HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS ONLINE WITH TARGET AUDIENCE, MARKETING STRATEGIST & BUDGET (4_6)

4. Identify your target audience

If you don’t know exactly who you wish to promote your business to, then your marketing efforts won’t be as targeted as they should be, leading to disappointment and unsuccessful promotional campaigns.

Your target audience is a specific group of people most likely to buy your products or services, often sharing several characteristics (such as age, interests, etc.). The clearer you are about your target audience, the more successful you will be at understanding how and where to reach your best prospects.

To define your target audience, ask yourself the following questions:

- Is my perfect customer male or female?

- What age group do they belong to?

- Where do they live? (i.e. in a particular city, country, or hemisphere? In rural/urban areas?)

- What industry do they work in? What position might they hold?

- How much do they earn? Are they low, middle, or high-income earners?

- What level of education do they have?

- What are their interests or hobbies?

- What is most important to them in life? What specific goals might they have?

- What challenges do they face?

- What influences them to buy a product or service? What objections must they overcome first?

- Where does my target audience spend the most time online?

- How would my target customer use my product/service? Would they buy it for themselves or as a gift for a loved one?

5. Consult with a marketing strategist 

Once you've clearly defined your goals for marketing your business online, it will be a lot easier to consult with a digital marketing specialist to find out when, where, and how these goals can be achieved.

The role of the marketing strategist is to define the best inbound marketing strategy for your business, as well as to put together a final and detailed digital marketing plan covering aspects of the promotion, such as:

- online channels

- sales funnel

- strategies

- KPIs that will need to be measured to determine a successful outcome

A marketing strategist is the best professional to reach out to when wanting to promote your business online, as they are extremely knowledgeable about all types of paid and non-paid inbound marketing strategies. Not only do they create the most effective online marketing strategy in relation to your business's specific goals, but they also do so while considering important factors such as budget and how to achieve the highest ROI in the shortest amount of time. Furthermore, they are able to point you in the direction of what specific experts you will need assistance from to reach these goals.

6. Define your marketing budget

Just as every business is different, there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ figure when it comes to determining your marketing budget. Because of this, defining a budget is often considered the most difficult aspect of putting together an online marketing strategy plan however, with the appropriate assistance and expertise, it doesn’t need to be.

Remember how we discussed the importance of a marketing strategist in the previous step? When discussing your business’ goals for your online promotion, your marketing strategist will give you a clearer idea of how much you can expect to spend on these promotional methods, as well as how you should allocate your budget across different channels.

Research suggests total marketing budgets are commonly between 8 and 16% of a business’s total revenue, with the average business allocating 45% of their total marketing budget to online promotional methods.

A marketing strategist will take a number of factors into consideration to help them determine your required budget for online promotion, such as:

- the cost to produce required content, such as blog articles, landing pages, or banners for SEM

- the cost-per-acquisition of target keywords

- hidden expenses such as outsourcing work to freelance experts or purchasing required software or tools

Along with enlisting the help of a marketing strategist, the other key to keeping your budget on track is to keep your campaign simple. Online promotion methods such as SEM, retargeting, and social media ads are becoming increasingly complicated, with campaigns costing thousands (or in some cases, millions) of dollars. A much more affordable form of online promotion, for example, is SEO, which largely only requires the cost of hiring an SEO expert.

Again, a marketing strategist will advise you on which promotional methods are not only the most affordable but also meet your goals and provide the best ROI in the least amount of time. 

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