Tips for Finding and Connecting With Your Optimal Target Audience in Any Field

For any business, target marketing can bring in a variety of benefits. Increasing sales, attracting new customers, and achieving success are all possible with the help of a neatly honed targeting strategy.

However, segmenting and reaching your audience is more easily said than done. With a wealth of data available to you on digital platforms, how do you truly understand an audience for a successful targeting approaching? 

To find and connect with your optimal target audience in any industry, consider these five helpful tips. 

1. Research Your Target Audience

The first step you must undertake in finding your target audience is to conduct thorough, timely research.

The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped the workforce, altering demographics and shopping behaviors. Old data may not be as relevant as it used to, so for every step of your marketing and overall business approach, you must find fresh and useful information. This means taking into account shifts in work patterns and demographics.

For instance, newly remote employees will need a host of new tools to make the transition. B2B companies researching this niche will understand that failing to include complete onboarding, for example, can lead to a churn rate of as much as 80%. 

Research gives us valuable information like this so that we can craft content and products to meet the needs of our customers. With an effective approach to research and data analysis, any business can better understand how factors like the growing multicultural population in the U.S. require updated marketing strategies that truly empathize with and see audiences.

2. Test and Explore

After the initial research period comes the time to test out and explore how a targeted demographic receives your content, products, or services. Search engines and social media, along with their respective analytics platforms, can help. 

Entrepreneur Bryan Clayton found this to be the case when examining the data around a new ad promoted through AdWords. His company, GreenPal, looked for ways to improve the success of the ad. Exploring ways to make the ad more relevant and contextual, GreenPal researched income and home value data for the area and came up with a new headline offering “The Cheapest Lawn Mowing in Nashville.” 

The experiment paid off. Click-through rate went up 200% and on-page conversion was boosted 30%, all because of a little test. 

Any company looking to market online can run similar tests before even launching content to gauge interest and explore marketing techniques. With data on your side, you can generate better results and higher revenues. 

3. Use Social Media

With more than 3.1 billion users, social media represents a smorgasbord of customer engagement and feedback. And the best part is most of these media platforms come with their own data tools and analytics. 

Use Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter analytics to explore how your customers interact with your content, who they are, where they live, and what their needs may be. There are plenty of demographics you can use to better define your customer base. Some of these demographics include:

• Age
• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Income
• Religion

All these factors make for varied content with corresponding needs and challenges to address that marketers may be missing.

For instance, local dentists may attempt to generate content in a broad sense to service the area in which they live. However, by using social media analytics and engagement, they can explore how content marketing to retirement communities or certain neighborhoods might be a big win for their business. 

The potential of social media in uncovering your audience is immense. Don’t hesitate to explore, engage, and enjoy.

4. Understand Your Metrics

Targeting your marketing is about more than just the numbers. If your data metrics aren’t constructing a narrative around your audience and their needs, you need to adjust your approach.

Google Analytics, for example, can be a highly effective tool in examining audience engagement online. Through data analytics platforms like these, you can keep an eye on information like the following: 

• Average time on page
• Bounce rate
• Exit rate
• Sessions
• Users

However, this information won’t necessarily give you a bigger picture of your target audience. Instead, ask yourself questions surrounding the data that allow you to construct a narrative.

What is bringing them to your site? How are they getting there? What are the needs they are trying to address? 

By making more of the data than just numbers, you position yourself to better craft your marketing to your target audience, leading to greater connections and conversions.

5. Build Comprehensive Customer Profiles

Finally, your work to find a target audience should produce enough information to build comprehensive customer profiles. These are collations of data points and narratives around common audience demographics used to understand your customers. You can even complete your profiles with an avatar image to represent your target audience.

Defining your target audience in this way is important because it helps ensure that you align your brand and marketing content with customer needs and values. You can then maintain a consistent marketing strategy that wins the loyalty of your target audience. 

These efforts can be further assisted by reaching out to real people on social media and hearing their perspectives. 

Bottom Line

No target marketing strategy is ever truly complete. Audiences, products, and needs are changing all the time. Effective marketers will keep a close eye on their data and social media pages to ensure they are hearing their audience and adapting to meet changing needs. 

In the meantime, these five strategies can help you find and connect to the perfect audience for your field. In turn, you can watch your conversions and revenues grow while you plan out your next marketing campaign.