A vital step in building a successful business is to find your target audience. A target audience refers to the specific demography that your product or service caters to. For example, if you are a musical artiste, your choice of genre, language, age, etc., will determine your audience. Your listeners will include people who connect with your music, find it relatable, and enjoy your genre.
This trend also applies to writers, creators, and business owners. Therefore, finding your target audience is crucial to succeeding as a business owner, content creator, or content marketer.
This article aims to help you identify your audience faster, with extra tips to help you tailor your content marketing to your audience. Read on!
Why is it important to find your target audience?
As an SME (Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise) owner, it’s necessary to identify your target audience. It is vital in this digital age because the internet gives us access to many people. Your business can leverage this unlimited digital space to create an online presence where potential customers gain knowledge about your products or services.
Also, Identifying your target audience will help to determine the type of content to create for your business. You can use the services of a content marketing expert like FinidiWrites if you have the budget. But if you wish to handle it yourself, the tips in this article will help you.
Some of the benefits of knowing how to identify your target audience are:
1. Develop a solid brand identity
It is easier to build a solid foundation for your business in your field if you have successfully identified your target audience. Your business will have a definite outlook that appeals to your target market. This approach, in turn, will increase your visibility in your chosen industry.
2. Identify the shortcomings in your marketing strategy
Knowing your target audience will help you when reflecting on past and existing marketing techniques. The mistakes you made before discovering your target market will be easy to spot so you can make appropriate adjustments.
Related post: How to Build a Successful Content Marketing Strategy for B2B Companies in 2022
3. Tailor services to customer needs
Customer satisfaction should be your utmost priority as a business owner. This is not only to retain their patronage but also to establish and strengthen your brand’s integrity. Armed with the knowledge of your target market, you can curate a better experience for your customers.
4. Cost-effective and time-saving
Identifying your target audience will save you time and avoidable costs. This is because you already know how your copy, captions, and instructions can be structured to attract your desired customers. Decision-making is faster, and the absence of multiple trials and errors will help save you money.
What are the steps to find your target audience?
1. Establishing the purpose of your product/service
Answering questions about what your product is and the need it fulfills is the first step to identifying your target audience. When developing a product, your focus must be to meet your consumers’ needs. Knowing your product’s specific purpose will help you narrow down your target audience.
For example, if you have face-cleansing oils for sale, the purpose of the product is to clean the face. Your primary users are most likely people involved in skincare and makeup, with the majority being young and middle-aged women.
Can you see how pinpointing the purpose of your product led us to our target audience?
2. Analyze competitors in your industry
It’s rare to find a business without competition nowadays. If you do, rest assured that the monopoly will be short-lived. Knowing that you have competitors should put you on your toes and make you strive to stand out in the industry.
Monitoring and analyzing the focus of your competitors’ content, medium of advertisement, brand packaging, etc., and checking out the demography that responds to them mostly can give you more insights about your ideal audience. Studying your competitors’ shortcomings can also help you discover an untapped audience and how to attract them.
3. Conduct research to analyze existing customers
Pay attention to people who already use your products, even if they include friends and family. You have to categorize your customers by demography. Some parameters you can use are age, location, financial capabilities, social standing, etc.
If there is a recurring age or age range in your analysis, it is an essential determinant of your target audience. For example, if the predominant ages of your customers fall between 20-25 years, your target audience most likely includes young people. This approach will influence your marketing choice, business strategies, and social networking.
4. Use customer feedback
Always ask for feedback. You are a business owner looking to grow exponentially, so you must be willing to go back to the drawing board and make changes. Your first trial at a product or service will not be perfect, and that’s okay. This is why I recommend that you have the option of feedback on your social networks and websites.
The feedback from your customers will help you understand their needs better and find ways to cater to them. With every feedback-based adjustment, you get familiar with your target audience and build a better rapport with them.
Social media networks like Instagram have made accessing your insights on all your business posts easier. These social media metrics will show you all the data you need on the people interacting with your posts. This will include their age range, gender, location, etc.
5. Create content to attract new customers
This is the final step. With all the data you have gathered using the four steps mentioned above, the analysis will help you prioritize your target audience. After determining your potential customers, you need to use the data as a metric for creating content for your business.
For example, if you render a service that caters to men within the age range of 45-50 years, and your gathered data confirms that as your target audience, your choice of content should address potential customers within the same age range.
