Garious S.M.A.R.T. Group Presentation: How To Identify Your Target Market (B2B/B2C) Using Social Media

In May of 2011, Aaron Eden, Garious founder, presented Garious as a featured speaker at The S.M.A.R.T. Group of Arizona.Recently, Aaron was honored to share his expertise on social media marketing with the same group, where he gave the following presentation:

What Made Garious Presentation So Distinct…

What I loved most about Aaron’s presentation is that he didn’t talk theory! While sharing his tips and insights, he presented Garious SMM experience as a supporting example. That’s what I referred to in a previous article as Tips Humanization.

In the beginning, he discussed the importance of having a target market and how to segment your market based on different criteria. Then, he shared Garious target market definition to showcase the importance of narrowing it down to a very specific niche:

Are You Using Social Media As An “Interviewing” Medium?

Aaron proceeded to explain the best practices of using social media as a target market identification medium.

Think of Social Media as a great place to conduct virtual interviews and ask all kinds of niche-driven questions. The human nature of social media allows you to gain in-depth understanding of your market’s needs and aspirations in a subtle, non-intrusive way.

When you ask questions, you must empathically listen and create a compelling brand message that resonates with such needs.

Aaron also touched upon a very important point: Which social media sites are best suited for B2C and/or B2B businesses?

Since Garious is a B2B business (as you probably noticed from our target market definition), we are mostly active on social networking sites that give optimal B2B support. Here are just two examples of how Garious uses social media as an interviewing medium:

Can You Pinpoint Your Market’s Key Problems?

The most important part of identifying your target market is discovering what they are hungry for and handing it to them on a silver platter. That’s the final outcome of your social media interviewing process.

After conducting countless interviews online and offline with social media marketers, Aaron came to the conclusion that Garious target market is facing these key problems:

Now let me ask you a logical question: Why are these three particular problems the most relevant to us? Because Garious scheduling tool offers viable solutions to them.

In other words, when you define your target market problems, you are essentially doing that to offer your product/service as a solution to these problems. That’s the whole point behind target market identification.

Interestingly, Garious started out as a solution to Aaron’s individual problem. Soon enough, he realized that other people would benefit from his newly born invention. So, he took the plunge and shared it with the world! Oops, I meant he shared it with our target market!

But in order to accurately define this market using social media, the entire Garious team took all the steps mentioned above.

Now, after doing our homework, we know for certain that we are on the right track and feel so excited about Garious future.

What About You?

What’s your take on Aaron’s presentation? Have you tried using social media for target market identification. If so, how was your experience? Your valuable contribution is much appreciated.