On Target: How to successfully identify the audience you need to reach

On Target

How to successfully identify the audience you need to reach.

By Chris Smith

Identifying and understanding your target audience is crucial to maximizing your sales potential and exponentially growing your business.

You’ve spent a lot of time creating and perfecting your product or service, but the work’s not done yet––and your final offering shouldn’t be either. In order to determine the best market fit, you must understand who you’re trying to market to.

It’s time to establish who your target audience is so you can determine the best way to position your offering to them and increase your chances of successfully selling.

When it comes to identifying your target audience, casting a wide net is not the best practice. You want your marketing budget to get you the most bang for your buck, so it’s important to understand your niche market in order to develop a campaign specific and targeted to them to generate the most leads and sales.

Remember, if you try to sell to everyone, you’re not going to sell to anyone. Once you’re ready to identify your target audience, there are a few things you’ll want to focus on. Below are three key factors to consider so you can best identify and understand your target audience.

1. KNOW THEIR PAIN POINTS AND CHALLENGES

One of the main forces that drives consumers and clients to buy something is because it solves a problem they have. What problem does your product or service solve? What type of people suffer from this problem or challenge and need a simple solution (your product or service) that is not already on the market, or different than anything that currently exists? Determine who can benefit from your product or service and why and use this information to create your brand messaging.

2. UNDERSTAND HOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE TALKS

Now that you know who needs your product or service most, you need to start thinking like them. Cater to your target audience and personalize your marketing campaigns to fit their needs and their language. If you work in an industry that uses a lot of technical terms and jargon that most of the public doesn’t use (or know), it’s probably best not to include it in your messaging. You want your target audience to find you when they’re searching for solutions on the Internet in their own words. Incorporate keywords that they would use in their searches to guarantee you pop up as a result.

3. THINK OF YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE AS ONE PERSON

Buyer personas are a great way to think about your target audience. A buyer persona is not just a description of your audience, it’s a fictional representation of someone in your audience. To create your personas, you’ll want to gather all of the information you have about your audience and use it to create their story. Conduct customer interviews and send out surveys to gather data on your ideal audience. Use any historical data you already have available to determine buying behavior or online activity.

Instead of having a long list of categories that your audience fits into, personas afford you the opportunity to think about your audience as a real person, instead of a large, unattainable mass of people. Now you can consider questions like, “Would ‘Stacy’ really want or need this product?” or “How would Joe try to solve this problem?”

Defining your target audience now will be so beneficial for your company in the long run. A clear understanding of your target market can help your marketing department, sales team, product development team, and management make informed and effective decisions.

While these three factors may not create a complete profile for your target audience, they’re a great place to start because they focus on key information. Always consider these three factors when defining your target audience.