The Ultimate Guide to Identifying a Target Audience
Target audience, ideal client profile, customer avatar, buyer persona, they’re so many different names for it, we’re just going to call it your target audience.
They are the people who will most likely be responsive to your message because they have a pain you have identified and are providing solutions that they find helpful.
If you want your marketing to succeed, you should identify your target audience before doing anything else, or you risk wasting your time creating offers and content no one is interested in.
In this guide, you’re going to learn the step-by-step process to identify them from and market your product or services to them.
What is the target audience, and why its important?
Your target audience is the group of people within your industry or niche who identify with the solutions you provide. The solutions you provide could be a product, a service, or simply the content you create.
To define the perfect target audience, you need to know their psychographic profiles, like their wants, needs, pains, fears, struggles, and frustrations.
What are their dreams and aspirations?
What’s the model of their world?
You also want to know their demographic profiles, how old they are, their income levels, professions, family status, etc. You need all this information to create an avatar of your potential customer so that when you start to write, you will know who you are writing to.
So, you want to know your target audience so well as you know your brother, your sister, your business partner, or your loved ones because you can better serve them.
According to a recent study by Market Evolution, $37 billion is wasted from ads that fail to engage the target audience every year.
This happens when you don’t take the time to know them properly. So identifying your target audience is crucial if you want your business to be profitable.
A perfect example of a target audience is — Single women, 25–35 years old, living in Houston, Texas, with a master’s degree, monthly income of $6,000-$7,000, and looking for a perfect marriage match and have kids.
If you have a dating app with members in Houston, Texas, these women are your target audience, and if they see your ad, there is a high chance that they will convert.
7 Step by Step Processes to Identifying Your Target Audience.
So now we know what the target audience is and why they are so important. Let’s follow a step-by-step process to identify them from scratch for your business.
Step #1. Pick the Market, Industry, and Niche First.
It goes like this:
Market > Industry > Niche > Target Audience
Work your way down from choosing the market to the target audience.
If you look closely, you’ll find that almost all businesses are based on one of the following three core markets:
- Health.
- Wealth.
- Relationship.
So, the first question for you is, which of those three best describes your current area of expertise? After you’ve determined which market you belong in, you’ll need to go at least two tiers deeper to locate your target audience.
Let me show you what I mean.
Multiple industries exist within these three markets. Inside health, for example, there might be hundreds of industries such as diet, nutrition, strength training, and weight loss.
Finance, investing, real estate, and sales are all found in the wealth market. The same is true for the relationship market. Inside, you’ll find love, dating, marriage, parenthood, etc.
The list is practically endless in any of the three markets. And new industries are constantly emerging. You may believe you’ve discovered the solution when you determine the industry you fit in.
The money, however, is NOT in the broader industry. You’ll have to drill down to a niche if you want to find the perfect target audience.
For example, a good niche would be “a retired couple looking for Eco-friendly garden materials,” whiles “garden materials” would not be considered a good niche because it is broad.
Examine the other specialists in your industry to discover what they are selling. What unique services can you provide to people?
The idea is to carve yourself a distinct niche in that environment in which you can thrive.
For example:
Market — Health
Industry — Weight loss
Niche — Weight loss after pregnancy
Market — Wealth
Industry — Online business
Niche — Google ads for eCommerce products
Market — Relationship
Industry — Dating
Niche — How to find your soul mate
A rule of thumb for choosing a niche is always to go for three phrases or more. The more specific a search term is, combined with enough search volume, the better it is as a niche.
Once you get your market, industry, and niche right, only then can you better work towards identifying your target audience.
Step #2. Study the Experts, Competitors, and Brands Thoroughly.
You want to see what they are selling, what their message is.
By studying your competition, you ensure that your target audience will be willing to spend on your eventual product or service.
Avoid products or services that don’t have competition. It means nobody is spending money on them.
You want to find out the emotions your competitors are trying to create in the audience, their promises, how they fulfill those promises, and what they are doing to become the big brands and experts in their markets.
Concentrate even further on your target market by looking at the target audience that your rivals are going for.
Of course, you will not have access to their consumer analytics data.
But you can analyze their website content, content marketing approach, and social media strategy. Consider who their target audience is. Based on their brand language and tone, you should glean information about their target audience.
You may also look at the comments on their social media accounts to see who is responding to their postings. Examine their most popular social media and blog entries in particular.
Is there anything these pieces of material have in common in terms of messaging?
What interests or needs are they addressing?
Use this data to determine which features or benefits are most appealing to customers in your sector.
Step #3. Scout the Web
- Read industry blogs
Blogs are one of the best ways to identify the topics your audience reads and studies. Why does anyone read a blog? To find solutions to problems they are facing.
