Three Simple Steps to Defining Your Target Audience

Knowing and understanding your target audience is arguably the most important factor in internet marketing. Not only will this allow you to produce great work that draws attention and makes money, it will also ensure that your business is making the right choices to achieve economic security, sustainable growth, as well as establishing itself as an industry leader.

1. Who is your business?

The first step in this process is to figure out who your business is. Yes, who. Chances are you know what your business sells, where it sells what it sells, and how you go about selling. But ‘who’ is the heart of the matter here—who is your business?

If you’re actually a little stuck for an answer, think back to the planning or brainstorming phase. That was when you and your team members were narrowing down the business’s focus and considering whom the product or service would attract. Reconsider your business’s mission statement or the central purpose of your product or service.

Knowing who your competitors are can help you position your business within the market, too, so consider the top five. You can run a quick Google, Facebook, or Twitter search using some keywords related to your field of business. You may even dig a little deeper by reading into their mission statement or scanning the About section. By the end of this process, you should know the purpose of your business and its products, who is looking for and purchasing your content, and how you can do it better than your competitors.

2. Who is your Customer?

Next, delve down deeper into who you are selling to. Of course, it is wise to distinguish your customer bases, but aim high for this one and imagine your top customer base, the most specific, most profitable, but also the customer bases you’re planning to connect with in the future. Having high hopes for your business and the audience you market to only further supports business growth in the long run.

For this step, it’s necessary to tap into your analytics. You can find the relevant data on your primary website, via your previous advertising campaigns, on social media pages, and particularly your business’s purchase history. Google Analytics is also a great tool for viewing data on your audience, and Facebook Insights can show you how you’re doing on social media. Does the data show you’re connecting with those you’d like to target? Or does it show another customer base you did not intend marketing to? Can you align the two?

If you are having trouble locating or producing reliable data on your audience or your business has no previous customer base to work with, you can always work from assumptions. However, be wary of making your audience feel dumb. Your users may not necessarily understand your industry terms or they may not have had previous experience dealing with a brand like yours. Be conscientious and when in doubt, be broad and extremely detailed.

Revisit your analytics regularly using the tools above. You can also try sending out automatic emails to your audience asking for their feedback or conducting a semi-annual or annual user survey. This will give you more specific, individualized responses from your audience,  but this approach is generally more time intensive and produces fewer results than Google Analytics.

3. Learn and Change

In the third and final step, take the information gathered and apply what you already know. Maybe you are concerned your business has strayed too far from your initial target audience, that your product has turned out to be more appropriate for a different crowd. If this concerns you, work towards realignment—in other words, make sure you are making the right material for the right people.

Or, perhaps you are willing to accept the new audience your product appears to be servicing and changing your target audience altogether. In this case, you may consider customizing your user experience to accommodate the new target audience. If you have reached this point in understanding your audience, get back to basics. Rinse and repeat steps one through three – now with this new audience in mind.

By following the steps outlined above, you are ready to know and grow your business. So go for it – your market is waiting!