Of course, the first step in learning your audience’s language is to know exactly who your target audience is. Thankfully, there are effective steps to help you get to know who your target audience is that will help you throughout your efforts. One thing to keep in mind before you learn these tips is that you shouldn’t just do market research once. Audience demographics can stay the same for 100 years, but the audience still changes in terms of language, problems, morals, values, and moreover that time. So, keep studying.
Some of audience identification starts with an educated guess. For example, you know in your mind the type of client or customer you think that you want to work with, right? If you don’t sell anything yet, you’ll need to make an educated guess. If you do sell things successfully already you can look at the stats to find out who the audience is that is buying. But otherwise, you’ll need to take the following steps to identify your audience.
• Create a Customer Avatar – Define their likely age, gender, income level, location, and any other characteristics that make them an ideal customer. For example, do they have children, are they members of certain ethnic groups, have a specific religion, share hobbies and interests and so forth. You want a very specific picture of your ideal customer in mind so that you can start searching.
• Research Your Audience – Once you’ve developed your customer avatar you can then start researching your audience to ensure that you have chosen the right audience for you. Conduct surveys, interviews, and even create focus groups to help you get to know them more. You can also survey people who do make purchases to ensure that you’ve got the right audience too.
• Join Your Audience Where They Are – As you conduct your research you’re going to discover that your audience hangs out in different places both online and offline. When you join them in their groups and natural environment you can become a fly on the wall and observe, but you can also become a participant and learn that way too.
• Research Your Competition – Another way to find more people who fit your audience is to find your competition and observe them. Sign up for their email lists, buy a product from them, and join the groups they are part of so that you can see how they engage with their audience who is the same as your audience.
When it comes down to it, your audience is who you want them to be, once you create the outline of who your audience is, then you can create the avatar of your ideal client. Give the avatar a name, a personality, an outlook on life, and even a job if that helps you to relate to them better. Plus, you’ll be able to find them, get to know them, and do better by them.
Leave a Reply