You need to ask yourself which platform your audience is most likely to be on. This will help you decide which one you should use if you want the best chance of making your social media marketing a success. If you want to target a younger demographic, Instagram and TikTok may be the way to go. If you’re looking for other businesses, use LinkedIn. You may find older audiences on Facebook. Knowing which platform you’re going to use will also help you when it comes to creating content, e.g TikTok is video based, Instagram is image based. 

 

Now, lets look at the different types of targeting. 

One of the first things you need to think of is your audience demographics. This includes their age, gender, income, education and more, and creates an initial idea of who your ideal customer or audience member is. For example, you may have a luxury, makeup brand that you need to target. Therefore, you may want to select women, earning over £30,000 a year, in full-time employment and between the ages of 25 and 50. With this information, you can the begin to create a content plan that speaks directly to your chosen audience – you wouldn’t use Gen Z or Gen Alpha references or lingo if you’re targeting generations who are older as they won’t resonate with your message. Having a basic understanding of your audience demographics will then help you to form a bigger picture of the people you want to be interacting with and purchasing from your business. 

Geographical targeting is based on where your audience member lives. You need to think of the area your business is located in, or if you’re solely online where you ship to. This is particularly important if you’re running ads, as it allows you to select the location your audience is based in so your ad can be displayed to the right people. If you live in the UK and ship to the UK, then you’d make your targeting only aimed at those in the United Kingdom. If you also ship to Ireland, then you’d include that in your Geographic targeting. If you are a physical store based in Derby looking for visitors, you may only select Derby or Derbyshire as a location, or branch out a little further and include surrounding areas in the region like Leicester and Nottingham. When it comes to Facebook Ads, you can also change the radius around the area you’ve selected, allowing you to be a bit more specific if you want to target only a certain area of the city or county you’ve initially selected. 

Interest-Based Targeting is exactly what it says it is – targeting users based on their interests, hobbies and activities. As per our example, if your beauty brand is only using natural products, you may target those interested in natural or vegan products. You can also target interests like beauty, makeup or skincare too. Whatever your business is, you should know what your audience could be interested in so that you can define them further and figure out your messaging. Ads can also be delivered to those who interact with content similar to your own. Again, sticking with our example, if you have an audience who often watches beauty content, follows influencers in this field and frequently purchases makeup items, if you are running ad’s, you can target them to be shown to these audience members based off their online activity. 

Targeting is one of the most important aspects of marketing, forming the foundations that you’ll build your marketing plans on. Before you begin creating content, start by discovering who your audience is and decide what aspects you need to target to bring in the most engagement.