As your business expands, you may find yourself interested in reaching entirely new demographics and new market segments. If you’re used to talking to one specific audience directly, this can be extremely challenging. Fortunately, there are plenty of strategic opportunities to help your business expand – and nearly all of them are accessible, regardless of your business size.
The Benefits of Reaching New Segments
Are you unsure about reaching a new audience segment? Consider the following benefits:
How to Reach New Audience Segments
So how exactly do you go about reaching new segments?
Do your research
Everything starts with your market research. You need to do preliminary research to determine what types of audience segments might be available; can you benefit from targeting different people based on their age, sex, location, family status, income level, or other demographic factor? Once you narrow down the list to a handful of possible options, you can dig deeper to figure out more about them. If you were to focus on this demographic, how would you reach them? What are their values? How are they different than your current primary demographic?
Try a new marketing channel
One of the easiest ways to reach a new market segment is to use a new marketing channel. For example, you may invest a lot of money into digital marketing and advertising strategies – but there are millions of people who don’t even use the internet on a regular basis. Printing catalogs and investing in newspaper or magazine ads could instantly connect you with this previously isolated segment.
Tailor your messaging
No matter how strong your marketing channel is, you’ll need to invest time into reshaping your messaging. You need to understand what types of messages and words will “click” with your target audience. What are their biggest pain points? What are their values? What types of strategies seem to work for them?
Introduce a new product or service
An easy way to appeal to a new market segment is to introduce a new product, a new service, or a transformation of your existing products or services. For example, let’s say you make a lotion product that’s designed for women with dry skin. This product could hypothetically be used by men as well, but it needs tweaking to generate a similar appeal. For example, you might use a different scent or develop an unscented variety, or you might pitch the lotion as serving a different purpose (such as “strengthening the skin” rather than “beautifying your hands”).
Increase your budget
If you want reliable results, you’ll almost certainly need to increase your budget. Think of the logic here; if you’re going to reach twice as many people, you’ll probably need to pay twice as much money. But remember, this is an investment in the future, and it’s often worth the sacrifice.
Optimize for search intent
When it comes to reaching new demographics, search engine optimization (SEO) is your best friend. With the power of SEO, you can create new content that’s exclusively targeted to a specific demographic. If you cater to search intent, by predicting what your customers will search for, you can rack up organic traffic and ultimately see even better results.
Experiment and improve.
Finally, you have to experiment and improve over time. Your first efforts to reach a new demographic may fall flat, or they may fail to help you reach your full potential. You have to tweak your approach and tinker with different options to see what works best.
It’s tough to reach a new audience segment without putting in substantial time, money, and effort. But if you’re willing to make those sacrifices and change the way you market and advertise your business, you can greatly expand your potential.