Growing your audience isn't just about increasing numbers—it's about building a loyal, engaged community that forms the foundation of your business's success. In today's competitive landscape, relying solely on paid ads or Google SEO is risky.
Once the ad platforms decide to increase their prices or when Google updates its algorithms, your business gets affected. By cultivating your own audience, you gain independence and create sustainable growth. In this article, we'll explore the top tactics for expanding your reach and nurturing a dedicated audience that drives long-term success.
How to Grow an Audience
Start with What You Know
Your target audience, or what we call "lookalike" audiences, would probably have similar characteristics and behaviors as your current customers.
To find them, start by analyzing your existing customer data, such as their age, interests, where do they get information from. These details can then be used to create targeted campaigns or content marketing strategies aimed at reaching new potential customers who fit a similar profile.
For example, if you're an ecommerce brand selling gym apparel, and you find that your users tend to be females aged 25–35, you can use this information to target audiences that match this demographic criteria.
Additionally, you can explore interest-based targeting. In the same example, you may discover that these users frequently visit Crossfit and order healthy meal deliveries. You can partner up with gyms or meal delivery brands, reach out to similar fitness influencers, or use interest targeting on ad platforms.
Use Social Media to Engage Audiences
Today, almost 95% of global internet users are on social media. It's an essential and one of the most inexpensive ways to reach a mass audience.
One of the best ways to connect with your followers is by sharing valuable insights and expertise. Post tips, how-to guides, and industry news to establish your authority. For example, if you're a furniture brand, you could share tips on home decor trends, furniture care and maintenance, or space-saving design ideas to showcase your expertise and provide value.
AI-powered tools can significantly speed up your social media content creation process. Tools like Instagram caption generators can help generate ideas, create visuals, and even write compelling captions. By utilizing AI, you can maintain a consistent posting schedule while focusing on your audience growth strategy.
You can also encourage user-generated content by running contests or promotions where followers can share their home decor photos or stories using your branded hashtag. This creates a sense of community and allows you to leverage your audience's content to reach new potential customers.
Article, a digitally native furniture brand, started leveraging user-generated content by creating the #OurArticle tag, which now has almost 30k posts. Article reposts these on their Instagram account and also uses them on their website to inspire other shoppers.
Social media algorithms can limit your post exposure and serve them to fewer people than you'd like. Consider social media advertising to reach your target audience and expose your content to more people. On ad platforms, focus your campaigns on specific demographics, interests, behaviors, and even lookalike audiences, ensuring your content reaches the right people at the right time.
Utilize Audience Preferences
To effectively grow your audience, it's crucial to understand their preferences and behaviors. This includes details like the interval between each purchase, what items are usually bought together, their social media activity, price sensitivity, and more.
CRM systems and audience dashboards allow you to analyze valuable data about your target audience. Hypotenuse AI's ecommerce analytics tool, for example, gives you data on high-potential keywords and estimated traffic. This gives you a good indication of what items are high in demand amongst your target audience.
You can also start with free and effective tools like GA4 or Shopify's own dashboard if you're selling on Shopify. These tools already give you good insights to work and experiment with. For example, you can review demographics like country and interests, or their purchase journey and conversion rates.
Once you've got a handle on your audience's likes and dislikes, it's time to put that knowledge to work. Create useful and relevant content that speaks directly to their interests. Whether it's through blog posts, videos, or social media updates, tailoring your message is key to building a loyal following.
Keep your finger on the pulse of your audience's changing needs and preferences. Continuously experiment with new tactics to expand your reach, always learning and adapting your audience growth strategy. By staying responsive and relevant, you'll create a thriving community that's excited to engage with your brand!
Improve Your Landing Page Traffic
Landing pages are your highest value asset. That's where your audiences land and where they convert. Great landing pages give a strong first impression, reduce bounce rates and turn visitors into paying customers, or at least a loyal follower.
You can leverage multiple channels to drive traffic to your landing pages, such as:
- Sharing relevant links on your social media platforms to tap into your existing network
- Running targeted Meta or Google Ads to your product pages based on interest or relevant search terms
- Collaborating with industry influencers or partnering up with brands that share the same audience
While you work on the above outbound efforts, it's important to optimize your product pages to improve SEO and rank on search engines. AI tools like Hypotenuse AI's ecommerce product description generator allow you to craft product descriptions in your brand voice and optimized for SEO.
Once they land on your website, they either browse and buy or browse and leave. If they don't make a purchase, ideally you'd want to capture them by having them subscribe to your emails so you have a way to reach them. But even if not, you'll get some data to work with, whether for retargeting purposes or having an extra data point on demographics or interest.
Consider Partnering with Complementary Businesses
Partnering with businesses that complement your offerings is part of an effective ecommerce audience growth strategy.
By collaborating with companies that share your target demographic but offer different products or services, you can cross-promote to each other's customer bases, exposing your brand to potential new fans and followers.
For example, a fashion apparel brand targeted at female working professionals could team up with a sustainable makeup brand or a healthy meal delivery service. This symbiotic relationship allows both businesses to leverage each other's audiences and credibility, creating a win-win scenario. Co-marketing initiatives like joint promotions, social media cross-promotion, or even co-branded products can help drive awareness and interest from new segments.
Another successful partnership model is influencer collaborations. By identifying influential voices within your industry or niche and partnering with them, you can effectively leverage their existing fan base to introduce your brand to a highly engaged audience. This could involve sponsored content, product placement, or even co-creating products or campaigns together.
For example, Dose of Colors partnered up with beauty influencer Shayla to create a makeup collection. This reflected both the brand's color expertise and Shayla's signature style, giving the brand exposure to Shayla's diverse fan base.
The key to successful partnerships is finding companies or individuals whose values, brand identity, and target audiences align well with your own. By strategically selecting the right partners and creating mutually beneficial collaborations, you can effectively expand your reach and tap into new pools of potential customers or followers.
Consider an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy
In today's digital landscape, consumers engage with brands across multiple touchpoints, from websites and social media to mobile apps and physical stores.
An omnichannel marketing strategy ensures a seamless and consistent brand experience across all these channels, allowing you to reach and retain your audience more effectively.
By implementing an omnichannel approach, you can:
- Increase Brand Visibility: Your brand presence across various platforms increases your chances of being discovered and remembered by potential customers.
- Enhance Customer Experience: A cohesive brand experience, regardless of the channel, fosters trust and loyalty among your audience.
- Gather Comprehensive Data: Tracking customer interactions across channels provides valuable insights into their preferences and behavior, enabling more personalized and targeted marketing efforts.
A brand that does omnichannel marketing really well is IKEA. Their IKEA Place app uses augmented reality to help you visualize furniture in your homes before purchasing. The app scales products with 98% accuracy to fit into your space, and after experimenting, you can purchase directly from the app.
This makes the entire process seamless and enjoyable, and gives shoppers confidence to make the purchase.
Start Growing Your Audience Today
Audience growth is an ongoing process that requires continuous adaptation and data-driven insights. By leveraging the audience growth strategies laid out in this article and constantly experimenting, ecommerce brands can build a loyal following and create long-term, sustainable growth.
