Who is your target audience? Every business asks themselves the same question. You can have multiple businesses in a single industry that target different types of consumers. For example, a truck manufacturer would not target an audience that has only purchased cars in the past. However, that does not mean that the truck manufacturer would not benefit from advertising to audiences outside their target range, but the return on investment will be much lower in the short-term with such a strategy.
Sticking within your target audience is how businesses become successful early on. Too many times a new business has opened up with the idea that it can appeal to everyone and the fact is that being that vague with your audience can lead to missing out on sales, especially when you get going. If you are selling a product that appeals to a large audience and you do not have the marketing budget or resources to reach that group, the best thing to do is to narrow down your options based on variables like geographic location, preference in your products and services, preferred platforms to be reached on and so forth. All of these things and more will factor into who your audience really is.
Determining Your Primary Audience
One of the best examples of why it’s important to determine your primary audience early is with the type of consumer you get in the cannabis industry. Dispensaries welcome all types of consumers, but most cater to a particular type because they know that this customer is the one that they can usually grab the fastest, meaning they meet the criteria that type of consumer is looking for in a dispensary.
Someone who is new to these products is going to have questions and be hesitant about what to purchase. This limits what you can offer them and means you have to invest more time into customer service than sales. However, for some dispensaries, the cost to bring in this type of consumer over someone with years of experience with the products may be much more reasonable. Consider that someone with years of experience with these products will be more critical about the dispensary or already loyal to a brand. Therefore, the new consumer, while requiring more work and posting smaller sales numbers at first, may be the ideal customer to target for that dispensary.
Best Platforms To Utilize
Communication with strong content is going to be the key no matter what type of audience you are trying to reach. It’s important to know the best ways to reach them, especially based on how they gather information. For example, if you are targeting an audience that is not as familiar with the products, search engines tend to be a better option. This is where that type of customer goes to do their research and determine the next course of action. If you are reaching out to customers who have knowledge and are perhaps loyal to brands, you may want to try sites and publications that focus on quality, not only of the product, but of the brand.
This is why it is so important to understand the platforms and sites that your target audience relies on in order to make a determination on which brand to move forward with. In some cases, they will also have friends and family, people they trust who have knowledge of the industry. However, even in those cases, people still want to double check and gather more information and that’s where having a presence on these platforms like search engines can be so valuable. The more consumers can learn about you on their own, the more they will trust your brand, especially if you have high-quality content.
Keep Your Existing Customers Shopping
A key mistake businesses make once they get a solid customer base is that they keep focusing on new growth. Yes, getting new customers is important, but in the cannabis industry especially, your foundation is the strength of your existing customer base and the best way to build your brand is to keep your existing customers shopping. Hit them with everything you can, discount new products to incentivize them to try it, discount bulk shopping to get them to make their entire monthly order at once, offer them referral rewards to recommend you to their friends and give them every reason to come to your site even if it’s just to read some new information on a product you are adding to your store. Your first real group of customers will help determine who your target audience is going to be but also how successful your business will be as well, if you build on the same strategy.