How To Find Your Target Audience [Small Business 101]

A Target Audience Explained

Your target audience is a specific group of people that your marketing is intended to reach. This means all of your newsletters, branding stories, and copy should resonate with this specific group of people.

Everything you create, that is to do with your product, must have this specific group of people in mind.

Why Is It Important To Have A Target Audience?

Having a target audience is important because it sets the fundamental baseline for the content you create about your product.

Marketing brands can look very different, depending on the age demographic of their target audience, as well as other factors such as location, and income. 

Different Types Of Target Audiences

There are different types of target audiences that your marketing will target, and you’ll use different mediums to reach them.

For example, you may send out a newsletter in the form of an email that appeals to your general target audience and is aimed more toward your current customers.

Emailing may also target any current blog subscribers your business may have.

However, you may host a specific event that targets your current customers, but also targets potential customers, and even potential partners.

This works best if you are trying to target an entire community, as it will bring all the people you want to appeal to into one single room. Here, you can show them exactly what it is you have to offer.

Social media is another popular marketing tool that cannot be ignored nowadays.

Here you can target all of your social media followers, as well as current customers, influencers, and potential customers. The latter can be done by using Instagram ads.

Finding Your Target Audience

Whether you’re just starting up your small business and are trying to find out who your target audience is, or you’ve got your business up and running, but aren’t exactly sure about the specifics of who your target audience is, you can do this by following a few simple steps.

It all revolves around looking at who is engaging with your product or service, as well as your marketing and your brand.

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to speak to your customers. By doing this, you can get a good idea of why they choose to engage with your brand. You can also find out what problem your product or service solves for them.

Look At Your Social Media Followers

By looking at who follows your brand on social media, you can get a good idea about what kind of people are engaging with your marketing, who is interested in your brand, and what you are offering.

Studies suggest that the main reasons people follow brands on social media are to learn about new products or services, get access to promotions or discounts, and read up on any news about the company.

You can analyze who is engaging with your social media platform by conducting a survey that asks your followers about their demographics, or you can use several free online tools that will do this for you.

Make Use Of Google Analytics

You can also find out what certain terms they are searching, so you can find out what they are searching for on Google, which leads them to your website.

Look At Your Competitors

No matter what business you are offering, you are going to have competitors, and you can use them to your advantage.

You can analyze your competitors and see who their target audience is. You have a look at where they are displaying their marketing. Is it Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or all of them?

What issues are they tapping into, and what kind of message are they putting across?

You can look at all of this information, and see how it compares to yours. There may be some dark differences that you can take inspiration from and use in your own marketing.

You also want to check what kind of audience your competitors are engaging with the most. It may be the case where you have the same target audience.

Outline Who Isn’t Your Target Audience

This step is crucial for determining who your target audience is. In order to do this, you must look at all the information you’ve gathered, and determine who is not your customer.

For example, if you’re a store that sells gym wear, you do not cater to those who are not into physical activity. If you’re a liquor store, your customers are not going to be under the age of 21.

By figuring out who your audience is not, it can help you guide your marketing moving forward.

Create Your Target Audience Profile

The final step is to create a target audience profile. Here you can create personas that include location, age, gender, industry, interests, hobbies, education level, etc.

These bits of information can be linked to aspects that link to your brand as well.

These personas can be shared with the rest of your team in order to plan your marketing strategies around, in order to target this specific audience.

This last step can be completed once the previous steps have been followed.

Final Thoughts

In summary, finding your target audience is a key part of building a successful small business.

Your target audience is a specific group of people that your product or service is targeted towards. Therefore, all of your marketing strategies should be designed to resonate with this particular group of people.

If you are struggling to figure out who your target audience is, then this article has compiled a few simple steps on how you can identify who they are.

After analyzing some of the specifics around who is engaging with your brand, you’ll be able to narrow down your target audience in no time!