How to find your target audience

0
Dec 23, 2022 / by
How to find your target audience

If you’ve invested a lot of time and money into building a business and a website, you want to make sure you’re attracting and targeting the right audience. But what does that audience look like? Of course, if you’re a cosmetics company your audience will be primarily women and if you’re a craft beer company your audience will be primarily young men but is that granular enough?

Gender, age and interest are perfectly logical places to start but there are ways to narrow down the niche even further and ensure you’re reaching the people who will actually engage with your business and build your brand. It’s a journey that will involve understanding who your ideal customers are, who your competitors are, and the core pain points that your products or services solve. And that’s just the beginning.

Types of target audience

If you’ve ever seen a procedural crime show, then you’ll appreciate the concept of profiling. That’s effectively what you’re doing here but rather than profiling a serial killer, you’re profiling your ideal customer. This will be based on three principles: –

Purchasing intent – These are the parts of your audience that have already decided they want to buy a version of what you’re selling. Your job is convincing them that what you’re offering is better than what the competition is offering.

Interest – If a person is interested in football, then they are more likely to buy football boots and if they are interested in video games, they are more likely to buy a games console.

Subculture – Subcultures are incredibly homogenous and tend to be very passionate about what they love so can be a very specific but powerful audience to aim for.

But while understanding the criteria is important, what specific tactics should you be using to identify your target audience?

Analyse existing customers

The most obvious move is to look at who is already investing in your business and seek out more of the same. Analyse the people that are already buying what you’re selling and check out where they live, what age group they belong to and what else they are invested in.

Conduct market research

Look at what the competition is up to and ensure you’re at least competing in the same general ballpark. How many competitors do you have and what do the strongest ones all have in common? Who are they marketing to and how can you do likewise? These are all questions you should be asking yourself.

Find who your audience isn’t

There will almost certainly be those that almost fit the demographic that would never have any intention of becoming a customer. Go over your data (everything from customer interviews and site traffic to your social media following) and pick out the ones that might seem on the surface to be viable customers but might not be interested in what you’re selling. If you’re a sports outlet that doesn’t sell hiking equipment, for example, count out the ramblers!

Avoid assumptions

Finally, never assume. It’s very easy to lose all subjectivity when looking for your perfect audience but don’t assume that all women are going to be into flowers and all men are going to be into football. We’re a far more eclectic and interesting species than that!

Tags: