When you take the time to clearly identify your target audience, you can build trust with them and create a sense of loyalty that will be long-lasting and create a more sustainable business.
It can appear to be an impossible task to pinpoint your ideal customer, but there are effective steps to help you get to know who your target audience is that will help you throughout your efforts.
One thing to keep in mind is that you shouldn’t just do market research once. Audience demographics can stay the same for 100 years, but the audience still changes in terms of language, problems, morals, values, and moreover that time.
Free Tool: Create Your Target Audience Avatar
5 Steps To Identifying Your Target Audience
When it comes down to it, your audience is who you want them to be, once you create the outline of who your audience is, then you can create the avatar of your ideal client.
1. Create a Customer Avatar
Give the avatar a name, a personality, an outlook on life, and even a job if that helps you to relate to them better. Plus, you’ll be able to find them, get to know them, and do better by them.
Define their likely age, gender, income level, location, and any other characteristics that make them your ideal target audience. For example, do they have children, are they members of certain ethnic groups, have a specific religion, share hobbies and interests, etc. You want a very specific picture of your ideal customer in mind so that you can start searching.
2. What Are Your Customers Buying Now?
Some of your audience identification starts with an educated guess.
For example, you know in your mind the type of client or customer you think that you want to work with, right? If you don’t sell anything yet, you’ll need to make an educated guess. If you do sell things successfully already you can look at the stats to find out who the audience is that is buying.
3. Research Your Audience
Take the time to start researching your audience to ensure that you have chosen the right audience for you. Conduct surveys, interviews, and even create focus groups to help you get to know them more. You can also survey people who do make purchases to ensure that you’ve got the right audience too.
4. 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 groups and natural environment you can become a fly on the wall and observe, but you can also become a participant and learn that way too.
5. 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 who is the same as your audience.
Free Online Tool: Create Your Customer Avatar
A customer avatar, also known as a buyer persona, is a detailed fictional representation of your ideal customer. It helps businesses understand their customers better, tailor their marketing efforts, and make strategic decisions to effectively attract and serve their target market.
Use this free tool from HubSpot to create a buyer persona that you can use to market, sell and serve your customers better.