When finding a way to promote your business, it is important to find an audience that will be interested in your offerings. This will help you focus your energy on the places and platforms that make sense.
One of the key things to define is who is going to want to purchase your offerings and how they will come to your website. Who is going to be interested in your work? When you identify the topics and the market, it will help you be more successful online and offline.
Market research.
Your market research will help you sort out who is going to be drawn to your work. This includes scoping out your competitors as you’re going to want to stand out from them so that you can succeed.
Market research includes finding the attributes of your audience and understand their wants and needs. And you’ll want to ensure that your audience is large enough so you can sustain your income. But be careful here because the law of supply and demand could have you go crazy if your audience is too big.
My audience has ideas and dreams but isn’t sure how to make that happen nor do they fully believe they can be successful. They also experience frustration in several areas of their life, starting with themselves and extending outward.
Advertising.
Don’t be wasting money on the web or otherwise – this is why market research is the first thing you’ll want to do. A blog can help feed the search engines and with the proper keywords can lead your audience back to your website. And then there are the ads on various social media platforms you could pay for – but this is only going to be helpful if you understand your audience.
If you’re looking to get in front of people through paid options, again be super clear on your audience. For example, The Rebels Den is a sponsor for Metal in the Mountains. My audience from the people I like to interview and the people who are potential clients will be going to the event – so it makes sense to be a sponsor.
Offer something different.
The work you offer could potentially found in supermarkets or other businesses at a different price range. So when you are doing your market research and explore the places to advertise (free or paid), it’s helpful to offer something that’s unique and perhaps not offered anywhere else.
This will help grow your audience and keep competition at a minimum. It’s through the unique offerings that you can attract different people and offer the pricing you want and/or makes sense. This can sometimes be as simple as adding a different product or using different materials.
In my art business, I offer pyrography (wood-burning) but I also make tagua nut pendants that are burned on making the material different enough as well as unique.
Define The Target Market by Demographics.
Something that can be super helpful is to tune into your audience by knowing the age, gender, education, income, marital status, etc. You can also tap into their lifestyle, social class, activities, and interests.
This will help you determine, where to run advertising, where your audience hangs out online and learn how to speak to them directly.
A musician may be best suited for YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram but Pinterest may not make much sense, while an artist would benefit from Pinterest in addition to the once named already.
My audience is between 30-40 years of age, low to middle-class income, enjoy going to concerts, be in nature and are creatives and have a rebel nature i.e. love going against the norm.
Costs and Providing Information.
The more people know about you and your work, the more successful you stand to be in the noise of 7.3 billion people in this world. But you will want to keep your cost in mind as well. There’s a fine balance of coming across too cheap or too expensive – both of which will impact your audience.
Something that can help you is to give information (via blog or social media post) and sharing the process of the work i.e. establishing your expertise so that you are not under- or overcharging.
My service and products follow a specific formula for pricing based on my market research but also my experience and knowledge. Some of my competitors offer lower or higher pricing – but something that I believe is that it has to feel good to you as well and not just speak to your audience. If you price too low you may end up resenting the work you do – and if you price too high you may struggle forever to get customers.
No matter what type of business you are developing, it is always important to research and know the different factors that should be included when selling your produce or service. This will help you be more successful – either online or offline.
