Jazz Jones is hoping to build business for her leadership development coaching for healthcare professionals. She’s clarified her goals and objectives and is ready for Step 2: identifying her target audience.
Step 2: Identifying the target audience
As with goals and objectives, we want Jones to be as specific as possible about who she is trying to target. While she could arguably say, “Anybody in healthcare could benefit from my services” (and many business people do tend to take this broad-brush approach), we want to get her to narrow her focus on some specific target market segments based on such demographic attributes as geography, size of company (number of employees and/or revenue), or position within organization (e.g., purchasing director, CEO, or CMO).
Jones already knows she will focus on the healthcare industry, but she might want to narrow her focus on hospitals, long-term care organizations, or healthcare clinics, etc. Because she is physically based on the East Coast, Jones decides that the healthcare systems in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Delaware, and Rhode Island will represent her primary market area. The rest of the country will represent her secondary market.
Through her research, Jones has also learned that there is a growing trend toward hiring clinicians (e.g., physicians and nurses) to move into leadership roles; these represent her ideal customers. However, through our discussions, we realize that these individuals may not be the decision makers, so we know we must also target those who are (the CEO, other C-suite members, and the human resources department) when it comes to purchasing coaching services.
Taking the time to clarify your target audience, including key decision-makers and influencers, will serve you well when you get further along the planning—and implementation process.
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About Us
Strategic Communications, LLC, works with B2B clients to help them achieve their goals through effective content marketing and management with both internal and external audiences. We are adept at evaluating and analyzing communication efforts and working with clients to plan, create and publish high-quality, unique content, through both on- and offline media to achieve desired results. Our background in business journalism, marketing, PR/media relations and online communications makes us well-positioned to serve the needs of 21st-century marketers.
We serve clients who are looking for help creating content for a wide array of channels—from social media posts to full-length manuscripts, and everything in between. We focus primarily on service-related B2B topics and work with a number of independent consultants interested in building their thought leadership through online channels. For ongoing content management, our first step is to fully understand your goals, objectives and competitive landscape.
Then we’ll conduct a thorough analysis and assessment of your digital presence, compared to competitors, and recommend a communication strategy to achieve your goals. But, we also regularly take on individual projects – white papers, blog posts, contributed articles, etc. If you’re interested in learning more, let us know!
(Strategic Communications is certified as a Woman-Owned Business Enterprise through the Wisconsin Department of Administration.)
Recommended Reading
21st Century Secrets to Effective PR: Tips and Best Practices for Gaining Media Exposure
Best Practices in Influencer Marketing
Tags: content marketing, content marketing strategy, marketing strategy, setting goals and objectives, Strategy, thinking strategically