Understanding Your Target Audience
Table of Contents:
Define Your Target Audience
Locate Your Audience or Ideal Customer
Learn to Understand Your Audience
Market to Your Audience by Speaking Directly to Them
You may have come across this quote, “A friend to all, is a friend to none”. It’s one of my favorites. It also serves as the centerpiece of this article. What does that quote mean to you? I think it’s easier to understand by defining what a friend is.
BetterHelp describes a “true friend’s” characteristics as “honesty, loyalty, dependability, and empathy. A true friend will likely listen to you and make you feel good”. As you can imagine, you’re unable to be a true “friend to all,” just like you’re unable to market your business to all. Your business is not for everyone. Also, you have to build trust to build friendships – running your business is no different.
So, why is this important? Your business's success relies on how well you target and market your customers. If this sounds complicated, don’t worry—it’s not.
Stick around, and I’ll help you:
✔️ Define Your Target Audience.
✔️ Locate Your Audience or Ideal Customer.
✔️ Learn to Understand Your Audience.
✔️ Market to Your Audience by Speaking Directly to Them.
— Define Your Target Audience —
If you’re still on the fence about what a target audience is – I’ll break it down for you. Take Pagerie, for example. When you first land on Pagerie’s homepage, you’ll immediately know who their target audience is. The models and verbiage they use to advertise are very specific. And once you see the prices, you’ll know if you’re in that audience or not.
Now imagine if Pagerie targeted a budget shopper or a retired pet owner. Their price point and core values would not match that audience.
So Pagerie targets young, wealthy, modern pet owners instead. Then, they target their interests, like sustainability, organic products, and luxury fashion. They’ve successfully matched their products (and price point) to a target audience. This means they know how to speak to them, attract them, market them, and build loyalty.
By defining your audience, you can:
🎯 Align Your Brand with Your Customers' Values
🎯 Create a Personalized Experience for Your Customers
🎯 Build Loyalty and Repeat Business
🎯 Lower Your Cost for Customer Acquisition
🎯 Price Your Products Accordingly
🎯 Market, Pitch, and Sell Successfully
— Keys To Understanding Your Target Audience —
After you’ve defined and located your target audience, dig deeper to understand them. You’ll need to uncover as much as you can about them. The analytics in the previous section is a great place to start. This will help you determine their geographical location, age, and gender.
Although this helps, you’ll still need to gather additional details, so here are some methods that will help you dig a little deeper:
Surveys – Surveys are most useful when you already have a robust email list. You’ll know by the amount of subscribers that voluntarily subscribe. Your subscriber engagement and bounce rates will reflect this as well. Send your subscribers an invitation to survey. Curate a series of questions that draw their interests out. Find out what they’ll engage with, their pain points, and their needs.
Interviews – You can conduct a customer survey with your sales and review data (mentioned in the last section). Contact your customers via phone, email, or messaging, depending on your customer account data. As with surveys, ask a series of questions about the product and the customer.
Social Network Platforms – If you are on a social network platform (ie: Instagram, TikTok, etc.), use it like a scientist would use a lab. Try a variety of content ideas and study the analytics. Also, engage with your connections via comments and direct messages. This is another outlet for surveys and interviews.
— How To Find Your Audience (Or Ideal Client) —
Sometimes it’s not easy until we see it in action. How do you find your target audience? And how do you know if they truly are your target audience?
Try the following:
Stalk the Competition – Who do you look up to? Or, who inspired you to start your business? Most business owners found inspiration in someone or something. If this is you, stalk them! Spend time on their website, look at their images, watch their videos, read their blogs, and subscribe to their email list. It won't take long to catch on to who they’re marketing to.
Review Your Analytics – Your website, Google, Social Network Platforms, and Email Service Providers will have detailed analytics. This should tell you the who, what, when, and where of each member of your audience.
Sales and Customer Reviews – Check your sales and customer review information to see who is making purchases.
I know how hard it is to run a business while handling your marketing.
Feel free to reach out if you have a question about any part of the process or if you’d like someone to handle it for you.
“Define, Locate, Learn, and Market your way to success.”
— Market To Your Audience By Speaking Directly To Them —
This is where the fun begins! Use your research to directly target your audience. For inspiration, turn to content that attracts you (and your audience, too). Ads of the World has a great section on its website dedicated to the pet industry. Here, you can get ideas by viewing ads from PETA to Pedigree.
Through the process of locating your target audience, you found where they interacted. This will tell you where to build your marketing strategy. Where you market, impacts how you market. You’ll need to know if that is emails, blog articles, social media content, ads, etc.
Remember to keep your target audience in mind. Who are they? What are their beliefs? What are their pain points? What problems are you solving?
Some ideas for your content strategy:
💡 Anger to Envy - Use their upset to position your product as a resolve.
💡 Build Confidence - Identify their doubts and use a testimonial to build confidence.
💡 Budget Restrictions - Present your product as the budget-friendly option they never had.
💡 Emotional Math - Make a statement + Their reaction = Your answer to their objection.
💡 Stock Outs - Use your competitors’ stock out to your advantage.