This time of year, is a great time of year to review your business performance and dust off the marketing strategy you wrote back in January, to see if you are on track or need to make some changes. Two things which underpins all good marketing activity is to understand your target audience and “Where can I find my target audience?” In an earlier blog we talked about how you may go about defining your target audience and what kind of things you might like to think about. There are two steps to defining your target audience, the first is to visualise who they are and the second is to then verify that understanding through research.
How do I visualise my target audience?
This is the start point in defining your target audience. Think about who you love working with. For service based businesses this is a little easier because you probably speak to them on a daily basis, but as as product based business think about who buys a lot from you. Once you have someone in mind, you might like to consider their:
- Demographic. Think about their life stage, profession, location, age, etc.
- What are their pain points? What problems do they have that you can help them with? How does your business solve the problems they have?
- What are their dreams? Through working with you, what would their ideal scenario look like?
- What are the golden nuggets that sets them apart? More on this in a minute but consider what do they do outside of work, what do they read and how else may you get in front of them to raise awareness of your business?
Once you have visualised your target audience, you may then wish to verify your understanding through research. That could be via a survey or 1:1 interviews. By talking to your audience this is where the real magic begins. By identifying golden nuggets around the challenges they face or where they hang out will really help your marketing to be more effective by tailoring your message, images selection or media choices to resonate with them.
Where can I find my target audience?
In conducting your research there will be golden nuggets of insight or information that will come up. This will then help you to craft where you can find your target audience. In today’s digital world it is kind of a given you need a website, to send emails, use social media and write blogs to connect with your audience. The real difference starts to appear when you get to know your target audience. So for example do they run, row, play tennis, go to yoga or visit the gym? amongst other things. Identifying other pastimes and additional insight about your target audience, not only provides you with some interesting media outlets to explore, but also to start to direct your content in this way.
Content forms a large part of any digital marketing strategy and for many it is not just about talking about business. Yes that is important and in many ways a driving force behind what we do but also to show the human side to the business owner is important. For example if your audience are tennis fans then talking about Wimbledon, Queens or the French Open will help you resonate and connect with them.
So, with this in mind – what golden nuggets do you know about your target audience? How could you connect with them in a different way?
If you would like some help in defining and researching your target audience please get in touch to arrange a no obligation discovery call.
