Tips for Effectively Analyzing Your Target Audience

In today’s world, everyone is trying to reach out to as many potential clients as possible. Whether you are an e-commerce business selling products or a business providing services you will need a regular flow of customers to survive in the business world. Although the buying decision is up to the customers itself, as a marketer it is very important to have in-depth knowledge of who you are offering your product or service, and who actually needs them. You can’t sell female shoes to a male audience.

Every year, billions of dollars are wasted on ads. The reason for failure is simple. The marketer is unable to identify the target audience of that specific product. That results in low engagement on the ads and the money is wasted.

Now the question arises, why is it important to know about your audience? As a marketer, it is the most vital step. It helps you define your marketing strategy and the action plan. Targeting a larger audience with less engagement is never an option. It’s better to target the right people to get the most out of your ad campaign. This not only increases your campaign ROI but also builds a loyal customer base for your product. Today’s research shows that customers are more likely to do business with brands whose ads are more personalized and targeted to their needs.

The target audience can be based on many different factors. They can be location-based or interest based. Interest can define your target audience. Different people have different interests. You can’t sell hockey sticks to football players. To sell your hockey sticks your audience will be people having an interest in hockey.

Ways to Determine Your Target Audience

Before we jump into ways to determine your target audience it is important to know that there can be two roles your target audience can play. The first is a group of people we call The Decision Maker. The Decision Makers are the ones that have the authority to make decisions on whether or not to purchase a product or service. The second group is called The Supporter. They don’t have the direct authority to make the purchase but their interest can encourage The Decision Maker to make the purchase. So, while determining the target audience it is important to keep these two groups in mind.

Now, moving on to how you can determine the target audience for your brand. There are seven rules and if you follow them properly not only your ad campaign will be successful, your business will see an increase in sales as well.

1.      Analyze Your Customer Base

The best way to know your target audience is by analyzing your current customers. Look at who is buying your products. Note down every key point about them. Note their purchase behavior. Another optimal way to know your target audience is to provide surveys with questions in order to familiarize yourself with your clients, therefore helping you determine your target audience.

2.      Market Research

Everything you want to know about your perfect audience is out there in the market. All you need to do is invest some time and effort in research.  Doing market research will give you an idea about how the products similar to yours are already performing, who is buying them, and where there may be any gaps in the market that your product can fill. People love a new product. So if you are selling a product with a change there is a higher probability you will attract a large number of buyers.

3.      Competitor Analysis

Another way for you to determine your target audience is by doing competitor analysis. Unless you are launching a completely new product, you will have many competitors selling the same product as yours. So, the best practice is to see who your competitors are targeting. Make a list. Take notes and then decide on who you are going to target. Competitor analysis will make your work easy if done correctly.

4.      Create your Buyer Persona

Creating buyer personas can play a very vital role in your business. The persona can be built on many different factors starting from the demographics. Search for the regions your product will be best suitable and narrow down your audience. After determining the demographics the other factors that you can look into are age, gender, location, hobbies, income, profession, and marital status. All these parameters may look very simple and orthodox but they can define your target audience and can save you time and money.

5.      Define who is not your Audience

Defining your audience is important but on the other hand, defining who isn’t your audience, is equally as important. One can be greedy and target everyone but that brings trouble. Less ROI and more time and money wasted. Thus it is imperative to define boundaries for the most optimal audience.

6.      Revision

As you continue all of the above-mentioned steps your database of buyers will continue to increase, expanding your database. It is always advised that you keep optimizing that data for better results.

7.      Google Analytics

Lastly, keep a track of your campaigns. Running a campaign is not just the end goal. You can learn a lot from your campaigns itself. Once the campaign is successfully run, go to Google analytics and record everything. The analytics will show you who actually engaged with your campaign, and who didn’t. This will help you to figure out the changes for the next campaign.

Once all this is complete, you are ready to target your audience and grow your business. But let’s talk about how you are going to reach out to your audience. Use tools available in the market to do so. Make use of social media to your advantage. Social media caters to many different demographics. Utilize it to boost your business. Email marketing is one other way to target your audience. Emails are not dead. There are billions of email users in the world. Never overlook Email marketing while targeting your audience.

This was a brief overview of how you can efficiently narrow down the audience for you to target. Optimization takes time. Continue to persevere with different demographics and eventually you will find the most optimal target audience for your products or services.