What it means to know your audience
When it comes to communicating, creating, and planning content and marketing materials for your business, understanding your audience is non-negotiable.
This holds true for influencers, small businesses, and large enterprises.
Regardless of what is being offered, you’ll want to want to familiarize yourself with who makes up your community and customer base so that you can make informed decisions.
The data can inform your overall message, campaigns, and strategies.
If you know what your audience is currently struggling with, it will allow you to position your offer in a relevant manner so that it appeals to and resonates with the consumer.
And that’s ultimately what will help set you apart and be able to connect with consumers on an emotional level. That’s the golden ticket to becoming top of mind. Understand how your offer will benefit them and improve their lives or work.
You can gather consumer data through various methods.
Here are a few ways:
- Website clicks
- Open rates
- Social media
- Engagement rate
- Offer sign ups
- Email Opt-in
- SMS subscriptions sign ups
From the data collected, you can learn more about your audience’s demographics and psychographics.
Demographics
Demographics include data collected from a group of people such as
- Age
- Location
- Gender
- Income
Psychographics
Psychographics include data collected about a group or individual’s personality traits, values, interests, and preferred lifestyles.
When you’re equipped with both types of data, you have a more holistic view of what your audience cares about and what they need help with.
In an article written by Donald Miller, author of Building A Story Brand, he shares that companies that are customer-centric generated more profit than businesses that weren’t.
To understand how to position your brand as a customer-centric business, you’ll want to focus on obtaining demographics, psychographics, and any direct feedback from your customers and leads.
You’ll want to gather first-party data directly from your customers. This has the potential to be the most cost-efficient and can be easily done on existing platforms you may already have.
You can:
- Add a survey to your website
- Poll your social media community
- Hold interviews with past and current clients
- Gather insights during discovery calls
Organize this data to help you segment your audience.
Segmentation is the process of categorizing your audience based on interests and behaviors.
Doing this will help you craft a relevant and specific message that will appeal to this specific segment.
A great way to use SMS marketing for your business is by infusing your message strategy with personalization.
According to research conducted by Salesforce, 73% of consumers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations.
What to include in your SMS message
By understanding your audience you’ll know exactly how to present and talk to them about your offer to get them to take the desired action. And it will help you create content that is personalized and beneficial.
Let’s go over how to maximize your SMS messages.
Use images and multimedia
Including images, video, or audio in your messages can help capture attention and provide a richer experience for your customers.
Multimedia content is more engaging than plain text and can communicate much more visually than standalone text.
The use of images can also reinforce your brand image if you consistently use elements specific to your brand. Such as colors and image styles, like using GIFs.
Don’t be afraid to get creative
Text messaging is a versatile tool that can be used in many ways. Think outside the box to come up with creative ways to use SMS marketing in your business.
You can try asking for a response, hosting a challenge, or inviting them to join you on a live video event to answer their questions.
Use Mobile-friendly links
Including links in your text messages can be a great way to drive traffic to your website or landing pages. Just make sure those links are mobile-friendly so your customers can easily click through.
Using links also improves the user experience since most users access the internet on their mobile devices.
You’ll just want to ensure that the webpage you’re linking out to is mobile-friendly and formatted so that it loads quickly and is easy to navigate through.
Use short & concise messages
Your customers are likely to be on the go when they receive your text, so make sure your message is brief and easy to digest.
Short messages are more likely to capture and retain your customer’s attention for the simple fact that it takes little to no effort.
You’re able to deliver your point across simply which helps with the time it takes to create your SMS campaign.
Analyzing your SMS and consumer data
If you’ve already taken the time to conduct your audience research and implement strategies to capture user data, you wouldn’t want to skip analyzing that information.
Depending on how you’re collecting information, you’ll want to review the following kinds of data if you have access:
- Qualitative: Subjective and opinionated data that describes an individual or group's attitude toward a topic or offer. Ex: Survey responses, customer feedback
- Quantitative: Numerical data, number of subscribers, conversion rate
- Descriptive: Name, age, gender, purchase history
- Identity: SSN, Driver’s license, phone number, email address
Once you start collecting this information, you’ll be able to determine what KPIs (key performance indicators) to use to measure your efforts.
Monitor your results.
Keeping an eye on your metrics will help you track the success of your SMS marketing campaigns and make necessary adjustments along the way.
Another type of analysis you can do to improve your KPIs is A/B testing.
A/B test your messages.
With A/B Testing, you can compare 2 versions of similar content to see which one is performing the best so that you can optimize your results.
For example, consider having two CTAs at the end of your SMS message to see which one is being clicked on the most to increase your CTR, click-through rate.
Timing is everything.
Sending your messages at the right time can ensure that they’re seen by your customers and improve the chances of them taking action.
Take a look at your open rates and note the times you are sending them, and how far apart your next messages are.
Your ultimate goal is to merge and utilize the data you have at your disposal to get a more detailed picture of who makes up your audience and how you can best position yourself to serve them.
According to a HubSpot article, “Disconnected marketing data is problematic because you don’t have the full context needed to make data-driven decisions.”
By not integrating your marketing data you can be missing out on important details on how a customer may be interacting with your brand.
The information is always changing because the data comes from humans. And humans are dynamic and their opinions and habits evolve with time.
Consider dedicating time to review if the data you’ve collected is still accurate and relevant to your audience.
Conclusion
To make sure that your SMS marketing is a worthwhile investment, it's essential to concentrate on three key aspects: your target audience, the content of your messages, and the analysis of your content’s performance.
Analyzing your data isn’t a one-time thing. If you want to maximize your SMS marketing efforts review your data on a consistent basis to help you reach your goal.
Attempt to connect your data across multiple platforms so that you have a better picture to make informed, data-backed decisions.
If you’re ready to put your data to the test and start planning out your SMS campaign, sign up to try Subflow free for 14 days.
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