When it comes to spending money on advertising, everyone wants to know what will give them the best return on their investment.
 
The answer to that question depends on several things. And it requires you to ask yourself a basic question: Who is your audience or ideal customer?
 
Most people have some sort of answer to that question, and it should never be “everyone and everywhere.”
 
When making decisions on how to best spend your advertising dollars, you need information about your target audience, and the more specific data you have, the better. One way to learn about your customers is to ask them questions about themselves and how they found your business, and then keep track of their answers. You can also hire a firm to handle the task for you.
 
With customer information in hand, you can go deeper in targeting your marketing efforts by asking yourself:

• Which type of customer provides the best ROI for my organization?
• What part of my business do I want to grow?
• How do my advertising efforts work together?
• Can I commit myself or my organization to an ongoing advertising effort?

That last question is an important one. Building an awareness of your brand, business or organization takes consistent and ongoing effort. It can be tempting to do a big, splashy campaign to draw quick attention, but what happens in a few months when people have forgotten all of your hard work? And what about reaching people who are new to the area?
 
With an ongoing, consistent campaign, it’s more likely that your organization’s name will be remembered when your potential customers is ready for your product or service.  Think about this: If a person needs something in a hurry – a car repair, for example – then you want your name to be one of the first two or three that come to mind.
 
When you’ve identified your audience and which of your advertising efforts is most effective in reaching it, build on them. Refine your messaging, increase the frequency of your efforts, if necessary, and begin to look for narrowly defined extensions of your audience that you aren’t currently reaching.
 
To learn more about defining and identifying your target audience, click here to read an article on the topic from Inc. magazine.