As a business owner/marketer, there is no better key to your success than knowing your target audience. This is key because the people you target have a high probability of leading to the success of your product or the entire business. In addition, decision-making online becomes easier when you know the specific category of people to target online through media, messages and at the best time.
But before targeting a specific group of individuals, let us understand who the target audience is.
Simply put, “a target audience is a selected group of individuals that you post your campaigns for, willing they will have interest in your products, services or the entire business and become your customers“. Specific factors like age, gender, location and interest can categorise them.
In addition, they can also be based on niche or beyond. For example, if you have a boutique of various jeans and shirts for all ages, your target can be men, women, boys and girls because almost everybody wears them. However, if you sell track suites and sportswear, your target audience revolves around people that engage in sports or are interested in exercise activities.
Knowing and categorising your target audience is essential. Also, find the social media platforms they mostly prefer to avoid wasting little or excess cash without any returns. Below are seven tips for determining your target audience:
Analysis of Customer Base and Carrying Out Quick Interviews
Analysing the majority of people patronising you is among the most suitable and fastest ways to know who you should target. Look at their age, where they come from, and what engages them most regarding your business. Customer surveys or social engagement are the most comfortable way to get this information.
Conducting Marketing Research and Recognising Trends
Make industry-based market breakdown. This is substantial because it will help you know where your business fits best. While conducting your research, keep an eye on possible trends and know where they are putting more effort. Understand where their significant concentration is, then push in your unique values.
Know Your Competitors
You can comprehend so much about who you should target by peeping at what your opponents are doing. For example, find out the majority of people they sell to; are they allies or decision-makers? Also, check which channel works best for them.
Know Who Doesn’t Act On Messaging
Some individuals are close/similar to your target range, but they are not who you need someone else. Be specific about who you are targeting. For example, are you targeting men, or are they men of age 30-50? Are they students, or are they students of a specific department? Being more specific will prevent you from spending cash on ads that will not yield positive returns.
Create Unique Characters
Different roles and characters are an excellent way to spread across several segments that may contain most of your target audience. Unique Characters help let you determine the number, characters, and specific needs of your target audience.
Special characters are formed through surveys and engaging with existing customers online and offline. It is advised that business owners should have at least 3 to 5 unique characters.
Review Data
Day by day, more communication is generated with existing and new customers. This leads to more information and gives you more knowledge of your audience daily. Therefore, it is a good practice to continuously go through these data to generate new characters that will lead to the best results.
Use Google Analytics
If you want extensive knowledge of the users that visit your website, there is no better way than using Google analytics. You can obtain key insights like the platforms they clicked from and the content they mainly engage on. This type of data is suitable for making media planning decisions.
Knowing who your audience is and how to target them is essential because a recent study showed that $37 billion is wasted yearly in ads that fail to engage the target audience.
