How To Reach Your Target Audience (NEW Content Marketing Strategy For 2022)

Hey guys. This week on hey Sudbury, I'm going to be answering. Gents, good question. I know that's your channel's name and not your real name, but let's dive in. Hey, Sabri. We've just started an online business for a few months ago. Our target market is millennials aging 25 to 34 years old. And after doing some research, a big portion of them still hang out on Instagram. We've created helpful content and also did some paid ads on Instagram. Thanks to your book YouTube channel, they are gold. Thank you, kind sir. However, we've seen poor performance in terms of organic engagement recently on Instagram. Then we read a recent research that showed TikTok's growth is just increasing rapidly. We tried some content on TikTok and the organic engagement seems better, even though the audience are much younger, 17 to 24 years old, which mostly did not fit into our target target audience for now. So what advice would you give if you were starting building audience base today? Is it better for a new brand entrepreneur to focus on making organic content on TikTok over Instagram while still using Instagram for direct response and paid ads? Cool. Well, let's dive in. So first of all, your target audience is, is really not a group of people like that. I think that you wrote 25 to 34 year olds. So your target audience is one individual, right? Because even if you just say, look, my target audience is a 25 year old male. A 25 year old male is an entirely different person on a Monday morning at 9am than they are on a Friday night at 11pm, let alone once you start adding in other years on there, right. It just gets way too broad way too quickly. So the, the issue that I see is that most people like, yeah, my target demographic is just like you said, it's like 25 to 34 year old males or women or whatever it might be, and that is just such a large, big, broad brushstroke. So instead what you want to do, you want to have a look at which you can do, you can have a look from your Instagram page insights. You can look on YouTube, you can look at Google Analytics and you can find out really the biggest specific year crossover and gender that is really represented the most in your audience base. And then you single in on that individual and you, you basically say, okay, cool, it's a 25 year old male. You give that male a name, then you think about like, what books that they read, what Netflix shows do they watch, what artists do they listen to. On Spotify? What YouTube channels are they subscribed to? What do they wear? How do they get to work? What do they do for a living? Are they single, married, engaged in a relationship on Tinder? Like, what is that person? Who are they? Right? And then everything that you do is we'll just call him Larry. Is completely targeted to Larry. Does that mean that you're going to get Sam, who's two years older? Yes, it does. Right. But it means when Larry reads that, it says if you are reading Larry's mind and specifically talking to him and you know exactly who that individual is and what they're doing and what music they're listening to and all of that kind of stuff. So then everything that you put out, it strikes like lightning and literally sets that person on fire and they feel a kinship, like they connected with you because everything that you put out is so targeted towards them. And when I tell people to do this, they freak out and they're like, well, I'm going to be discounting and not talking to everybody else. Like, what about Sally, who's a 26 year old woman then? She's not going to buy from me. Why do you say that? Right. It's still, you're still talking about the overarching problem that that market experiences it, but you're zeroing in on the bullseye. Who is the individual within your target audience. So that's the very first thing. And I know that I went off on a rant there because that is the most important thing ever in marketing, period. End of story. That's it. Right? Is really understanding who it is that you're speaking to. You will still get the other people if you're talking about the overarching thing that they want, but you will be magnetic to that specific individual that it is that you want. Then in terms of putting out content, you want to go where your target audience is, Right? So yes, you can look at engagement and all of those kind of things, but more or less, where are they hanging out? Like are there more of the 25 year old males on Instagram or. Or more of them are on TikTok? If more of them are on TikTok, then you should be going on TikTok. Right? Or if more of them are on Instagram, then I would encourage you to go on Instagram. There are, yes, organic reaches in the toilet. However, there's always ways to manipulate that. There's reels, there's all these other stuff that you can use at your disposal to get that reach that you're looking for, but more so your question was around where would you go to build an audience. So first of all, you mentioned that you're doing some organic and you're doing some paid, right? First of all, I don't like those two terms. I don't like organic versus paid. Everything is paid, right? Either you pay with time or you pay with capital. Right? One is human capital, one is financial capital, but you're paying regardless. So the real question is what do you have more of right now? Do you have more time or do you have more money? Whatever you have more of, that's what you should be paying with. If you have more time, then go down the paying with your time route. And the realistic thing that you want to look at is where am I going to get the most leverage, for instance, on TikTok or if it's Reels or YouTube shorts or what happens to be right? What has the longest half life right of the content that you're putting out? The way that I look to do it is like what is an action that I could take today that will compound over years and that I will reap back the fruit of the seeds that I am planting not just in this year's harvest, but in next year's and the year into perpetuity. Right. So that's the first thing that it is that you want to look at? I can't answer that. I don't know what it is that you're selling because you haven't told us. So basically what I would tell you to do is first of all to have a look at where are the biggest group of individuals hanging out? Where is the largest group of that individual that you're looking to target? The Larry, the 25 year old male, which platform are they on? And then run it through another lens and have a look which is the channel that is going to be the most evergreen and that I can get leverage on for many months and years to come. Not just a short term dopamine rush right now like a real going viral and then the discovery of that is kind of over, right? So that's the thing that I would then look at. And then if I had some financial capital, I would very, very quickly move to an environment where I was not paying with the most valuable currency that I will ever possess, which is non renewable, which is my time, and start using money which it is renewable. I can make as much money next year as I did this year. I can make infinitely more money in five years time than I can right now. Either I'M broke for five years, can I get to a place where then I then have abundance? I can, right? But if I waste this year, can I ever get it back? No, I cannot. So you want to very, very quickly move to a position where you are using financial capital instead of human capital to do that. Or unless your time, you can hire other humans to then use their time to then do that thing, but you really want to quickly move to a place where you do have the money to run those ads. So I can't give you a definitive answer and exactly write you a prescription for what it is that you're looking for, but I can give you the frameworks to run this decision making through to help you into the future. Not on this question, but in many different questions that will arise throughout your journey as an entrepreneur. I hope this helps you hey guys, if you're enjoying these videos, please like subscribe and hit the bell button as we're dropping a video like this every other day on YouTube. And if you've got any questions, just leave a comment below with heysubrey and I will do my best to get to it. Sat.