Who is your target audience and why? If you don’t have a specific answer to this question, then you need to figure that out real soon. Something most businesses may not realize is that you can’t appeal to everyone and your target audience can’t be “everyone”. That’s why getting to know your audience earlier on before launching a product or publishing your blog post is important as it will reach the right people leading to more conversions and feedback.
With that being said, let’s look at how you can define your audience and appeal to them.
What is a Target Audience and why do you need one
A target audience is a specific group of people👨👩👧👦 you would like to reach using the different channels that are available. These are people who most likely will be interested in your product, service or content, they follow you on social media or have subscribed to your newsletter. Such people have similar interests and characteristics like age, location, education, goals etc.
For example, if your company is launching a new clothing line for example gym wear, chances are you would want to appeal and attract people around your company’s geographical location, people who can afford it and of course people who are interested in fitness. This way you will definitely get a high conversion rate.
Having a target audience is important because you will understand how to speak and connect with them. Once you identify and analyze them, you will discover helpful things like the language they use, their most preferred channel, their wants and needs, and much more. All these data will help you find the right direction to take for your marketing campaign.
How To Find Your Target Audience🤔
Now that we know what a target audience is, the next step is finding them. You can do this in a number of ways.
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Analyze your current customer base
Look into the people who are already buying your products, paying for your services or engaging with your posts. Break it down using the following data categories;
- Age- What age bracket or generation do they belong to?
- Location/time zone- It is important to know where your audience lives so as to know what time you should publish your posts or put up your ads so as to reach them. It also helps you to know which areas to target.
- Interests/hobbies- What does your audience enjoy doing, watching, what places do they like hanging out etc.
- What stage in their life is your audience in? Are they students, young parents etc.
- Language- Find out what language they speak whether native, fluent or conversational.
- Social class- How much do they earn, spend and what do they do for a living.
- Gender- Is your audience mostly male or female?
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Research Your Competitors🔍
Are they targeting the same demographics as you? What are your competitors doing differently that you could consider emulating or what are they not doing that you could do? Go through their websites and social media feeds to know more about them.
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Consume the type of content your audience consumes
Visit similar websites to know more about their behavior and interests. These could give you fresh ideas on how you can reconstruct your website if need be. You may also find a new set of people that you could target. Secondly, listen to some of the content they consume such as podcasts to get an idea of what language they use that you can later on incorporate when creating content for your website or blog. Lastly, if possible attend similar events as them to see the kind of activities they enjoy.
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Identify the challenges, pain points and needs of your audience
Identifying the needs, expectations, and problems🤕 of your target audience not only helps you to understand them better, but it also ensures that you’re creating a product, service or blog post that’s going to have a real impact on the marketplace. Think about what problems your target customer suffers from in their day-to-day life, and how your product solves those issues for them. Once you do, come up with a Unique Selling Point (USP) for your product
Also while figuring out their needs and wants, try to find out what they don’t want or what they consider as negative. Once you do, avoid it completely. You don’t want your image or name to be tarnished.
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Identify where they get their daily information from
Find out what kind of publications your audience gets their information from. It could be blog posts, magazines, YouTube, Social media etc. Be keen on how the information is structured and presented then you could do the same. There are so many tools out there you could use to help you get all these data we have discussed above the most common one being Google Analytics. These data will help you understand your customer base more and also guide you in finding new ones plus your content creation and campaigns will be curated from valuable data.