You can focus your marketing on the channels they are likely to use frequently, such as social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, website blogs, email campaigns, etc. Getting this right will keep your existing customers familiar with your business. Plus, you’ll also quickly attract new customers.
How to create the ideal content to reach your target audience effectively
After you have identified your target audience, you must consider that different types of marketing apply to various people. What your potential customers have in common is the need for your products or services. However, different types of business content attract the patronage of various customers.
Some of these target audience examples are:
- Young adults
- Women
- Older people
- Entrepreneurs
- Salary earners etc.
You should know that when people feel a sense of comfort from engaging your content, they get endeared to your business. Your aim should be to make sure all your bases are covered. Determining what your audience enjoys will take some time, so consider it a journey.
To create content for your potential customers like the target audience examples above, you must:
1. Understand your target audience
Your business website and social network platforms are to sell your services, so avoid being lax with your content. You already know your target audience; the next step is understanding them. You should use the metrics you have identified to tailor your content to suit your audience’s needs.
For example, if you have data that shows your target audience as mostly young men between the ages of 20-25, your content must appeal to the men within this age range. Your content must also capture your existing and prospective customers’ interest from your target audience.
You can opt for visually appealing videos and pictures for a young demographic – millennials and Gen Zs – on platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and Tiktok, which they use often. For older people, you can publish blogs, Twitter threads, and Facebook or LinkedIn posts to garner their interest.
2. Offer quality
It is easy to cater to the needs of your target audience once you understand them. The next step is to ensure that the information you publish is helpful for your audience. That is, it recognizes their pain points and promises to solve them.
Your goal as a business is to reach more customers and make more sales. And one of the best ways to do that is to ensure your content projects the quality and benefits of your product or service. People are more drawn to things that benefit them. So, your content must adequately communicate how your business adds more value to your target audience.
If you are in the business of making clothes, you can create content on how to style your pieces. This makes it easier for your target audience to envision what they would look like on them. It will also keep them coming back to see what tips you have for them next.
3. Hire a content marketing agency
I understand that being an SME owner requires being frugal. However, hiring a content marketing agency is a worthy investment. It eliminates trying and failing with content, as these agencies are well-versed in content creation and content strategies.
These agencies gather data or use existing information to decide the types of content that will give your brand more visibility and the proper medium to use. For instance, if your product or service requires a lot of navigation to understand, your agency will suggest having a blog that can be referred to for better understanding and frequently asked questions (FAQs).
Your trusted content marketing agency is also responsible for writing copies, captions, and articles that will help attract your target audience to your business website.
Are you looking for a reliable content marketing agency?
FinidiWrites is a content marketing expert that can help you get your content campaigns right. FinidiWrites prioritizes your business needs and sets the ball rolling with high-quality content until you have seen substantial results in your business.
Businesses that are successful from knowing their target audience
1. Apple
This popular gadget brand succeeded by making phones and laptops for regular people. Apple has realized that its target audience uses gadgets for work. As a result, the company is designing products and updates tailored toward helping people become more efficient and productive at their jobs using their devices.
2. Nike
This sporting brand leveraged the power of diversity to appeal to its target audiences. With this in mind, Nike has created numerous campaigns that show its stance on equality regardless of age, race, gender, and religion. The brand’s app also has a sneaker customization feature that reeled young adults in.
3. Sephora
Sephora noticed a gap in representation at beauty stores and filled it. Knowing that its target audience majorly comprises young people of color, the brand’s marketing strategies revolve around the young. Sephora has an active online presence that helps it access young consumers. The brand also creates content to guide customers in shopping for the products they need.
“As more and more clients were shopping online, we really challenged ourselves in how do we bring that differentiation of play out of the store and onto the phone” – Calvin McDonald, President and CEO of Americas at Sephora.
Related content: Top 10 B2B Companies Doing Content Marketing Right
FinidiWrites helps tech and IT businesses create content tailored to their specific audiences
Knowing how to find your target audience and structuring your marketing around them helps increase the chances of business success. Identifying your target audience should be relatively easy for you as an SME owner.
Are you finding it challenging to discover your target audience, or do you need help creating content for your target audience?
FinidiWrites is here to help! I can understand your industry and find keywords targeted to your preferred audience. I can also develop content tailored to their needs.
Transform your ideas into captivating content addressed to your specific audience with FinidiWrites. Let my words be the voice of your brand. Contact me today and take your content marketing to the next level!
