How do I find my target audience?
Understanding your target audience is essential to accomplishing any kind of goal related to digital, social, growth, sales, subscriptions, engagement, business, you name it. Think about it - in order to truly be effective in moving the needle against any of these endeavors, you need to know who you’re trying to reach, where they are, what their lives are like, and - most importantly - the unique value you bring to them.
People are busy. We are inundated with information from all directions - television, on our phones, in our email - so it’s important to understand how you bring value to others’ lives. No matter what industry you are in, when it comes to posting on digital platforms, you must offer something of value in order to breakthrough. Whether it’s teaching something, sharing tips & tricks, life hacks, facts & stats, selling a special product, curation, or simply providing entertainment, your content strategy can’t just be something like selfies. Shallow content elicits shallow engagement, and it won’t build the deep relationship with a community that we are all striving for.
Besides bringing value, the other critical reason to know your target audience is so that you know how to shape your brand voice to effectively communicate with them. If you are aware of what your audience is up to, how they live their lives, which platforms they spend time on, and when they are there, your content planning s is a million times easier. In fact, creating a customer avatar - or a literal made-up person - can also be helpful. This way, when you write, you write as if you are communicating with them versus the masses, which makes the content feel much more intimate, human, and personalized.
Here are some initial steps to take to get started and/or refine your process in order to hone in on exactly who your target audience is:
Identify what you think your audience looks like. Layout the age ranges, gender, interests, geographic location, incomes, and any other characteristics that apply to who you believe you’re reaching
Get familiar with analytics. Now look at the numbers on your social platforms. On the backend analytics, check to see if the audience data aligns with what you think of your target audience. Note the differences.
Define your target. Combine who your audience is and who you’d like to be reaching into 3 sections; superfans - your diehards, converts - those within reach, and aspirational - major goal audience. From here on out, when you build content and write captions, you keep all of these segmentations in mind. Consciously create, write and hashtag so that you reach at least one at all times.
Measure and tweak. Once you are consciously creating content, double down on analytics. Measure how content performs. If you move any demographic or characteristic information, note that, and track the type of content, timing, cadence and frequency. Every target audience is completely unique, so refining your process and perfecting it is an individual exercise
And remember, a lot of times your target audience can be a lot like you. Speak with them the way you’d want to be spoken to. And like all things in your digital strategy, don’t be afraid to revisit and revise over time.