How to Find Your Target Market and Engage With Your Audience
Know your Target Audience
The first step in learning your audience’s language is to exactly know who they are. There are some effective steps you can take to help with getting to know your target audience. One thing to keep in mind, before you learn these tips is that you shouldn’t do market research once. Although, audience demographics stay the same, the audience changes; language, problems, morals, and values.
Some of the ways an audience identification is captured is through what’s perceived. For example, you know in your mind the type of client or customer you think you want to work with, right? If you haven’t started selling anything, you’ll need to make an educated guess. If you’ve already started selling and have been successful, you can look at your analytics to see who has been buying. To get a more concise idea of your target audience, take the following steps.
Create a Customer Persona – Define their age, gender, income level, location, and any other characteristics that make them an ideal customer. For example, do they have children, are they members of certain ethnic groups, have a specific religion, or share hobbies and interests. You want a very specific picture of your ideal customer in mind so that you can start searching. HubSpot offers a FREE template for creating a persona. You can download it here.
Research Your Audience – Once you’ve developed your customer profile you can start researching to ensure you have chosen the right audience. Conduct surveys, interviews, and even create focus groups to help you understand them more. You can also survey your current customers to ensure that you have the right audience.
Join Your Audience Where They Are – As you conduct your research you’re going to discover that your audience hangs out in different places both online and offline. When you join them in their online groups and natural environment become attentive. Take note of the what they like and dislike. The more time you spend with them and become engaged, the more you will learn.
Research Your Competition – Another way to find more people who fit your audience is to find your competition and observe them. Sign up for their email lists, buy a product from them, and join the groups they are part of so that you can see how they engage with their audience which is the same as yours.
When it comes down to it, your audience is who you want them to be, once you create an outline of your audience, then you can create a persona of your ideal client. Give the persona a name, a personality, an outlook on life, and even a job if that helps you to relate to them better. Once you have created your person, you are now able to find them, get to know them, and then offer them what they want.
What methods have you used to determine how to find your target audience?
