I’m sure we can all agree that social media has become a microcosm of ‘real-life’ conversations. For me, Facebook is for family and Instagram is for friends. For this reason, what I post or don’t post on each of these channels differs. I change my profile picture on Facebook every few years and give holiday snaps a polite like, whereas I use Instagram on a daily basis and talk to a lot of my friends on there too. I don’t know about you, but I’d refrain from posting my drunk selfies on Facebook for a disapproving nan to see (or maybe you wouldn’t, I’m not here to judge), whereas a video from a ruckus Saturday night surfacing on Instagram would seldom bother me. These differing thoughts surrounding what I want people to see of my life come intuitively. However, these thoughts don’t come as naturally to many businesses when they don’t know who they are marketing to.

In the world of marketing it is integral to know who your target audience is. What do they want? What are their pain points? What are their values? Pinpointing these needs provides fertile land for an effective marketing plan to grow. For example, the SexTech brand Dipsea have clearly identified their target audience as sexually curious, fantasy-stimulated female 20-somethings keen to invest in their sexual wellbeing as if it were physical exercise. By doing so they have built a marketing strategy that specifically reaches them using platforms and channels that directly tap into this demographic; from blogs like ‘How to cultivate self-love with body neutrality’ to features in magazines like ELLE and Marie Clare.

You can’t meet needs you don’t know exist. My second cousin once removed probably doesn’t care about the outfit I wore last night coming up on their Facebook feed, but my friends on Instagram might. If you don’t know who you’re talking to you can’t effectively communicate with them. Put it this way, imagine trying to have a phone conversation with someone without knowing who is on the other end of the line. We’ve all seen Scream, and that didn’t end well…