FINDING YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

In my previous article, I spoke about how essential it is for an organization to have a content strategy in place. It can help an association in improving marketing results and increase ROI. In today’s article, I will walk you through steps on how you can identify your target niche.

Content strategy begins with knowing how to find your target audience. Of course, how can you define a stratagem if you are unaware of who your audience is? Given the current state of the economy, it is not easy for businesses to target everyone hence targeting a specific market who falls in your niche, excluding people who don’t fit your criteria is the only effective way to generate business.

That’s exactly what this post will cover.

Understanding the term “Target Market”

This term refers to a group of people to whom a company wants to sell its products and services. Businesses spend a lot of time and money in knowing who will ultimately buy their services and to whom it will appeal. The target market is generally categorized by terms such as age, location, income, lifestyle, etc.

Most B2B marketers think that they can simply blast out a few posts on every potential platform and can sell their products just like that – without having any idea about whom to target only. Can this bring success? It is a NO-NO.

In simple words, not all products can be sold to all customers, defining a niche is crucial. Now, let’s directly dive into what factors are involved in finding your favorite audience.

Identify the key benefits that your businesses provide?

A good business plan includes determining your customer base, think about characteristics that appeal to them the most about your goods and services. You need to be able to ask yourself these questions very clearly:

1-     What problem does your business solve?

2-     Who are your current customers?

3-     What needs does your business meet?

4-     Who is your competition?

Once you have clearly identified why your products and services exist, it will be fairly obvious for you to understand who is in need of your products and services.

What is the best thing they love the most about your competitors?

Pay a visit to dealings that are similar to you to check what is missing in their business line. Then offer those missing elements to your audience. Conduct a local survey by communicating with potential customers or attend a meet up to sample your items to gather some feedback. Stay more up-to-date on your competitors’ social media to pay attention to their trends and tactics. But don’t go after their market, there must be a niche that they are overlooking. That is your audience.

Look for deep audience research methods

60-70 percent of B2B marketers admit that they don’t know about their target audiences and 48% of buyers believe that they want their issues to be addressed. To cater to this, try deep audience research methods, dig into social demographics. The best way to find this information is through social media platforms that you are using. Check twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn analytics to check the audience’s real-time information. Social demographics can help you set up marketing personas and understand your audience in detail.

Demographic attributes like age, sex, gender, religion, and educational qualification, play an important role for businesses to stay aboard. Demographic segmentation is conducted according to family size, religion, gender, age, ethnicity, education, and even income. This data helps different markets to target customers more competently. It is so important because it is a proven strategy to help companies connect with audiences much faster. It is all about establishing an everlasting bond with customers so that they remain attached to the brand. You can get to know about all the valuable data such as their choices through census data, analytics software, consumer insights, and more, why they love your brand and stick to it, their lifestyle, etc.

As government census is readily made available, it can help in identifying the target market. As the population never remains constant so businesses cannot collect demographic data only once and use it for years, instead, refresh it every year for use. 

Conclusion

Understanding your position in the market by conducting a competitive product analysis is important to any successful business. First, understand who your potential competitors are, you can compete with anyone to think. After you have that list of direct competitors, gather information about how much they are selling their products for? And what makes shopper wants to purchase from them? I recommend reading their brochures, repeatedly checking their websites, annual reports if available, and social media platforms they are using. Developing your strategy comes next. Now that you know your target audience, have a list of competitors and know where they lack. It is now time for you to put together a game plan that sets your business apart from others. Make sure to continue your research as businesses evolve every year, it is good to stay up-to-date.