Does My Marketing Strategy Reach My Ideal Customer? 5 Things To Keep In Mind

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Yes, you hear it over and over again. Some people can “make anything go viral”. Most marketing agencies believe they “can market any business” – yet they do not have the required skill set to flourish on all platforms.

So, the old saying of “Jack of all trades, master of none”, does in fact apply.

The brutal truth is that, depending on what it is you offer, some promotional avenues may just not work for you.

Which marketing strategy will work for my business niche, for social, SEO and AI search?

There are 5 things you need to keep in mind:

1: Platform algorithms.

Depending on who your target audience is, and what your expectations are, not all promotional channels or tactics will work for you.

If you are someone who has very little time to create content for platforms like X or Youtube shorts, for instance, you will find that each post has a limited life span – so it might not be visible until the next time you upload something.

If, for instance, you want to go after search engine traffic, and you want to compete in a highly competitive market, it is likely to take a lot of money and effort in order to generate any viable search traffic.

You may want to focus elsewhere.

Then you have Tiktok, where you need 1,000 followers before you can add a link to your bio, and you cannot add any links into posts. If you serve a small, higher ticket market, it’s probably not your best bet. Instagram, Facebook and even Pinterest would be better suited.

2. User behavior.

Each social media platform has its own usage patterns. On Youtube, for instance, people will spend lots of time, while on X they are often just in-and-out.

On some platforms they tend to scroll endlessly, but seldom engage. On others, like Tiktok, the content starts playing automatically, but most people simply scroll on anyway.

Of course, there is also the matter of mobile versus desktop usage numbers. On Facebook, for instance, desktop usage is over 40%. For all other networks, it hovers around 10% or less.

Even on Linkedin, where you may want to find high ticket clients, roughly 90% of all users are on mobile devices. Not only does it bring some challenges regarding friction, but it also determines how long people use the network at a time.

3. User demographics.

There is no point in engaging with an audience which doesn’t contain people from your target market. So if you want to market to an ideal customer profile (ICP) of 50 year olds, don’t bother using Tiktok

If you want to target survivalists, Pinterest might not be the best place to go, since most of their users are affluent women in the 25 to 45 year old range.

If you want to push brainrot content to attract people to an entertainment site, don’t bother using Linkedin. Most of the people there are actually trying to do something with their lives. Tiktok will work much better for you.

4. Time to obtain results.

It has been said that everything in life is a trade-off. Some people trade their present for their future, and vice versa. Some trade their family lives for success. Many trade their peace of mind for money.

In online marketing, however, you have 3 options:

a. Simply pay for advertising. The traffic keeps coming as long as you have money to put into it. Whether you can convert it into sales is a whole different story, but as long as you keep paying, you have visitors.

b. Run with sort form content. Its life span is shorter (aside from Pinterest, where it can last up to a year), but you can literally start seeing traffic within a week or so if you do it right.

Granted, it won’t be much at the start, but it will be there.

c. Go after search traffic, aimed at Google and Youtube. On both of these platforms, your content can be visible for many, many years. It is not uncommon – when you search for something specific – to come across videos that were uploaded ten to fifteen years ago.

However, both of these have “slow” algorithms. it’s a bit much to explain here, but do understand that it will take a considerable amount of time and effort before you gain any real momentum. But once the traffic comes, it keeps coming.

If you cannot wait that long, you will need to either switch to – or incorporate – paid advertising or short form content promotion.

5. Your marketing budget.

In many cases, new business owners are on a tight budget when it comes to marketing. Also, in many cases, they only have so much money to spend on marketing before their reserves run out.

A constrained budget is likely to prevent you from spending too much on search engine optimization or long form Youtube videos content.

You will probably be better off going after methods that generate traffic and sales faster to keep your cash flow running.

In conclusion:

Each marketing channel has its pros and cons. That is why it makes absolute sense to first generate an ICP, and then figure out where they hang out.”

From there, it is just a matter of creating content that resonates with them, and providing it at the right time.