Before you start your business, you must know who your market is. If you already have a product or service, you may already know who your potential customers are. These are your "audience", or a term you might want to familiarize yourself with, your personas.

What is a Persona?

Your persona does not refer to everyone in your target market. For example, if you are selling men's shoes, your audience probably won't be all men. You have to drill down the market to find the right prospects.

To drill down on your persona, find out everything you can about your best clients and create a fictional person out of the information.

Questions To Ask Your Customer:

• What is your job role? Your title?
• How is your job measured?
• What is a typical day?
• What skills are required?
• What knowledge and tools do you use?
• Who do you report to? Who reports to you?
• What industry does your company serve?
• What is the size in employees and revenue of your company?
• What are you responsible for?
• What does it mean to be successful in your role?
• What is your biggest challenge?
• How do you learn about new information?
• What blogs do you read?

You can define your persona by answering questions about gender, age, interest, employment, income level, and personal details. These factors will give you a firm start on defining your audience. From there, you can even further drill down the customers depending on what you are offering.

If you are new to marketing or have a small business, you might be wondering how to do retargeting marketing, and what it is. Retargeting is very helpful to both the user and the company if used properly. Retargeting can be used in many cases, including display ads, social media, and pay-per-click search marketing.

Concept Behind Re-targeting

Re-targeting is not something that only large companies can do, with a little effort and a small marketing budget, anyone can use retargeting marketing. There are a few channels to use for re-targeting, including search marketing, social media marketing, and display marketing. Depending on your budget, and where your audience is, you can use all of them, or pick your favorite.

• Google Search and Display using Adwords
• YouTube if you have video
• Twitter
• Facebook & Instagram
• Bing

What You Need to Setup Re-targeting

• You need access to your website. If it is a basic HTML website, you have to know how to put code in.
• You may also need a graphic designer to create banner ads for you.

Google Search & Display

The first step to set up re-targeting for the Google network is to log in to Google Analytics and set up your audience. Select "Admin" at the bottom left, and click "Audiences" in your web property.

Once you are in the audience section in Google Analytics, click the "New Audience" button. Once you are in the audience setup, there are many options for you to segment your audiences based on a multitude of settings. For the first audience, choose the "All Users" pre-populated audience. This will give us the ability to re-target all users that have visited the website. After you get used to this process, you can come back in and create audiences based on URLs or even keywords in URLs.

The last step is to select the destination you want to use the list. For this purpose, you are going to choose the Google Adwords account, which will add this new list into Google Adwords re-targeting options.

Google Adwords

Now that you have created your new retargeting audience, head over to Google Adwords, and create your new display campaign. Create a "Brand awareness and reach" re-targeting campaign. This way, when visitors leave the website, you can show them banner ads to bring them back. To start, click the + in your Adwords campaign view, select the display campaign type, select the brand awareness goal, add in your URL to your website or landing page, and continue.

The next step is where you will set up all of your campaign specifics. Give your campaign a name, select your location next, you will create your bidding options, since this is a re-targeting branding campaign, you may consider viewable impressions, and set a daily budget. This will let Google use their bidding algorithms to get you the best position and most views.

Many of the settings you can leave in their default selections if you are new to Adwords. When you get down to the "Add Group" section, give your ad group a name that is specific to this group of ads. Just under that you will see your "Audiences" section, this is where you will select your re-targeting audience you just created in Analytics.

After you make the selection, you will see additional selections such as "Similar Audiences", "Combined Audiences", and "Website Visitors". For now, select "Website Visitors" and look for the "All Visitors" audience you created. If you created additional audiences to segment different ad groups, you will see them listed here as well. You can segment your users if you have different services or products, to show specific and personalized ads.

After you select your audience, scroll down and look through a few more settings, and add your ad group budget. The last step is to create your ads. You have a couple of choices here. Start with your responsive ad, this ad will use an image and text.

The second option, "Upload Display Ads", you need an eye-catching banner. There are many best practices to follow, including a short and concise message, and a call to action. There are a few banner ad sizes that are more successful than others, you will want to make sure you have a banner designed for each of these sizes.

After you create your responsive ads, and you upload your custom banner ads, you have just created your first retargeting campaign. Now, when visitors come to your website and look at any page when they leave and visit another website or mobile app that uses the Google display network, your ad will be displayed to that same user, reminding them how great your service or product was, and maybe with a little incentive to come back and spend some additional time learning about it.

YouTube

To create a re-targeting campaign for video using YouTube, make sure you have already added the Google Analytics script to your website and created the audiences as outlined above. You will use the same audiences that you have already created and used in your Adwords account.

This time, when you go in to create a new campaign, click on the "Video" selection. The next steps are almost the same as setting up your Adwords campaign. Give your campaign a name and enter a daily budget. Many of the network and language settings you may leave defaulted, although you can get in and fine-tune your settings if you would like.

Next, give your ad group a name. If you are going to run a campaign for a specific service or product, name your ad group something that will make sense to you. As you grow your campaigns and ad groups, it will make it easier to find the correct one when looking at a list.

The next section is where you will connect your re-targeting audience to the ad group. Select "How they have interacted with your business", select "Website Visitors", and then select your custom audience.

The last step is to select which video you would like to use for your video re-targeting campaign. This video should already be uploaded to your YouTube page, all you will need is the URL. If you have not uploaded it yet, open a new tab, upload the video, and get the URL from the sharing section.

For your first video re-targeting campaign, keep it simple and use the In-stream ad type, which will play your video before the users' videos start. As you learn about the other types of video marketing available through YouTube, you can branch out and try new formats. Don’t forget to add in a click-through URL, which will be your website or landing page.

