Knowing Your Audience: How to Determine Who Your Target Market Is

​Are you trying to figure out how to determine who your target market is? Read this article to learn how to go about knowing your audience.

Getting the word out about what you do and why people should do business with you is getting more difficult because of all the noise you have to cut through. The average American sees around 5,000 ads per day.

If you're trying to get through to people, you need to make sure you're targeting the right people. That means having a target audience in your advertising strategy. The shotgun approach doesn't work anymore.

Continue reading this article and learn why knowing your audience is key and how to determine who your audience is.

​Look At Your Current Customers

When you're trying to create a target audience in advertising, one of the easiest ways to do this is by looking at your current customers. If you already have a book of business, it makes sense that people like the ones already doing business with you will also want to do business with you.

The more information you have on your current customers, the more helpful it will be. If you have their email address, send out a survey, and see what you can learn about them

​Copy Off Your Competition

Even if you're a new business, there is a way to find out who will buy from you. By copying off your competition, you'll be able to start targeting the right audience from the get-go.

If you don't feel like you can go head to head with the competition, the best thing you can do is niche down. Find a small group within that target audience that you can serve better than the other company.

​Review Your Products and Services

As you're trying to figure out who your target audience is, your products and services hold a lot of your answers. Write down all the features and benefits of your products or services.
​
Once you have a list, look at all the people you think would get a benefit from these things. All of these people will be a good place to start when you're determining who you want to market to.

​Use Demographic Information

You might find that everyone needs your product or service, but not everyone can afford it, or not everyone wants to solve their problem this way.
​
Whatever the case, using demographic information can help you weed out the people that aren't likely to buy. Look at things like age, gender, where people live, marital status, and occupation, and you'll see a common thread of who buys and who doesn't.

​Don't Forget to Consider PSYCHO-GRAPHICS

Going beyond demographics, you can also use psycho-graphics. Psycho-graphics has to do with who a person is and how a person acts.

Think of things like their personality, attitude, what they value, how they behave, and what their lifestyle is like. These things have a lot to do with whether the person is going to do business with you, your competition, or no one at all.

​Look at Website and Social Media Analytics

Your website and social media analytics have a goldmine of information about your target audience. You can use the information from both of these sources to put together the puzzle of who your target audience is.
​
The people that interact with your social media accounts the most is likely a hot market you should pay attention to and use some marketing dollars to get in front of.

​Check for Errors

By this time, you're going to have a lot of information. Look over the information and put together a mock target audience. Understanding your audience in a deeper way will help you see any errors in the information.

For instance, it might have looked like a certain demographic used your product a lot. In fact, they might not use your product at all. They might be buying it at gifts for someone.
​
While you can still target these people, your ads are going to be very different than if you were targeting the person that was going to use the product or service.

​Create a Statement for Your Target Market

Creating a statement for your target market will allow you to stay on track when opportunities come along. You'll be able to look at your target market statement and see if the new opportunity aligns with what you're goal is.

When you're creating your statement, include the most important information you've uncovered in your research. You don't have to include everything and everyone. Your goal is to make the statement as simple, but as powerful as possible to keep your marketing on track.
​
You can have target audience statements for each product or service you offer if the people that use them are different.

​Putting Your Audience Together

Now that you know your target audience, it's the moment of truth. It's time to put your target audience profile together. Many people know this as a buyer persona.
​
During your research, you might find that you have people that don't fit into your main target audience. There is nothing wrong with having multiple target audiences. Start with one and then move on to create more audiences as necessary.

​Knowing Your Audience Like a Pro

Now you have more of an idea of how to go about knowing your audience. You can also figure out who your target audience is and how to be more effective when you're targeting them.

Do you want to learn more about advertising, marketing, and beyond? Keep reading our blog for more of what you need.