Every business needs its dedicated target audience to thrive. Without a target audience, our services/products will never sell. So, understanding your target audience can be the pinnacle of every business out there. Because, let’s face it, anything without an audience is meaningless and practically nonexistent.
The question is, how do we define our target audience? Or how can we reach them? In this short article, we will explain the fundamentals of the target audience and how to understand what sort of audience your online business is attracting.
What Is a Target Audience?
As the name suggests, the target audience are those groups of people you want to sell your services to, or they are more likely to require the kind of services you offer. Understanding your audience will help you a lot in your marketing campaign because it gives you the sort of data you want for directing your ads and marketing toward those particular groups.
If you look closely at your customers, you can understand a few characteristics based on their demographics, interests and buying history. So, things like their age, sex, location, employment, education, and income. For example, a beauty salon’s target audience are women in their twenties that live close to the salon and can afford the fees they charge.
Types of Target Audience
There are two types of target audience, decision-makers and influencers. Decision-makers are a group of consumers that buy your services/products, while influencers are a set of people who have an effect on other people and can encourage them to require your services.
It is also possible to go further in details and categories target audience into smaller groups.
Purchase Intent: some of our target audience know exactly what they want to buy. They have made up their mind and effectively are looking online to find a good deal to close. Identifying this group can give you the ability to tailor a specific marketing campaign to target them.
Special Interests: wouldn’t it be amazing for your business if you could define your consumers’ interests? Based on your customers’ hobbies and interests, you can separate them into even smaller groups and create special products for them.
Subgroups or cultures: in this level, you’d be diving deep into their characteristics. Things like when they were born and raised, what’s their favourite TV show/movie, what sports they play/ watch or anything that’ll help you understand their personality and their source of motivation.
The information above will help you create an intelligent strategy on how to approach these people who each have a different personality and come from different walks of life.
Understanding your target audience benefits
Identifying your target audience is very important because it enables you to structure the best marketing campaign possible and effectively present it in front of them.
For example, if your potential buyers are on Instagram, it will be a waste of time and resources to be more active on Twitter or other social media platforms.
Keywords research is one of the fundamental aspects of SEO. Choosing the correct keywords for your business requires a significant understanding of your target audience in order to pick the most suitable keywords that are click-worthy and connect with your audience on a deeper level.
Choosing keywords can be tricky and may require some SEO skills. It is always advised to live that for the professionals. At local SEO Sydney, the experts can help you come up with a list of keywords that target the sort of audience that fall into your category perfectly.
How to contact your target audience
After you identify your suitable audience, it’s time to connect with them and form a sort of relationship. After gathering all that information about their demographic, interest, income, buying history, personality and other characteristic aspects, you should present yourself and your business to them and start your marketing campaign.
One of the best activities that’ll gain you more trust and will generate more leads for your business is to include data. You can gather this sort of data from previous customers through interviews or surveys. After analysing the results, you’d have a better understanding of your consumers and work on giving them a better experience with your brand.
Social Media
Choosing the right platform on social media is solely based on your target audience’s activities online. Choose which one of the top social media your audience have the most traffic on and focus on that. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be active on other media platforms, though. You can also have a steady appearance on those less popular media platforms among your target audience for reasons like increasing conversion rate and strengthening your brand’s name, among other things.
Content Marketing
Content marketing, without a doubt, is one of the best SEO tactics that can help you gain more profit across all platforms. It is a proven way to increase authority and brand voice. It’s a great strategy that can help you gain new buyers, especially those who are researching online before making a purchase.
With your SEO-optimised content marketing, you can easily aim to win them over and turn them into new customers.
Video Content
In recent years video content has been on the rise rapidly, and it’s not going to stop any time soon. Platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and the fast-growing TikTok, which promotes short video content, have proven that investing time and money on these platforms can be so lucrative.
As business owners, we should always follow our target audience and be present in every platform they find themselves more active in. These days, video content platforms we mentioned above are driving a lot of traffic that we can’t ignore.
Email Campaigns
With all your activities on social media and the content marketing on your website, you should come up with an extensive email list provided by your target audience. If someone willingly gives out their email address, that means they are happy with your services and want to stay longer to consume more of your content or continue using your services.
You can perfectly use this email list to increase your return on investment by distributing discount emails and new updates, further your relationship with your customers by providing them with exclusive email content or products and a lot more cool and innovative email marketing strategies.