This guest post us by Genevieve Flinthamofwww.stagweb.co.uk.
Pictures of the day’s events, winter landscapes, and memorable quotes. Titles laden with puns, facts, and intrigue. An architectural layout that’s accomplished, savvy, and uncomplicated.
Each target group demands a different set of things when it comes to websites and blogs, but in this instance we’re going to look purely at users aged between 25 and 40. This is my target market. With ten years of experience targeting this commonsensical group, we’ve made some discoveries through our two blogs, The Antler for grooms-to-be and best men, and the GoHen Blog for brides-to-be and maids of honour.
Here’s what we’ve learned.
1. Keep it informative
As with targeting any group online, it’s important to first understand this age group. They’ve grown up with technology and sales pitches hitting them from every side and are, to some degree, immune to the typical advertising approaches.
As a first piece of advice, ensure that any form of engagement, whether it’s a blog post, advertorial or product description, remains fairly non-promotional.
We’ve found that people in this age group prefer instructional, informational posts; the most-viewed posts on our blog are Top tips for your Sunday hen party and Stag weekend planning—managing number changes. If you’re targeting a younger demographic, less-wordy posts tend to be favoured, such as those including bullet points, infographics, and pictures.
2. Tell them (nearly) everything about you
Another factor we’ve found when targeting this particular age group is that the bare facts ain’t gonna cut it.
We make sure to state all the facts (including that we’re financially protected, our contact details, testimonials, etc.) whenever we get the opportunity. Make information about yourself readily available and if you’ve got great credentials, let them know!
This demographic tends to be wise to companies that could rip them off and have seen a fair share of reputed companies go bust, so they need to know that they can trust you. To back ourselves up, many of our blog posts link to the following page:
3. Appreciate that it’s a great target market to have
There are many benefits to having a target audience of 25-40 year-olds.
One example is that picture placement seems to have little effect; we’ve spent years trying various positions of quality pictures and call-to-action pictures, but the resulting enquiries for each page haven’t changed with each different position.
As well as that, they’re wise to the testimonies of the company—great for genuine, successful businesses, since this audience is able to weed out the fakes.
4. Mix old and new
Only slightly less tech-savvy than their 18-25 counterparts, 25-40 year olds are spending increasingly more time online. Many people have suggested that offline advertising will soon become redundant, but Direct Marketing News does point out that when trying to reach the 20- to 45-year-old demographic that “word of mouth has always been a powerful marketing tool.”
Word of mouth has transformed to be word-of-mouse now though, and if you’re looking at online advertising then mix in the elements of the old (aiming to get people talking about your product) with parts of the new (finding innovative ways to target consumers).
If you don’t mind paying for social media advertising, the best fairly new way to target specifically 25-40 year olds might be to employ the use of Facebook hypertargeting; when going through the advertisem*nt setup process, select this age group as the only ones to see your ad.
Overall, to avoid making any egregious errors when targeting the 25-40 age demographic, ensure that your content is informative, your company values are reflected, and that you bring contemporary elements into a traditional mix.
Do you target 25-40-year-olds? What extra tips can you share with us?
This is a guest post by Genevieve Flintham of www.stagweb.co.uk.
