Understanding Your Target Audience

If you sell a product or a service, there are very few things you can do that will make you more successful than understanding your target audience.

If you understand your target audience it will allow you to..

Position what you have to offer in a more appealing way
Develop products/services that are more likely to sell
Find more opportunities and inroads to position your products/services
Gain ambassadors, fans, and followers who can relate to what you are selling and how you are doing it
Learn where they look for you to be, both online and in-person
Serve their needs better
Communicate more effectively—both in outreach and follow-up

An added bonus to understanding your target audience is that you will be able to spend your marketing budget more wisely. Your decisions will be guided not by a guess but by what you know about them.

While few business leaders would argue with the idea that understanding your target audience is a good thing, the true challenge is to actually do it! To properly understand your audience, you should be able to identify, entice, and communicate better with them.

Identifying your target audience

Consumers may not appreciate having their consumer buying activity tracked through barcodes, ecommerce, social media, and more, but it opens up an opportunity for marketers to glean the information they need for understanding their target audience. Today’s businesses have plenty of ways to collect information on who is buying their products, but it only works if the business is PAYING ATTENTION. When we pay attention to our customers, we learn to understand them better.

What do we have to pay attention to?

Onsite visitors. If you own a brick and mortar store, talk to your customers and learn what makes them tick. What age customer do you attract? What are their demographics? Is this who you want to attract?
Purchase data. Can you analyze and discover more about your purchase audience from your credit card company, warranty registration, mailing list, etc.? There must be commonalities among those who purchase your goods and services.
Online data. One of the advantages of an online site is that all the information about who clicks through and purchases your product/service are easily captured on website analytics. The analytic reports provide a myriad of information for understanding your target audience. Google Analytics is one of the biggest ways to do that. The program offers day by day (even hour by hour) reports of activities and analytics about demographics, geography, technology, etc. used by your site visitors. All of this information can be critical for understanding your target audience. For example, if most of your site visitors are 20 and you are aiming for the 30+ market, you may want to make some changes.
Social media visitors. Simple social media analytics easily tell you about your reach, likes, shares, etc. but if you utilize the advertising features, you will be able to drill down into important characteristics of your followers. You will be able to learn a little bit about their interests and income which is important to know when you are considering your marketing efforts.

Enticing your target audience

Understanding your target audience will help you determine how best to interest them in your products/services. It will help you….

Be where they are. If you’ve done your homework in identifying your target audience, you should have an idea of where they go to get your products/services. Would they rather buy online or walk into your store? Are they receptive to ads in social media or in a particular niche magazine? If they are not on Facebook but are on TikTok, that’s where you need to be. The trick is to have a presence where they gather, move, and live, either electronically or physically.
Know how to capture their attention. Once again, this is dictated by what you find in your target identification process. What do they need? Can you provide it for free, cooperatively, or collaborately? There is genius in providing selective sponsorships, award programs, or scholarship competitions to an audience that is receptive to them.
Know their keywords. We know that at least 85% of consumers start their search for products and services with the internet. Understanding your target audience includes understanding how they think when they are researching for your products and services. If you practice law, does your audience search for attorney or lawyer? Do they search for a personal injury attorney or an attorney for accident victims? The answers to these questions are tracked, and it is worth the investment in time and money to find out what keywords appeal to the greatest percentage of your target audience.

Communicating with your audience.

Just like learning a foreign language helps you communicate with more people, understanding your target audience will help you learn how to communicate better with them. Many business owners don’t realize that the decisions they make in their marketing communications are critical, and should be made with the target audience in mind. These include…..

Content style. Once again, understanding your target audience can help you make key decisions like the language you use in your website and other marketing materials. Would your audience prefer more formal, corporate language or would they rather be addressed in a more playful, colloquial way?
Graphic design. Your logo, your website, and the look and feel of your company is expressed in the graphic design you use. If you want people to view you as a cutting-edge company, your logo should not look like it was designed in 1952.
Subconsciously, we assign meaning to the colors that we see, and that means in your logo and corporate colors as well. For example, red and orange are seen as exciting while blue expresses sedate stability. Green denotes a fresh and eco-friendly brand. Plenty has been published on color theory, but the point is, as you make your final decision make sure you are understanding your target audience’s ideas and interests.
Where you communicate. Just as the same story will be reported differently on Fox News vs. CNN, where you choose to advertise or appear communicates something about your company. Are you helping a nonprofit? Advertising at a sporting event? Make sure there is no cognitive dissonance between where you are communicating and what you stand for.
The way you do business. The channels you use to sell your products/services all say something about your business. If you are understanding your target audience correctly, you will be conducting business in a way that pleases them. This includes your reaction to social justice issues, use of eco-friendly sales techniques, use of social media/ text and other forward technology. Ideally, your corporate values are in line with your audience’s, so you will both live together happily ever after!

Understanding your target audience is the best way to proceed with your marketing efforts. It will help you find the audience you want, make the right decisions with your marketing budget, and appeal to them in a way that will make you irresistible! At JJR Marketing, we are experts at helping businesses successfully hone in on their target audiences. If we can help you, contact us today!