Many small business owners we talk to, often ask us the same question:  How can I acquire new customers using online marketing methods?

Fortunately, Team Focus has spent a good amount of time and research to help companies of all shapes, sizes and missions. It’s always our goal for our clients to understand digital marketing  in a way that doesn’t break the bank, and doesn’t inundate people with confusing messages that they really don’t want to hear.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll tackle three quick answers to this question – that will help you grow your business. Ready? Get to reading!

Before you can do anything with digital marketing, you have to identify the basics for what you want to do in the online space. The first question we ask is:

“Who do you need to reach?”

Google Analytics and Facebook Insights are very in-depth. They can tell you a vast amount of detail for who is already visiting you, online. Additionally, there are tools that can be combined with other sites you may be using that will give you a better idea about the specific demographics you are reaching, such as Hootsuite. But for this conversation, I want to focus on the big two – your website and a Facebook page.

Google Adwords and Facebook Ads give you the flexibility to be as specific as you would like to be with your paid messaging, but the specificity of these tools are why it’s so important to know your audience. With them, you can set your own budget and price per advertising function. Here’s how specific I was able to be for one of our clients, The Biloxi Boat and RV Show. They had a big event last weekend, and to help manage their online advertising campaigns, we sifted through a few variables for paid online advertising. On Facebook, we did the following:

1. Selected interests or keywords to be – boats, new boats, fishing, kayaking, RVs and a few more
2. Selected a “geographic” audience – Hattiesburg, Jackson, New Orleans, and Pascagoula.
3. Then we dove a little deeper. We identified segments of people by income level, family make-up, additional interests and more.

That’s the power of knowing your audience! Only spending dollars on potential customers that are most likely to be interested in your message, product or mission is more beneficial than paying for potential audiences. Never before have businesses had this kind of power in advertising!

Lets look at some examples from Facebook.

This graph is for the entire Facebook user audience in Mississippi. If your target demo is light on Facebook, then there are more traditional ways to reach your audience, but if you’re looking to reach 18-44 year old people in Mississippi, it’s time to invest in Facebook .

Facebook Example 1.

Facebook Example 2.

If my business caters to engaged couples, I need to really think about if I’ll even use Facebook to reach them, even though the expected age range of engaged couples fits my Facebook demo of 18-44.

But if I want to reach married couples, Facebook certainly holds some advantages for my marketing dollars.

 

Google now provides similar data, but you have to initialize it through their new analytics code. Learn more on that here. Once you’ve enabled custom reporting you’ll begin to see data like this.

 

 

Now you’ll be able to decide if your dollars would reach your audience through your current web traffic. You could then use tactics such as remarketing or programmatic marketing to bring back past customers or visitors. While those items are a little more advanced, you are at least armed with the basics to begin tackling digital marketing.

Neat, huh? Join us next week, as we tackle Part 2: Creating great content!

Thomas Broadus, Director of Interactive and New Media