Finding Your Target Audience

Finding your target audience defines the success of your company online. Good content marketing is building your presence online and it takes a lot of time. In everything, you have to know who the right people are.

You might be wondering why we need to define your audience. Know this approach called “Field of Dreams”. Great content connects you to an audience but there is no guarantee for online presence unless you connect your content to your product and the audience buys your product because they like your content.

There are three (3) reasons to define your target audience:

1. Creating the right content for the right people.

2. Connecting readers’ needs to your content.

3. Increasing conversions.

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. What does your product or service solve about your market? What solution can you offer the general public? Your content should be connected to your purpose.

2. Who are your existing customers? Who buys your products or services? Learn to categorize your customers based on location, budget, or needs.

3. Is the company competitive enough? Do you have what it takes to compete with other similar market brands? What sets you apart from them in terms of branding your product or service? What do customers gain from choosing you compared to your competitors? What unique solutions do you offer?

In asking these questions you’ll be able to answer your content, your audience, and your edge over competitors. It will allow you to determine your brand, product, or service.

It is also essential to properly define your target audience by connecting these three (3) things: your brand/product/service, the demographics of your main audience, and your content’s mission. Learn to analyze your audience, sort them and use your analytical tools for the accuracy of your data. It is a must that content should reflect more of the audiences’ needs.

Tips for finding your target audience fast.

1. Audience Personas - deals with an assessment of the curiosity and motivation shown by an audience. By identifying these personas, you’ll be able to visualize or picture them in your mind as you create content.

2. Customer Surveys - make short and easy questions to answer for your audience, know exactly what you want to know from the question, and make simple giveaways for those who would answer your questions.

3. Use Analytical Tools for marketing to your audience. Monitor your best and worst content as well as your social activity. Use Insights for Facebook, Dashboard for Twitter, and Analytics for Google.

4. Automated Email Feedback - ask your audience through email to reply with their thoughts and opinions towards your content.

5. Talk to your followers by messaging them as if you were talking to them one on one. Use a conversational tone. Use also social listening tools which include tagging friends or using @mentions.

Tips in catching your audience’s interest.

1. Focus on what they are struggling with rather than who they are.

2. Learn what they want to be better individuals.

3. Learn what makes them awake at night.

Technically, the secret is not to make any assumptions for assumptions alienate your audience. Remember that people may look alike in some ways but they remain uniquely different. Don’t push what you know about their character and attitudes just because you have similar demographics. People are genuinely diverse.

Know that people don’t know the same things as you know them. Our learning experiences don’t work that way. Write in a way that others can understand. Give details rather than leave them hanging.

Also, stop thinking that people care about your brand; with that, you’ll be prioritized among work, family, and friends. The truth is, they have other concerns too.

Create content that will focus on your audience. This connection allows for building trust. Through this, you can convert website visitors into new clients.

Focus on the benefits that your solutions offer rather than the features of a product. Benefits and features are two different things.

Learn to create urgency. Make a way for them to prioritize and that something needs to be done now or at a limited time.

Make a clear Call-to-Action and make no room for misunderstanding. The rule is that the more direct, the better.