Who Are We Marketing To? How to Find Your Audience.

It’s Impossible to target everybody

We’ve heard people say it a million times before “Everyone is my target audience” but in reality, this just can’t be true.  It could be true that anyone could benefit from your product (although unlikely), but you cannot target “everyone”.

The word target is very specific.  

Think about it: If you are using a bow and arrow and let that arrow fly, and your target is “everywhere” how do you really know if you succeed when it lands?  

Could that arrow ever land everywhere? Of course not.

Marketing is the same way. This is why it’s important to remember that you cannot directly market to everyone.  Not everyone has the same interests, budget, needs, or desires. We are all individual people with individual thoughts. Luckily for you and your marketing, there are many commonalities among people that create niche audiences that are easy to market to.  If you outline who your potential audiences are with separate profiles, your message will be much more effective.

Your audience is the specific person or group of people that would be interested in your product or services.  

In some cases, you may be targeting your marketing to multiple audiences. In any case, in order to have an effective marketing campaign that is sending the right message, it is essential to know who you are marketing to. The easiest way to cater your message to the right audience is to create audience profiles for each specific type of customer you may have.

An Audience Profile is a fictitious character created to represent a buyer demographic for marketing purposes.  

This audience profile or character you’ve created allows you to think of your marketing material as a real conversation that will engage that target audience.  You should have an audience profile for each target audience you are trying to reach.

Who is your best customer?

Think about who has been your best customer, and not just in terms of profit.  Who is an easy sale? Who is your most pleasant customer to deal with? If you could get 100 of the same client, who would it be?  Think about all the reasons why you like them so much and why they’re great for your business. If you find that there are two or three clients that you’d like to include, but for slightly different reasons…great!  You should have multiple categories of “great clients”.

Details to include in your Audience Profile:

• Age
• Gender
• Geographic Location
• Ethnicity
• Values
• Interests/Hobbies
• Occupation
• Economic Status/Income Level
• Social Status
• Wants/Desires/Needs

The more detailed you can be in creating your audience profiles, the better off you will be.  It is sometimes helpful to assign names to each profile so that you can regard them as real people who you are targeting your marketing efforts to.  

Think about creating a conversation with these personas so that you are able to personalize the experience for your customers. The more you understand about your target audience, the more you can cater your content to suit their needs/wants/desires and solve their problems.

Now that we’re focused on who’s best for our businesses, let’s go make some quality content!

It’s Time to Take Action and Outline Your Audience.