When formulating a market strategy to generate sales or build a brand, you can ensure a hit only when you identify your target audience. This way, you are delivering the right message to the right people. However, since who your perfect audience is depends on various factors like interests, demographics, and buying habits, it can be difficult to judge.
Thus, it is best to follow some recommended steps so you don't make a mistake. Read to know more!
5 Steps to Identify Your Target Audience
The following are the simple steps to identify your target audience. It ensures your product and services reach people who need them or are your prospective buyers. Now let's look at the points:
Step 1: Conduct a Market Research
The first step involves conducting market research and using it to benefit the business. For this purpose, you may also have to run a SWOT analysis of your business. Later compare it with demographics, economic shifts, market trends, motivations and competitions to determine whether the brand's market matches the purchase path.
Step 2: Perform Competitor Analysis
The next step to how you can identify your target audience is to perform competitor analysis and find who they target. This analysis aims to know in what area does your competitor lack and how can you fill it?
Apart from this, check out their social media campaign (if they run any) and the platforms they use to reach their audience. Also, note the content they are creating to attract them. This will give you an idea of how to form yours. However, if you need assistance, you can always take help from the professionals available in all parts, even if you are looking for content writing services in USA.
Step 3: Note Industry Trends
You must note the industry trends you are working in. It will help you identify whether you are focusing your energy in the right direction. In addition, it can give you an idea of the unique value you can add to your product to increase its demand.
Another reason for determining industry trends is it helps you know the direction of market fluctuation. So, you can act from before. For example, if you record a growing demand for a product, you offer or can be used with your product, you can promote it aggressively.
Step 4: Connect with Your Audience
One of the important steps to identifying who is your lead or has the potential to convert into your customer is by sending out survey forms to them or conducting a one-on-one Q&A session. This way, it becomes clear whether the person values your product or services or not.
However, if you like, you can also make them understand in the survey how you are filling the pain points of the industry. Also, tell them about how your offering will save their money, reduce labor, lessen the time, enhance their overall experience, or make product adoption easy. Lastly, record their response on it.
Step 5: Interpret the Available Data
Now that you have gathered information about your competitor, industry trends, customer perspective, and others, arrange them together to come to a conclusion. Now, segment your audience according to their habits, psychographic data, demographics, and preferences to further form a clear picture. Later use these data to spot a pattern and create target market campaigns. In addition, you can also use these data to create your buyers' personas and identify your target audience.
How to Reach Your Target Audience?
You have only completed half of your work by identifying the right customers for your offerings. You must now reach them using the right platform and the perfect time to make a sale. For this purpose, you can even use gathered customer details to check when they will need your product.
Suppose you are selling car wash items. You can use customer information to know when the next servicing date of their car will be. Then reach them using the following platforms:
Social Media
This is the first and most convenient way of reaching your target customers as it is free. Moreover, you can get a diversified range of audiences here. However, before deciding which social media platform you want to use to run your campaign, analyse whether your target audience is on it or not.
For example, if you want to target technicians, you would want to approach your Twitter platform as it is more tech-oriented. On the other hand, if DIY lovers are your target, YouTube and Pinterest will be better.
Video
Video is taking over the internet like a wildfire. Now all platforms, whether Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or others, offer a short video option. It is because, according to the findings, audiences stay more engaged in video content than in reading posts.
So apart from making a video explaining your product for these media, you can also create YouTube videos to target older audiences. Some ideas of what your video content can include are product demos, brand interviews, case study videos, webinars, etc.
Content
Another convenient way to reach your target audience and teach them about the usage of your offering is by creating content. For this purpose, you can create reviews, blog posts, product comparisons and others. This way, you are establishing authority and increasing the credibility of your brand. Moreover, if you manage to improve your SEO, it will be even easier to reach your target audience already researching your products.
Offline Marketing
There are even offline modes of reaching out to your target audience. It includes advertising your campaign on TV, billboards, taking seminars, announcing on the radio or approaching print publications. Moreover, it helps you reach the older generation people. It is because while younger ones only spend most of their time online, older ones gather information offline.
Also, it will be the perfect mode of reaching when you identify your target audience are those above 50 years of age. Like if you are selling resistance bands for osteoporosis.
Email Campaign
All the other platforms are useful for creating brand awareness. However, you use email to funnel interested customers and stay connected to them. This is because a person will only subscribe to your email notification if he/she wishes to stay updated on your products. So, you can use an email campaign to nurture them and increase your website visitors.
In conclusion, it is important to identify your target audience as it lays the foundation of your market campaign focused on converting the prospective buyer to your full-time purchaser. So, follow the above steps to find your audience by differentiating them according to their interest, demographics, buying preferences, etc., and increase your ROI. It will also help you ascertain the tactics you can use to hook customers and make them take action.
However, also consider the platforms mentioned above to make sure you reach them correctly. This way, you will never miss out on a chance to make a sale. Lastly, study your competitor's next move to seize the first-mover opportunity.
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