How to Get To Know Your Audience

The most important aspect of your business is your clientele.  Knowing who that is, is key to any successful business.

It is easy to create content and hope that someone will find it and engage with it.  It’s a bit like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks…

For example, we recently had a client that needed help in this department, and originally said she can sell her product, women’s shirts, to “anyone who needs it”.

A common phrase we tend to hear, and whilst it might be true, when it comes to your branding and marketing you can’t try to please everyone.  You will end up confusing your audience in the process and wearing yourself out.

Instead, you need to find out who really needs it. Back to the client with the women’s shirts… after a simple brainstorming session, we discovered that a mother could buy it for herself and also for her daughter. Straight away we identified the shirt is a bigger benefit to the mum, rather than just daughter alone.

We also narrowed it down further to a working mother as the shirts had a corporate look to them.

Now to put this in perspective, if the client had chased “anyone”, she would have tried to please the 13-15 year old girl, as well as the 20 something version of her, and then the 40-50 plus version of her.  Things would have been a mess.

So, if you are picking up what we’re putting down you should start to realise if you want to be more serious and strategic, you must discover or refine who needs your product the most.  Create a customer persona aka target audience and customer profile of them.

If you’re asking yourself, “How do you create this business-altering, magic marketing tool?” continue reading on for the answer!

Below we have put together our top 3 steps to help you start profiling your ideal customer:

1. Identify and get old school:

To get real-time data you can also check social media analytics.

Facebook, Instagram, and most blogging platforms offer very detailed and reliable data based off of who views, likes, follows, etc.  You can establish if your audience is mostly male or female, when they are viewing your content, what their age range is, and more.  This information may vary between social platforms, meaning that you may need to create more than one persona.

2. Solve their problem

It’s time to identify their pain points. A pain point is simply a specific problem that prospective customers of your business are experiencing.

For example, if your company sells a women’s shirt to working mothers, your audience’s pain points might include things like:

– Being time poor and not allowing time for themselves
– Not knowing new trends that might help them dress for their shape and age
– How to dress “corporate” for their new job
– Balancing family, friends, and work

With these in mind, align with your business and down the track you can work out how you can create content to solve these problems.

3. Get niche

Now it’s time to get niche:

It may sound a little funny but start by giving your persona a name and perhaps take it a step further and find a photo or illustration that represents them.

Consider demographics, location, psychographics, characteristics, and behaviors. Key starting points might be:

Now it’s time to put all of this together. Open a Word or Google document and start writing down everything you have discovered about your audience. You may have to get creative when writing about their character but all of this will make things easier when it comes to your marketing, particularly your brand tone of voice.

Keep in mind, as your business grows, your audience evolves too. You need to stay on top of their needs, wants and trends.

If you’re still feeling a little stuck on who your audience is & want help from a marketing expert, we offer 1:1  target audience brainstorming sessions. To book in simply email us at info@2atstartup.com.au.

Held via Skype or in person at our Melbourne office, sessions are $149 ex gst. T&C’s apply.