After you click the save and continue button, you have just created your first video re-targeting campaign. Now, when visitors come to your website and look at any page when they leave and visit YouTube to watch videos, they will see your marketing video first. Make sure to learn about the other ad formats, and to start segmenting your audiences and use specific videos for each audience.

Facebook & Instagram

Facebook and Instagram are great re-targeting platforms with many extra features. The first step in setting up your Facebook retargeting campaigns is to install the Facebook pixel on your website. You can add the pixel in the header, just under where you added your Google Analytics script.

To get your Facebook re-targeting script, log in to your Facebook advertising or business account, click on the top left corner to open the navigation, click all tools at the bottom of the drop-down, and then click on Pixels in the full navigation.

Next, click into the data sources drop-down at the top right of the screen, and select "Facebook Pixel". Give your pixel a name and then click "Create" to finish this step in the pixel creation process. You will be presented with the pixel code, where you will copy and paste it into the header of your website.

Select to install the Facebook pixel code yourself, and then click to copy the code to your clipboard. After you install the pixel on your website, you can send test traffic to make sure it is working. If you have some type of cache on your website, make sure to clear your cache before sending the test traffic.

Next, set up your retargeting audience on Facebook. First, make sure you are on the "Data Sources" section and look for the "Create Custom Audience" button at the far right. Click that to open a new window to set up your custom audience.

This section, you will come back to in the future and set up specific audiences based on criteria such as keywords in the URL, this way you can segment your audience based on what they were interested in on your website.

Open up the Facebook ads manager, click to create a new campaign. For example, Brand Awareness, as this is just an initial re-targeting campaign to show visitors an ad to come back to the site and learn more. Give your campaign a name and click continue to move to the "Audiences" section.

Give your ad set a name, specific audiences can be connected to ad sets, so you can develop ads for each segment of your audience. Add your audience in the next step, under custom audiences. When you click in the blank field, a drop-down list will show your available audiences.

There are several more things to complete, including the location for showing your ads, and any demographics or languages you would like to include or exclude. You may also specify target people that like your page, or that do not like your page.

To finish up, set your budget, and you can leave many of the default items in their default status unless you are experienced with Facebook advertising and want to fine-tune your campaigns.

The last piece to setting up your Facebook retargeting ad is to build your ad.

If you’re just getting started with social media marketing, now is the perfect time to create clear expectations, establish metrics for success, and determine your audiences. Make sure the content creation matches the audience and keeps them interested, engaged, entertained, and informed.

Do your research now to find out where your customers are spending most of their time on social media. There are many different social media platforms to consider.

1. Facebook

Facebook is a pretty big platform to use to tell your story, and it is increasing where people will turn to learn more about your brand.

2. Twitter

Twitter is a great tool to communicate in real-time. It is also one of the only social platforms where you are encouraged to post multiple times a day. As with any other platform, begin by creating content that people will find informative, engaging, entertaining or fun, but - even with 240 characters - keep things short. You can always link to your blog post if you have a lot to say.

3. Instagram

Instagram is a perfect platform if you have a visual product or brand. For example, if you are hosting an event, share behind the scenes snapshots or a special social graphic promoting it with your unique hashtag so attendees can get excited about the event.

4. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network. It allows you to promote your company news, showcase your specialties. Because many businesses are on LinkedIn, you can connect with leaders in your industry through groups and keep an eye on what the competition is doing.

Email marketing is a great way to talk to your customers and tell them what you have got going on in your business. You can build your relationship by speaking directly to them, through their inbox, at a time that is convenient for them.

But, it is important to understand that users receive many emails each day demanding part of their attention. So, you need to do something special if you want your emails to be opened, valued, and engaged with.

1. People-first marketing

Write your email content as if you are communicating with real people. In fact, you are communicating with real people. By subscribing, your customers have asked to hear more about your business, and this is your opportunity to share valuable insights.

They want to know more about your brand, or you wouldn't have permission to email them in the first place. So, stop thinking about email marketing and consider your emails a way of talking to your customers or readers.

2. Don’t spam, opt-in

Sending emails to someone without their permission is not okay. Violations can cost you your subscribers, access to your email marketing platform, and some serious money.

3. Calls to action

To support email campaign messages, stick to a single call to action. You are already competing for your customers’ attention, don’t make it difficult for them to figure out what to do with your email. One button is less confusing for your audience, and they won’t get distracted reading too much content that requires looking at lots of clickable links.

4. Keep subject lines simple

Clear, direct subject lines can be more successful than clever ones when it comes to converting your customer. You can do an A and B test to see which subject creates more conversions. Also, test your subject lines for common spam words to keep them from getting lost in your recipient's inbox.

5. Be useful and helpful

Not all of your emails should sell something. You can share ways to use their recent purchase or get started using your services. Inspire your customer with genuine testimonials or endorsements from those who have had success using your products or services.

6. Use email marketing service provider

There are multiple options out there at every size and price point for your business. Choosing one won't be easy. Whichever service you choose, keep backups of your distribution lists in case you outgrow.

7. Be realistic with your goals

Average open rates for email marketing campaigns range between about 15% and 25% which means that about 75% of your subscribers are ignoring your emails. But that's the reality of the very competitive digital universe. Set goals that are SMART and based on the data you’ve collected over previous campaigns.

8. Get individual

Write your email content as if it is going to one person. If you have successfully developed your customer personas, you know your customers well. No matter who you are talking to, empathize with their situation and explain how your services can solve their problem.

9. Know the best time to send your email

The day and time of your email distribution matters when it comes to your click-thru-rate and email opens. If it is something you want your audience to take action on, it needs to be sent early in the day.

10. Get inspired by the best

Subscribe to other email lists. Look at what your competitors are doing and those outside your industry who really understand how to speak to their customers using email marketing. What are they doing well? Get motivated and modify the ideas to better match your business.