Blog: our latest tasty thoughts

There are so many ways to reach your audience - website, social media or even a stand in a shopping centre.

But are you getting the right message across to your audience?

The audience you have on Facebook differs from the visitors to your website, and these all differ from your shopping centre prospects. Often your Facebook fans will already be your customers: they know you are, like what you do, and want to be kept up to date on the latest news from your business. Compare this to your website visitors: these visitors may have found your site through Google or via a business card and are looking for more general information on your business and may be in the market for becoming a customer.

It all depends on what your business offers - do you have a range of products to sell? Or professional services to offer? Perhaps memberships or subscriptions? The audience for each of these differs, so be mindful when writing content that your message will be useful to your recipients.

For example, an online store can really benefit from pushing new products or specials via Facebook and email newsletters - fans can get the latest offers for your new products quickly and place an order via a direct link within your message.

But then on the other hand, if you provide a membership or subscription based product, pushing a sales pitch through Facebook and email newsletters may have a negative effect as your audience is probably already a subscriber to your product, so doesn’t need another sales pitch. For an audience like this, rather than trying to constantly sell your product to an audience who has already purchased it, try to post useful information about changes or additions to your services, competitions and promotions and, of course, posts asking questions to get your fans involved with your online community.

There are, of course, exceptions, such as member referral offers, but if your message is always about selling something that your audience already has purchased or subscribed to, you’re not going to get many new leads from this type of message. In fact, you may even lose the ability to reach your audience as fans may block you or unsubscribe due to repetitive and unnecessary sales posts.

Don’t get me wrong - Facebook is a great place to get new fans and get a message across - but take the time to know the needs of your fans so that you can tailor your Facebook messages to suit your audience. Similarly, look at your email newsletter list, and ensure that your message is fitting for your subscribers. Your website then will feature a different message to try to capture interest in new leads, as well as then direct these leads to becoming a fan on Facebook or an email subscriber - it’s all interconnected, but remember that each audience does need to have its own voice, and a simple copy-and-paste won’t cut such a broad market.

If your audience is responsive to your posts, be those via your website, newsletter or social media, then you’re on the right track. But if you’re not getting new leads from your posts, have a think about how you can better get your message across to the right audience, create new leads, and build a better online community to help you get your message across to those that want to receive it.