How To Find Your Target Audience
What Is A Target Audience?
Target audience is defined as a particular group which something is aimed at. It could be a film, a new product, food or service. Target audiences have a clear demographic at which these things are aimed at. Basically, they are your current and potential customers. Your target audience is who you hope to be selling your product or service to.
Target audiences are defined by the demographic and behavioural data of people. This includes; age, gender, education, location and income. This data can determine who is most suited to your products and services and is a great foundation for your business strategy.
Steps To Find Your Target Audience
There are a few steps you can take to define your target audience. Hopefully, you have already created your Buyer Persona as a starting point. Read our Buyer Persona blog to find why they are so important and how to create one here. It’s a great way to get you focused on who you want your business to attract and a good starting point for many areas of marketing and sales, not just digital.
But back to finding your target audience. We advise looking at the following areas to clearly define who you want to aim your products to:
Your current customer base
This is an obvious one, but for good reason. Looking at who is currently attracted to your business is a good starting point when thinking about your brand message. Are you saying the right things to the right people? Are you encouraging them to engage in your business?
The competition
Look at who your competitors are targeting. Do they have similar customers as you? Thinking about this will define your target audience more while also giving you inspiration for other people you could be targeting.
Your products and services
Think about what you are offering and why it will benefit people or solve a problem for them. From there you can make a list of people who need this benefit or have this problem and focus your marketing efforts around that.
The demographics
This is key to helping you define and reach your target audience. You need solid information to work from so that you can define your message. Think about your potential customer’s age, gender, location, income, education, marital and family status, as well as occupation.
Interests
This is where your buyer persona can come in really handy. Look at the interests, values, lifestyle and behaviours of your buyer persona(s) and think about how your product or service fits into your target audiences life. This is especially important if you hope to gain long term customers that will keep returning to your business such as with a barbershop or fitness class.
Different Platforms Mean Different Audiences
Thinking about your target audience means that you’re focused on who will see your adverts as opposed to where people will see your adverts. For example, some may think that having adverts or their brand name in as many places as possible will mean that they will create huge amounts of business. But that isn’t necessarily the case. There isn’t much point in advertising on every website possible when that audience isn’t remotely interested in your business.
The same goes for the platforms you use. If you are aiming your products to females over the age of 40, there isn’t much point in advertising on Snapchat or Twitter. However, it could be effective to use Facebook and Pinterest instead which is more popular with females in this age group. For more information on social platform demographics, Sprout Social has created this incredibly useful guide to help drive your social presence.
How To Use Your Target Audience
Having a target audience is a great way to plan where your adverts and branding will be shown. Your target audience is the starting point of a map in your online and offline marketing strategy. Offline, it will guide your tone of voice, brand message and the kind of marketing assets you create. It will also help with which publications to be featured in for PR purposes and which complementary brands you will benefit most from working with.
Online, your target audience will be a compass for where you advertise. It will help with which social media platforms your business will use and what you’ll post. Your target audience will determine how often you send marketing emails and what you’ll say in them. Finding your target audience is especially important for SEO and content marketing strategies. Knowing who your target audience is and what they are interested in will help you create valuable and relevant content that your audience will respond to. Finally, your target audience is incredibly important for your Google Ads account. You are able to determine where you would like to target down to the postcode and adjust bids for adverts according to the age and gender of who will see them.
