How To Find The Right Target Audience For Your eBook
Ask any business leader. No matter how big or small their company is, they can rattle off a list of top customers without having to put too much thought into it; because not all of them are created equally. Some are better fits for a company’s products or services than others, and their needs align perfectly with the solutions those companies have to offer.
Yet, when you ask these leaders who their company targets as new customers, they often tell you it's anyone and everyone who’s interested. When that’s the answer, marketing gets expensive and wasteful. Even when the responses are more specific, like “small business owners” or “working moms," they're still too broad. Narrowing down which small business owners and which working moms, is the key to defining your target market and increasing the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. In fact, the more precise you’re able to be about who you’re targeting, the more focused you can be with your spending and your messaging.
For B2B companies, a target niche is significantly smaller than that of their consumer-focused counterparts. Most B2B companies succeed by operating within the 80:20 rule, which is the idea that a relatively small number of customers, around 20%, account for a large portion of sales and profits [1]. As a result, B2B-focused businesses should target a few specific, needs-based groups of customers.
Successful B2B Content Marketing is never one-size-fits-all. Instead, B2B marketers with clearly defined target segments can, and must, effectively tailor the messages and tactics they deliver to each.
The Value Of Knowing Your Niche
In today’s digital world, marketing strategies that take a "kitchen sink" approach end up being too broad to resonate with the right buyers. Understanding what makes your target audiences tick is the key to success.
Identifying target segments is just the first step. From there, develop detailed profiles of each stakeholder. You want to understand their day-to-day worlds, the challenges they face, and the impact they want to have within their companies [2]. By discovering these things, you’re able to create content that speaks directly to each stakeholder’s pain points and connects them to the solutions you deliver.
The more you know, the more personalized your messaging can be. Based on target customer insights, your story can be carefully crafted to showcase how your product or service fits their needs. Just like targeting helps to eliminate wasted marketing spending, it also minimizes ineffective messaging [3]. Speaking directly to a defined customer set means you’re able to be specific about exactly what your product can do for them, increasing the chances that prospective customers recognize the relevance and take action.
At the same time, digital marketing channels increasingly make it possible to speak to precise segments of an audience. Rather than broad advertising, an eBook focused on a particular eLearning segment can be effectively and efficiently delivered through highly targeted promotional campaigns, including digital advertising and social media.
In fact, social media has enabled B2B marketers to better understand and appeal to the human and emotional parts of their target audiences. Not only can content be specially targeted, but messages can also be delivered through storytelling that can spark the emotions and imaginations of business decision makers [4].
5 Questions To Answer When Crafting The Right Target
eBooks offer the ideal opportunity to dive deep and share expertise about a topic that a target audience cares about. But, before you finalize the topic or write the first chapter and find your target audience, it’s essential to know the answers to these 5 key questions.
1. Who Are Your Current Customers?
Start by analyzing your company’s existing customer base. Then, create groups based on common attributes, and crunch the numbers to see which are the most profitable in terms of sales and long-term customer value. The best-performing segments provide important insights into which customer attributes you should be targeting.
2. Who Are Your Competitors Targeting?
Next, do the same type of customer evaluation for your primary competitors. Seek information on their current customers, and look at their market-facing messages. This type of competitive intelligence can be invaluable in identifying gaps in the market and further focusing your niche.
3. Which Customers Do Your Products Or Services Benefit?
Translate the different features of your offering into benefits, and then brainstorm the different types of business stakeholders who could benefit from those benefits. The more specific you can get about who and how the better.
4. Which Personas Are The Best Fits?
Based on your answers to the three “who” questions above, you’ve compiled some solid foundational information. Now, it’s time to develop personas for exactly which group (or groups) is most likely to purchase your company’s products or services. Think about demographic characteristics at both the business and stakeholder levels, but don't stop there. Go beyond basic demographics to look at psychographic attributes like values, attitudes, and behaviors. Combining demographic and psychographic insights enables you to create personas that tap into what drives each segment’s decision-making.
For instance, one buyer persona might be Instructional Designers who want to learn more about eLearning course design and development. Another might be learning and development managers, training managers or chief learning officers who are in charge of designing corporate training programs and continuing professional development for their workforce.
Explore articles, research, and blogs about these target audiences. In addition, look for online niche communities where your targets engage. These types of forums often offer opportunities to ask questions and test ideas.
5. Is My Target Audience Too Big Or Too Small?
While it’s important to identify a few profitable target niches, you don’t want to break the target segments down too far [5]. Build in checkpoints to estimate how many target companies fit your company's criteria to ensure you've defined a viable segment to market to. One good way to determine whether you’ve over-segmented your audience is to think in terms of messaging. If the same message points work for multiple segments, it might make sense to combine them into one overarching segment for targeting purposes.
In the end, finding the right target audience is a strategic balance. In today’s multimedia, multi-message world, audiences aren’t looking for full-page ads or TV commercials aimed at the masses, it’s the content that recognizes their specific challenges and speaks directly to their needs that holds their attention and earns their trust.
eLearning marketers may sometimes feel overwhelmed when they’re in the process of finding the best ways to create and market an eBook for B2B lead generation. Download our free eBook How To Create And Market An eBook For B2B Lead Generation: The Ultimate Guide For eLearning Marketers to discover how to create and market a B2B lead generation eBook that addresses the topic with the authority of an eLearning marketing expert but in a friendly tone.
References:
[1] Market Segmentation In B2B Markets
[2] 4 Advanced Targeting Strategies For B2B Marketers
[3] The Importance of Audience-Messaging Alignment in B2B Marketing
[4] B2B Marketing Has Evolved Into Something Beautiful, And It's Time For Marketers To Adapt
