Developing your target audience is the first step in marketing your product effectively. Your target audience will drive what, how, where, and when of everything you do, especially in your marketing.
Target Audience
A Target Audience is a group of people in a particular demographic that has a specific set of interests, which makes them more likely to buy a certain product or service. It's essential in developing any marketing strategy that you know who your target audience is, otherwise, you may spend way more in marketing costs and risk your business' lifeblood: profitability
Determine your Target Audience
If you're not sure who your target audience is, you'll need to do some research. There are a number of different methods of doing this, but it's important that you get the information right and accurate. This means getting more than one source or perspective on what groups make up your target audience. The more tailored your marketing materials are to any one group within your target audience, the more likely they will be interested in what you have to offer.
You want to ask the following questions when developing your target audience:
Who are they?
Are they plumbers, pizza parlors, doctors, lawyers, Fortune 500 companies, etc? Who do you serve the best? It can also be people that have a specific need, such as email marketing or social media. Whoever your target audience is, ensure that there are enough people that need and can afford your services.
What do they like?
It's important to know what your customers enjoy. What type of music, movies, sports, social media, news, and information do they like? This will help you develop ads, social media posts, emails, and the rest of your creative that truly speaks to your target audience.
How do you approach them?
This depends on your service mostly. Is your service something that people search for or do you need to educate them on the benefits of what you offer? This will help you dictate where to find your target audience
Where do they hang out?
People and business owners tend to congregate in places of others that are like them. HVAC contractors have groups, so do funeral directors, and those who love building giant flower gardens. These people also flock to Google to solve their problems as well, interacting on social media and with blogs or chat forums to solve their problems.
When should you reach out to them?
Your audience might purchase your products and services at all times of the day or year, however, most products and services are purchased in certain windows of opportunity. For instance, an HVAC company could remind their customers when the winter is ending to schedule a spring tune-up for their air conditioner by sending out an email blast to all their past customers.
Here are some great places to start with researching:
Google Analytics - If you're using Google Analytics as part of your website traffic tracking, this info can also help identify where your most viewed pages are coming from by location and device type (desktop/mobile).
Facebook Audience Insights - This is available for anyone with a Facebook page. It basically gives you the same kind of information you can get from Google Analytics, but tailored to your Facebook traffic.
SEMrush - This will give you basic information about the search terms people are using to find your site or product pages, which can also help identify what people are searching for when they're looking for other things like your product/service.
Publicly Available Information - If there's publicly available data on demographics or consumer trends that relate to something specific that could benefit from your product/service, it may be worth investigating further. For example, if you live in an area where census data indicates there are certain age groups living in each neighborhood, this could create an opportunity for you to target those neighborhood groups or geographies in your Social Media marketing.
Conclusion
Developing your target audience requires you to consider who can you profitably serve, what do they like, how do you approach them, where do they hang out, and when you should approach them. Answer these questions with research before developing the rest of your marketing strategy or spending any money on marketing.
Have questions about how to find your target audience? Reach out to us today!