A business/organization that knows exactly the type of audience they are targeting are at an advantage, as they will be able to design marketing campaigns specifically for those audiences, and converting more of them into customers.

Focusing on just your audience segment will definitely save you time and money as you would not waste any of your business resources in chasing after the wrong leads. Once you really get to know your target audience, you will even be able to gain valuable insights into their likes, preferences, and even purchasing behaviors.

So we have churned out seven easy ways that can help you identify your target audience and get to know them better.

1. Understand who your products are relevant to

One of the surest ways in which you can get to know your audience is by first understanding who your products or services will be most relevant to. It would definitely be better for you to sell your products to people whom you know would be most likely to buy them.

Suppose you are selling a brand of aftershave, you would naturally focus on marketing your product to males ages 20 and above. You would not waste time trying to promote it to other segments such as women, children, or teenagers.

You need to ask yourself – who would need my product and why? Try testing your products or services on a small segment of audiences to identify who among them would use your product/service and the reason why they want to buy it.

2. Learn from your existing customers

If your company is already well-established and has been doing business for some time now, then you have an opportunity to learn about your target audience from your existing customers. There could be a good reason why your current clients chose to do business with your firm, especially if you know that there are many other companies like yours in the market.

Find out what your clients like most about your company. Whether it’s the service or the quality of products you offer, the discounts provided, etc. Then understand their specific characteristics so that you know what category of customers you need to be marketing to.

3. Check what benefits your products offer customers

Another way to get to know who your target audience is by taking a closer look at the benefits your customers get after using your products. People will choose to buy your product only if it gives them some benefits or helps them solve a problem to an issue that they have.

Understanding the benefits offered by your products or services will tell you why your customers are interested in your products. So now you will be able to target those audiences who share the same interests or will get the same benefits from using your products/services as your current customers do.

4. Keep a watch on your competitors

It could also be helpful for you to watch your competitors to get an idea of the kind of audience they are targeting. Since they are your close competitors, your customers are bound to be almost or exactly the same.

However, while you can figure out who your target audience is from your competitors, you must remember not use a very aggressive or predatory approach to steal their customers. Instead, promote your products/services to a similar type of audiences in the market by making use of your products unique selling points (USP’s).

5. Check your marketing plan for key demographics

Before you launched your product or service into the market, surely you must have had an idea of who you would want to be selling it to. Have another look at your marketing plan and check whether you had mentioned any key demographics you wanted to begin targeting.

You must have included all of the marketing and promotional activities that you had discussed along with your team in your marketing plan or strategy. Thus, the type of customers you were planning on targeting must have been documented somewhere in there.

6. Take another look at your product price

Sometimes, the way you price your product itself could tell you who your target audience could be. If the market price of your product is moderately low and affordable then I would be an indicator that the general public could be your target.

However, if you know that you are selling luxurious goods or a providing a high quality of service (like selling a line of luxury automobiles or own a chain of stylish and elite hotels for instance), then your target audience would naturally be those with a higher income level.

7. Monitor social media activity

Social media can truly help you gain a lot of significant insights into your target audience, if you just spent a bit of time monitoring your audience’s engagement with your brand on various social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

With the help of the Twitter or Facebook insights feature, you can not only monitor your the performance of your social media pages, but even get to know your audience better. For example, Facebook insights can tell you the age, gender, location, etc. of your audience as well as their purchase habits or product preferences.

So do you know your audience yet?

If you are still struggling or trying to figure out who your target audience is, then we hope the above tips will help you to get to know them better. You certainly cannot target everyone in the market as that would be a waste of your marketing efforts. When you know who are targeting, it becomes easier to focus on marketing to just that segment instead of trying to cover an entire spectrum of audiences.

Don’t forget to tell us what techniques help you to get to know your audience in the comments section below.