Today’s guest post is by Brooke Chaplan, a freelance writer and blogger. This is great information for focusing your small business marketing efforts on the right target audience.

Discovering Your Marketing Demographic

The crux of marketing revolves around finding the right people to deliver the right message to. Anything less represents a strategy that could be improved. The challenge is often switching incredibly difficult. You may not even know where to begin looking for the more profitable demographics hiding among the people your marketing currently reaches. Let’s explore some tips that can help you find the most desirable target demographics, and refocus your current efforts so that you can improve the overall efficiency of your marketing campaigns.

Use Website Analytics to Find New Demographics
Your website is an amazing place to start looking for new demographics. You can generally spot outliers and trends based on keyword usage. While this information alone will not help you form a clear picture of new demographics, it can give you clues as to where you should start looking. It may even allow you to notice underlying trends between access time and keyword usage that can help you refine your current demographic targets.

Ask for Data from Your Users About Themselves
Visitors tend to be willing to share information with you, especially when that information pertains to their own interests. All you need to do is start asking them for it. By setting up a simple pop-up survey, you can acquire this information anonymously. This can help you form information about the most prevalent demographics on your website, and help you notice the smaller groups that visit it. The one thing to keep in mind is that you should be polite when you ask. Give your visitors the choice to opt out, as they may feel less compelled to share otherwise.

Opt for Market Research
Market research is considered one of the most appropriate ways to acquire information about new target demographics. It utilizes a wide variety of techniques and multiple steps to acquire this information. You may, for example, use a market research company like Lucintel to find out what motivates your current demographic through product studies. You can then look for information from random survey takers to find people whom may enjoy your products. Once that is done, you can align the desires of your current demographics with your potential demographics. This can effectively and efficiently help you find new customers to reach with your marketing campaigns.

Focus on Mobile Users
Users of mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets represent a new type of consumer. Their reasons for buying tend to differ from traditional demographics. By focusing on mobile users, you may be able to acquire new information about your potential target demographics. You may even be able to acquire information that can help you with your existing demographics. Don’t be afraid to target mobile users to learn more about who you can reach.

Refocusing Your Marketing: Putting It All Together
The big “trick” to shifting your marketing focus is to look for new traits and commonalities between demographics. You can use the methods outlined above to begin finding those traits, but be aware that this is often a lengthy process. Once you have enough information to begin formulating pictures of your potential demographics, then you can change your marketing strategies. You should start small with these new demographics, and expand once you confirm that they will provide the results you seek.