more complete picture to clearly indicate when and where the progress is happening and when and where any improvements are needed. This performance measurement system can help your business leverage search engines to get a positive digital ROI.

Also, Read 3 Step Digital Marketing Strategy for Customer Acquisition Funnel Validation

Are you spending money on blogging, getting articles written for your business, and pushing them on social media? Have you been thinking of setting aside a budget for video creation because video content is the hottest trend in content marketing right now?
But before you do all of that, have you validated your business model? In other words, do you know for sure if your product/service is fit for the market and you’re marketing to the right audience? If not, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.

Content Marketing Fails Are Expensive

Today, 9 out of 10 businesses use content marketing, and yet a majority of them fail. In fact, many companies are heavily investing in content marketing without getting adequate returns. A 2015 study by Kapost found that businesses wasted a whopping $958 million on inefficient content marketing.

The obvious question is: WHY? There could be a whole array of reasons for this as every business has their own problems and challenges. But we can all agree that if you’re trying to market a product/service before knowing whether it has a demand among prospects or not, there’s a high risk of failure.

So, what do you do? Take a step back from content marketing.

This might sound like an unpopular opinion. Every marketing guru out there and every other article you read on the internet might be telling you that you need to do content marketing. And you need to do it now!

But here’s the thing: Content marketing costs money. At a stage where you’re just kicking off your branding efforts, you don’t want to spend a lot of money. Especially if you’re a small or mid-size business that runs on a limited marketing budget, you need to first make the money that you need in order to sustain.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not asking you to give up on content marketing entirely. It’s all about doing it at the right time. And, the right time is after you have:

Validated your business model

Before you start content marketing or even before you start thinking about branding for your business, it’s important to know whether your product/service has an acceptance among your target audience.

Check out our 3-Step Customer Acquisition Funnel Validation method to learn how to do this.

Identified the right audience

No business is born with the ability to know their audiences. This knowledge is gained through digging in deep and doing your research. So create the ideal profile of your target audience based on age, gender, demographics, location, interests, educational status etc. Then streamline your focus on those who have the problems that your product/service can solve. These are the audience you need to target. They will be interested in your product offering and willingly engage with your content because they will find it valuable.

Understood the various targeting options

It’s worth taking the time to understand how targeting works on Google and social media. For example, Google Ads and Facebook give you options to segment and target your audience based on factors such as demographics, interests, purchase behaviors, device usage, buying intent, search terms, and so on. With the help of these targeting features, you can reach a local or global audience effectively.

Read the Blog on How to Target the Right People with Right Content- 5 Step Digital Marketing Strategy

Moving from Clicks to Conversions

Though content marketing is not something you should invest in right at the beginning of your branding process, you will still need to create some content pieces to get started. These content pieces will play a vital role in your customer acquisition funnel and help you set up a business validation and branding process. Here’s a quick glance at how to incorporate content in this three-step process

Reach – This is where you design the lead magnet, which is a free offering that hooks your audience by providing solutions to 1-2 burning problems that your target audience is facing. This could be in the form of a workshop, webinar, case study download, ebook download, a competition, or contest, to name a few.
Register – In this step, you create 3-5 personalized content pieces that serve the purpose of convincing your audience to buy from you. 
Regain – This is where it’s time to earn back the cost of creating the content for the previous two steps. How? By ensuring 5% of your lead magnet leads convert into paying customers.

The key formula to keep track of progress in this step is: 

Cost per Acquisition (CPA) < Cost of the Irresistible Offer (IO) => Validation

Let me break this down.

Your CPA or Cost Per Acquisition is what you spend on digital marketing activities divided by the number of sales.

If your CPA is less than the cost of the Irresistible Offer (an offer that your prospect can’t refuse, such as limited period trials, free demos, inaugural discounts, etc.), it means that your product/service is being accepted and you have the license to reach more people and can start your content marketing to reduce your CPA furthermore.

if your CPA is more than the cost of the irresistible offer or if your tripwire conversion is less than 5%, then you need to tweak either your target audience or customer acquisition funnel till you arrive at a point where your CPA is less than the cost of the irresistible offer or 5% Tripwire conversion rate.

For a more detailed understanding of this three-step process, check out this blog post

Related Article–

Low-Budget 3 Step Digital Marketing Branding Strategy for Small and Medium Scale Businesses 

Ultimately, your end-goal is to convert. All your branding, digital marketing, and social media efforts should boil down to getting people to become paying customers. You want your company to make money from these activities and not waste your time and resources. This is why you must invest big bucks on content marketing and distribution only after you have validated your business model and customer acquisition funnel and don’t make the mistake of investing on content marketing for the branding process. Knowing that you have what it takes to turn leads into real conversions, you can scale your efforts effectively.