So if a blog has a title like “how to lose weight in 30 days,” it is for someone trying to lose weight. “How to avoid tax on your new car” is aimed at someone trying to find ways to avoid or pay less tax on a new car.
So if you read the blogs your potential audience is reading. You will know what problems they are having.
- Read reviews on Amazon.
See the best-selling products on amazon and read their reviews. What are the people saying? Are they satisfied with the products? Did someone narrate a discovery story?
Discovery stories narrate what pains the buyer was facing before getting the product and what happened after using it.
These are gold mines of information that you can use to identify your target audience. You want to know what they are happy with and unhappy with.
So you know their pains and desires.
- Visit Forums.
Forums like Reddit and quora often have tons of people asking questions about their problems in different industries.
Quora has about 300 million active monthly users, with about 35% American users. Out of the 300 million monthly visitors, about 54% report a monthly household income of more than $100,000.
Reddit has 52 million daily active users and nearly 430 million monthly users in over 200 countries, implying that your target demographic might be spending time on that platform.
The deeply you understand the problems and pains of your market. The more you will know what kind of solution you can give them and what they will happily want from you and pay you for.
Step #4. Gather User Data on Existing Customers thoroughly.
Begin by obtaining information about existing customers and finding any distinguishing qualities these consumers share.
This information will assist you in marketing your products or services to others who share these interests.
Find the following in the given order:
- Demographics
Data such as age, gender, relationship status, degrees, physical location, language, and other essential information is the most prominent sort of data to examine.
- Interests
When we talk about your audience’s interests, we’re referring to the many sorts of material they consume as well as the verticals they’ve demonstrated interest in by their activity, such as through following Facebook pages.
- Psychographics.
Psychographics data include personalities, values, beliefs, attitudes, and lifestyles. The more you KNOW about them, the better.
- Activity
This is based on users’ particular activities, such as joining an email list or signing up for a free trial. Identifying a prospect’s activities might help you better cater to them with the material you generate.
- Purchasing power
Consider socioeconomic issues that may impact your potential clients’ purchasing power. What amount of money are they willing or able to spend.
Step #5. Communicate with Your Social Media Followers.
Being engaged on social media with your users will give you a decent understanding of your target demographic.
Here are some pointers to consider:
- Try replying to every piece of material or conversation that comes your way. This will allow you to get inside their mind.
- Find and join groups relating to your sector on Facebook and LinkedIn. This will provide insight into what is vital to your target audience.
- You may send out social media postings regularly asking your followers what they are interested in.
Step#6. Find Out What Attracts Their Negative Attention.
Being positive is beneficial, but considering what they want to avoid may also be helpful. Instead of focusing on what your audience wants, evaluate what they don’t want and what they avoid.
With this significant knowledge at your disposal, you may have a better chance of captivating your target consumers.
The first step in gaining their acceptance is to avoid what they deem negative. After that, you merely need to use additional marketing methods to be effective.
Step #7. Create the Empathy Map.
Finally, create the empathy map, one of the most important aspects of the target audience. It includes writing down all the information regarding what your target audience is seeing, hearing, thinking, saying, their hell and heaven.
That’s all there is to it! You now have all the tactics and resources you need to discover your ideal target audience and develop content that speaks directly to their needs.
Now you’re 100% ready to market your products or services to them, and they will thank you for understanding them and offering them the solutions they have been desperately looking for.
Conclusion
As you can see, identifying your target audience is not a simple task. It takes time and work, but the results are well worth it. You may make broad assumptions because you do not have enough evidence at the start of the process.
Start to niche down as you progress until it fits your market, industry, and niche. Engage your audience through surveys and interviews to have a thorough understanding of what motivates them.
Interact as much as possible with your social media following. Instead of assuming what they might enjoy, interact with them and find out.
Now that you know how and why to identify your target audience, it’s up to you to start profiling your ideal customer and determining who you want to contact and with what messaging.
The great news is that once you’ve defined your target audience, your business will begin to thrive.
As your business becomes more aligned with the audience you’ve established, you’ll find it simpler to hit your goals in areas ranging from sales and marketing to business growth and beyond.
By now, you should have all of the skills you need to define your target audience for better marketing, cheaper ad costs, more ROIs, and, most importantly, adding value to people’s lives.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you define your target audience?
The target audience is the group of people within your industry, within your niche that you’re going after.
What is an example of a target audience?
Single women, 25–35 years old, living in Houston, Texas, with a master’s degree, monthly income of $6,000 — $7,000, and looking for a perfect marriage match and have kids.
Why is a target audience so important
Trying to reach a large number of people wastes time and money. Finding your target audience helps you concentrate on the most likely people to convert.
