It’s much easier to sell something to an audience that wants what you’re selling. However, this doesn’t mean it’s a slam dunk.
Understanding the customer and delivering the right message can make a huge difference when enticing a person to choose your plumbing services over your competitors.
This is why it’s so important to know who your ideal customers are, and how to target your marketing to them. Here’s a closer look at the importance of understanding the customers, along with tips for identifying and marketing to your target audience.
Plumbers Marketing: What Is a Target Audience?
Your target audience is exactly what it sounds like: the people who you are trying to reach with your products and services. Your target audience refers to potential customers who want and need what you are selling… and are willing to pay for it.
Another way to look at it? Your target audience is made up of people who have a problem that needs solving. If your products and services are a solution to this problem, then you’ve found your target audience.
Many factors — both demographic and pertaining to behaviors and interests — come into play when you’re defining a target market. These may include:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Education
- Occupation
- Socioeconomic status
- Family situation
Why Is Your Target Audience Important?
You could make the best product in the world or provide an unbeatable service, but at the end of the day it won’t matter if no one needs what you’re selling. Enter your target audience.
But it’s not enough for your target audience to need what you’re selling. They also have to believe that your business is the best option for fulfilling their needs. The more you know about them, the more you can deliver messaging that positions your products and services as the best solution.
Furthermore, the deeper your level of understanding of your target customers, the more effectively you can market to them.
There are many benefits to marketing to your target audience. For starters, while casting a wide net can be good, it can also be time-consuming and expensive.
How to Find Your Target Audience
On the surface, finding your target audience is relatively straightforward: Who needs your services? Also included in your target audience should be people who have already used your services. In fact, existing customers are extremely valuable for two reasons: 1) they can become repeat customers, and 2) they can also refer new customers to you.
As a plumber, you’re in luck. Pretty much everyone needs a plumber, which means everyone has the potential of being a target customer. However, this doesn’t mean that a blanket marketing campaign is good enough. You still need to address the question of how to know customer needs and wants so that you can show them that you understand them. This means going beyond the basics to consider factors like:
- Where do they live?
- How (and where) do they get their information?
- How do they prefer to communicate?
- What is important to them?
- What challenges are they facing?
- How can your business help them with these challenges?
- What drives them to make purchasing decisions?
- What objections would they have to using your products and services?
In addition to individual homeowners, your target audience may also include other service professionals, such as:
- Property management companies
- Renters
- Business owners
- Real estate agents
- General contractors and builders
- Appliance repair services
- Electricians
- Roofing companies
- Landscape architects
- Interior designers
- Other local businesses
Another way to find your target audience? Pay attention to who your competitors are targeting, what they’re offering, and how they’re offering it. This doesn’t mean you should be going after the same customers. In fact, it may give you an idea of a different type of customer to target.
Which brings us to a strategy that can help you get even more out of your marketing efforts.
Your Target Audience and Marketing Segmentation
While service professionals may fall under the umbrella of your target audience alongside individual homeowners, they don’t necessarily have the same immediate needs. This is where market segmentation comes in.
Market segmentation refers to dividing your target market into smaller categories based on their shared similar characteristics. This helps you create and execute more effective marketing strategies, including the following:
- Delivering stronger messages
- Identifying the most effective marketing tactics
- Hyper-targeting your ads
- Attracting qualified leads who are more likely to convert
- Creating brand visibility and differentiating your brand
- Building deeper and lasting brand affinity
- Identifying niche markets and opportunities
- Maintaining messaging and marketing focus
Ultimately, the success of your plumbing internet marketing — and of your business, by proxy — is grounded in two things: identifying your unique value proposition and understanding the customers in order to find your target audience. Tougher, they represent the formula for growth for your plumbing business.
At The Light Digital, we specialize in all things digital marketing for plumbers, including helping plumbing businesses define their unique value propositions, hone in on their target audiences, and utilize market segmentation.
We also help plumbing businesses in all stages of planning — whether you’re completely new to online marketing or you’re looking to improve and enhance an existing campaign.
To start building your plumbing business by leveraging the full power of digital marketing, contact us today.
