5 FREE Ways To Research Your Ideal Customer Avatar

It’s important to know and really understand your ideal audience (sometimes referred to as your Ideal Customer Avatar), but what’s the best way to get inside their mind?

In this article I’m going to give you my top 5 ways to research your ideal audience. Through these techniques, you’ll be able to learn:

• What are the demographics (age, gender, location, education level, income level, etc.) of your ideal client
• What are the psychographics (interests, fears, wants, beliefs, etc.) of your ideal client
• What words and phrases is your ideal customer using to describe their pain points
• What your ideal avatar wants in terms of a solution to their problem

Take the time and really do the research… it will pay off 10x I promise you.

So without further ado, let’s get to the list.

1. Facebook Groups: There are 2 primary resources in Facebook that I rely heavily on — Facebook Groups and Facebook’s Audience Insights tool. We live in amazing time — where people all over the world are able to congregate together online based on their likes, beliefs, struggles, hopes, dreams. In Facebook, these congregations are called Groups. There are literally tens of thousands of groups on Facebook… and most likely, there are several specifically calling out your ideal customers. Join the groups, read what people are saying — how are they describing their problems? what kind of solutions are they looking for and/or are other people providing? I recommend adding value or asking questions when possible so you start becoming recognized as an expert or as someone truly trying to understand and provide a solution.
2. Facebook’s Audience Insight Tool: This one is also free to everyone but not everyone knows about it. Why? Because it’s not under your normal profile options… you actually have to go to the business manager to access this tool. Go to https://business.facebook.com. So what makes the Audience Insight Tool so special? It takes Facebook’s billions of data points and provides meaningful insight into the audiences you may be looking for. You can search by a lot of interests, people, businesses, etc. and the tool will show you the breakdown of the demographics, what other pages they like, and lots of other useful information.
3. Google: Google is an amazing tool and resource. In this instance, I specifically use it to type in whatever audience you’re looking for and then the word “forum” or “message board”. There are forums and message boards for EVERYTHING… it’s just a matter of spending a few minutes digging in and researching. This is one of the best ways to insert yourself into the conversations your ideal customer is already having.
4. Reddit: Similar to the Google search technique, Reddit is just a hotbed of information and conversations… especially for those under age 35. The website is home to thousands of communities and endless conversations — similar to Facebook Groups. Seriously… Reddit boasts over 330 million active monthly users and over 135,000 active communities. Think your ideal audience may be in one of those active communities? There’s a pretty good chance.
5. Reviews: Yelp!, Amazon and Google reviews also provide a ton of information. Find your product or service (or that of your top 10 competitors) and just go through and read what people are saying about them. What are the positives people are posting? What are the negatives? What are their frustrations? What questions does your ideal customer have that still haven’t been answered? Reviews are another great way to get inside the mind of your ideal customer.
6. BONUS — Just ask: Okay, so this one’s a bonus. But another way to gather valuable information on your ideal customer… it to just ask your ideal customer. You can do this through email, in-person conversations, Facebook posts, etc. Just say something along the lines of “Hey <targeted audience>, what is your biggest struggle with <whatever pain you’re trying to solve> right now.” So for example, “Hey business owners, what is your biggest struggle with getting new customers and doubling your revenues this year?” And then take the responses and classify and organize them. What you’ll find, is 80% of the responses will all revolve around 3 things. Those 3 things are obviously different for each type of audience and business, but there’s usually only 3 types of struggles that most of your responses will fall under. Address these 3 challenges and you’ll have a goldmine.

I can’t stress this enough. Take the time and do your research. And I have found it’s better to spend an hour a day over the course of a couple weeks researching your audience than cramming 6 or 7 hours of research all at once. It’s like studying for a test, when you give yourself the time and “study” your audience consistently, it will marinate in your brain and you’ll pull much more meaningful insight out of the information.

Want to double or triple the revenues in your business? If so, go to MichaelKittinger.com/ApplyNow to see if your business qualifies. We help high 6- and 7-figure businesses get more clients, get their clients to buy more often and get their clients to spend more money each time they purchase. If that’s something you’re interested in, go to MichaelKittinger.com/ApplyNow, complete the survey, and then schedule a 30-minute call to see if we’re a good fit to work together.