Written by Cid Hanna, Marketing & Communications Director, Business Link Alberta
Turn What You Know Into Marketing That Works
Now that you’ve done your target audience research and defined your customers in Part 1: How to Find and Attract the Right Customers, you’re ready to start marketing. But before spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on advertising, turn what you have learned into a small, measurable marketing test.
1. Start with one audience, one offer and one goal
Your first campaign does not need to reach every possible customer. Choose one audience. Then give that audience one clear reason to take action.
For example:
Audience: New homeowners in Edmonton.
Problem: They need to improve their yard but don’t know where to start.
Offer: A free 30-minute landscaping consultation.
Goal: Generate consultation bookings.
This is much easier to measure than a general campaign promoting an entire landscaping company.
2. Write your message around the customer’s problem
A common advertising mistake is starting with the business.
We are Alberta’s trusted provider of high-quality services. That may be true, but it doesn’t immediately tell a potential customer why they should care.
Start with what matters to them.
For example:
Moving out? Get your rental professionally cleaned before your inspection.
Then explain why your business is a good choice.
Your marketing should answer four questions quickly:
- Is this for me?
- Does this solve my problem?
- Why should I trust this business?
- What should I do next?
3. Decide where to test
Different advertising channels are good at reaching customers in different situations. The question is not simply, “Which platform is most popular?” A better question is: “Where is my customer when they experience the problem I solve, look for options, or become open to discovering a new solution?”
The chart below can help you identify places worth testing. Your goal here is to match the channel to the buying behaviour.
| Channel | Consider it when… | Who you may reach | A good first test |
| Google Search | People are already searching for the product, service, or problem you solve. Particularly useful for local services and purchases with clear intent. | Search lets you reach people based on what they are searching for and where they are located. | Test a small group of high-intent searches such as “emergency furnace repair Calgary,” “bookkeeper Red Deer”. |
| You want broad local reach, your research shows customers use Facebook or community connections are important to the purchase. | Facebook reaches a broad adult audience rather than one narrow generation. A 2025 Canadian survey found 82 per cent of adults had a Facebook account. | Test one geographic area and one clear offer. For example, promote a spring service to homeowners within your actual service area rather than targeting all of Alberta. | |
| Your product or service is visual, can be demonstrated easily or benefits from discovery before someone is ready to search. | Particularly strong among younger adults, although its audience extends beyond them. In the 2025 Canadian survey, 91 per cent of respondents aged 18 to 24 had Instagram. | Test strong photos or short video showing the product, result, experience or problem you solve rather than simply displaying your logo. | |
| TikTok | Customers discover ideas, products or businesses through short video and your business can create useful, entertaining or demonstrative content. | It has a particularly strong younger audience. About 65 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 24 surveyed in 2025 had TikTok. | Test short videos that answer a question, demonstrate the product or show a real result. Use your customer research to choose the subject matter. |
| YouTube | Customers need to learn, compare options or see how something works before making a decision. | Very broad reach across generations. YouTube is also especially common among younger adults: 94 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 24 surveyed in 2025 had an account. | Test a useful demonstration, explanation, testimonial or short video answering a question customers frequently ask before purchasing. |
| You sell to businesses or your buyer can be identified by their job, industry, company or professional role. | Particularly useful for business-to-business marketing because advertisers can target characteristics such as job title, company and industry. | Instead of “Alberta business owners,” try a more relevant professional audience based on your research — for example, operations managers at Alberta construction companies. | |
| Local partnerships, events and community advertising | Trust, proximity and word of mouth are important to the purchase, or your customers are concentrated in a specific community. | Potential customers connected to a neighbourhood, municipality, industry, association or shared interest. | Test a partnership with an organization your customers already trust, sponsor a relevant local event or participate in an industry or community gathering. |
A useful way to narrow your options is to ask what the customer is doing when you want to reach them. And the best channel is not necessarily the one with the largest audience. It is the one that gives you a reasonable way to reach the people your research suggests are likely to become customers, at a point when your message is relevant to them.
Advertising is only one way to reach customers. Your research may show that referrals, networking, partnerships, search engine optimization, email marketing or community involvement are more important.
4. Start with a small test
Your first advertising campaign is an experiment so start small and then as you learn you can grow your advertising reach and budget.
To begin, it’s about learning, you are trying to learn: If I show this offer to this audience, will enough people respond to make the campaign worthwhile?
Start with a budget you can afford to learn from. Rather than creating 10 campaigns at once, test one or two variables.
You might compare:
- two headlines
- two offers
- two audiences
- two images
- two landing pages
Changing everything at once makes it difficult to understand what worked and what didn’t.
5. Send people somewhere useful
Getting someone to click an advertisement is only the beginning. Think about their user experience or the path they take to reach you or make a purchase. Make sure the page they reach matches what the ad promised.
If your ad promotes a free consultation, the landing page should make booking that consultation simple. If it promotes a specific product, send customers to that product, not your homepage. Remove unnecessary steps wherever possible. Every additional click, form field or confusing instruction gives a potential customer another opportunity to leave.
6. Measure actions that matter
Clicks and views can be useful, but they aren’t usually the end goal. What really matters is what happens after the click.
Depending on your business, that might include:
- phone calls
- quote requests
- appointments
- email signups
- online purchases
- in-store visits
- trial registrations
Eventually, the number you want to understand is your customer acquisition cost: how much money did you spend, on average, to gain a new customer.
For example, if you spend $300 on advertising and gain six new customers, your advertising cost per customer is $50. Whether that is good or bad depends on how much a customer is worth to your business.
7. Follow up
For many businesses, particularly those selling higher-priced products or services, someone who asks for information will not necessarily buy immediately. Having a process for following up with potential customers can make all the difference.
That could mean:
- responding quickly to quote requests
- sending requested information
- answering common questions
- following up after an estimate
- reminding someone about an appointment
- staying connected with people who have agreed to receive your marketing
A marketing campaign can generate strong leads and still fail to generate customers if the follow-up experience is slow or confusing.
8. Talk to the customers you win
One of your most valuable marketing questions comes after the sale:
How did you hear about us?
Then keep learning. Ask new customers what made them choose you, what almost stopped them from purchasing and what information helped them decide. You may find that the audience you originally imagined changes once real customers begin buying.
That’s normal.
Your target audience is a working hypothesis, not something you define once and never revisit.
9. From guessing to learning to knowing
You do not need perfect customer research before marketing your business. You do need enough information to make a reasonable first decision, test it, and learn from the result.
Start by identifying a specific customer with a specific problem. Understand where they look for solutions and what influences their decision. Create an offer for that customer, put it in front of them and measure the heck out of it. Then improve your approach using real-world information.
The goal is not to find every potential customer. It is to get increasingly good at finding the right customers for your business.
10. Repeat and grow
As you start bringing in more customers, you will have more data to support what you know about your customer, their needs and how they find you. As you find one stable marketing solution is working, begin testing a new one, you might there is a mix of a couple of channels that work best for you. Do a small test again to start and then base your decisions on the findings of the test each time.
If you’re working through your target market, marketing strategy, or next steps for your Alberta business, Business Link Alberta can help you navigate your options. Connect with Business Link Alberta for free one-to-one business guidance and resources to help you move your business forward.
Cid Hanna is the Director of Marketing and Communications at Business Link Alberta, with more than 25 years of experience in marketing, advertising, and communications. She has worked with organizations of all sizes to connect with their audiences, strengthen their marketing, and build memorable brands.
