USP and Target Audience Mapping for Facebook Marketing
Now that we have understood the different business objectives that Facebook can help us reach in our previous 2 blogs: https://brandingbypixels.com/Portfolios/facebook-marketing-for-beginners/ & https://brandingbypixels.com/Portfolios/facebook-business-page-objectives/
let’s talk about the marketing process for your brand.
USP:
USP means unique selling proposition, this defines a characteristic or a point that you offer which is unique for your brand. This distinguishes you from your competition and some of them could be the following:
1. Product or Service – Your own product is very unique. Example: iPhone.
2. Associated Services – Your service or the options for services that you offer are unique. Example: Apple has service centers across the world to help serve you when you need to buy an iPhone or service one.
3. Convenient Location – If you have a physical product having your store at a convenient location so people can reach you easily and park better could be a USP as well.
4. Gifts with Purchase – If you are a restaurant or a food delivery service giving away a dessert or giving away a token with each purchase could become your USP.
5. Branding – Having a unique branding so people can identify your brand from far away is the best USP ever. Example: Golden arches of Mc Donald’s.
Some other USPs could be:
Let’s make a list of which of these above could be your unique selling propositions? That will help us understand what points need to be definitely included in the marketing material which we will create for our brand.
Now we will concentrate on “Target Audience”.
Target Audience:
Target Audience is to map out which people might be potential customers for your brand.
Some questions that help map out these audiences are:
1. What are their Interests? Example: News, Gadgets, Technology, Entertainment etc.
2. What Age are your potential customers likely to be of? Example: 20 – 30, 40+ etc.
3. What Gender are your potential customers to be likely of? Example: Male/Female
4. Location of your potential customers? Example: Worldwide, Only India, Only specific locations.
5. Mindset of your potential customers? Example: Love to shop, Love to research, Love to browse for the best rates etc.
6. What is the Media that they might be active on? Example: Facebook, Print Media, Pinterest, Instagram etc.
7. Devices that they use? Mobiles – iphone, Samsung.
Why to define Target Audience:
Now that you have understood how to define your target audience lets understand why we have to define them?
There is a proverb in marketing which says “If you target your product to everybody then nobody will ever become your customer” which is synonymous with wasted advertising budgets. So focusing on particular segment helps us:
1. Understand the potential customer better for a particular segment.
2. Target specific Communication regarding the brand.
3. Build a meaningful relationship with the potential customer.
4. Plan better regarding marketing budgets.
Case study – Target Audience:
Let’s go through a case study to understand the Why and How of Target Audience:
“Chinese Hut” is a Chinese restaurant which is looking to promote its brand online and wants to map out the target audience so they can create impactful marketing material for them.
They have come up with these details for their ideal client:
Demographics:
Since Chinese cuisine is preferred as a quick fix for hunger pangs “Chinese Hut” ideal potential customers would be:
Aged – 18 – 40 years
Working Professionals
Male and Female.
Behavior and Interests:
These potential customers typically:
Browse for food options on their mobiles
Looking for convenient, quick options as they mostly work late hours and prefer to eat out rather than cook at home.
All these parameters can now be used to target potential customers on Facebook as Facebook provides options to target to their 2 billion audience across the world using these specific parameters of Chinese hut.
Customer Journey:
Now that we have defined our USPs and Target Audience, let’s look at Customer Journey as a concept, this is also called as a “Sales Funnel”.
What is a Customer Journey?
A Customer Journey is a process that is used to define how a customer moves through the journey of being interested in a product to actually buying it. For each product/service this journey is different as each product/service has different potential reasons to exist.
Some products might be a spur of the moment decision to fulfill an immediate need – Example : Buying that roll of gum at the checking counter at the super market, Some other products or services need more than a nudge for the potential customer to decide to try out – Example: Switch from an Android phone to iPhone, Some other products/services are disruptive and their concept is so NEW that they need to educate the customer – Example : Using an iPad which is easily portable in the pocket of your jeans to hear songs.
Mapping out customer journey is important as in the above examples, the products/services have different goals and the same marketing campaign will not create great results for all of them.
A typical customer journey looks like the below and is generally shaped in the form of a funnel:
Case Study – Customer Journey:
Let’s use the above example of “Chinese Hut – a Chinese Restaurant” to map a customer journey.
Let’s say Nidhi a potential customer is thinking about dinner, the first step in the process is looking at different options that are available to her: Pizza? Noodles? Rice Bowl? Continental?
Nidhi wants to have some light dinner and decides on Noodles. She is now trying to recollect all the Chinese restaurant brands that can cater to her need now. She recollects certain brands like: Veggie station, Chinese Hut, Chef Noodles etc.
This stage where she has recollected that “Chinese Hut” serves noodles and is able to recollect their brand name is called “Awareness”. This has only happened as these brands have built a top of mind recall so she remembers their names and knows that if she ever feels like Chinese she can go to these restaurants.
Now that Nidhi has decided that she wants Chinese and has also recollected the brand names of restaurants that can cater to her need, the next step in Nidhi’s Customer Journey is “Consideration”.
There are different factors that affect the consideration of which restaurant to go to, these could be:
1. Price – Pricey/Value for Money
2. Menu options – Buffet/Alacarte
3. Location – Far/Near
4. Quality of Food – Excellent/Palatable
At this stage where she is evaluating the options at a serious note, let’s imagine that “Chinese Hut” convinces her that the best place to go for dinner tonight is “Chinese Hut”?
How you may ask?
1. Nidhi sees a post on her friend’s Facebook timeline where she has posted what a great time she had at Chinese Hut with her family the other night.
2. Nidhi watches an interesting 2 minute video about how Chinese Hut’s chefs create new recipes every week with the freshest of ingredients.
3. Nidhi sees a promo on her Facebook newsfeed that Chinese Hut is offering a coupon code that is only valid for tonight.
4. Nidhi gets a push notification on her phone for a coupon which is only valid for tonight.
Finally comes the most important stage that any business is looking for which is the “Conversion” stage.
Chinese Hut has convinced Nidhi to give a try and she has decided to visit this Chinese restaurant for tonight’s dinner, this is nothing but converting a stranger who was browsing for options to a customer whose now going to pay for the services that we are offering
This whole process right from the Awareness of the brand when a stranger is actually looking for options to making them a paid customer is called the “Customer Journey” or a “Marketing Funnel”.
This process enables a brand to think through:
1. What sort of communication is key for each stage of this funnel : Awareness – Talk about the brand to build brand recall, Consideration – Ensure that your brand USPs are communicated clearly to the potential customers, Conversion – A little nudge is given to the potential customer to part with their precious money and become a customer.
2. Build relevant content using original photos or original videos of the brand for each stage: Awareness – Talk about brand, USPs, Consideration – Build a community, Conversion – Customer Experience, Reviews etc.
We hope you enjoyed this week’s School of Marketing dose for Facebook Marketing. We will continue discussing about the other objectives for face book marketing, so stay tuned for next week.
Have a great week ahead.
Sirisha Varma,
Co-Founder, Head – Marketing
brandingbypixels.com
