Businesses that sell online, offline, B2B, B2C, etc. All have their specific target audiences.
It’s not a secret that most businesses fail within their first year. One of the main reasons for that is misunderstanding of their target audience.
It is pretty simple; It doesn’t matter how hard you are going to promote your business, and even if you had 10 million dollars to spend on paid advertising, if you don’t target the right audience within your campaign, then it will just be a big waste of time and money.
It doesn’t matter what type of business you have, even if you still don’t have one. As business owners and digital marketers, you must know your target audience in detail.
For example, who they are, what they like, their desires, what they are afraid of, and more.
Read this post to learn how to find the right target audience.
1) Start with your product or service
Your target audience must benefit from the product or service your business offers. Think about the industry, costs, and attributes of your product or service.
Another crucial thing to consider is the feeling that your customers will have once they buy from you.
Write all of this information on a paper and think about your ideal customers – Who do you think they are, based on the product or service you offer?
2) Research your competitors
After you have that general image of your target audience, it’s time to learn from your competitors.
Analyze competitors that sell similar products and services to yours, and check what they post on social media and who they talk to. Knowing your product or service’s positioning against competitors requires analyzing their weaknesses and strengths.
Learn how to differentiate your brand from your competitors by reading this post.
3) Use existing data
If you already have customers or people interested in your products and services, think about the demographics, interests, and buying patterns they share.
4) Conduct market research
It’s time to go online (or offline) to conduct deep market research to know who your target audience is.
One option is to use professional market research services to collect the relevant information, or you can do it yourself.
One of the best ways to find your target audience is simply by talking to them. If you think your target audience is online, then go online, chat with those people, and ask them relevant questions about the product or service your business offers.
Face-to-face conversations are sometimes the best way to connect with your target audience.
If you listen to their feedback, you can either change your target audience a little bit or change your product or service to suit their needs.
5) Create buyer personas
After collecting all the necessary information for your target audience, it’s time to create buyer personas.
Buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers. They include demographics, interests, habits, fears, desires, etc.
Creating buyer personas helps you focus on your target audience and understand them better to offer them a product or service that solves their problems.
The final step is to prioritize your buyer personas. Sometimes, some of your personas are more relevant and valuable to your business than others.
To conclude,
Conducting deep market research is necessary to find your target audience and is the basis of every successful business.
Even if you don’t have a lot of budget to conduct market research, take your time and find all the relevant information until you answer all your questions regarding the target audience that would be glad to use your product and service.
If you have an independent business or plan to have one, this post may give you the answer on how to grow it.
