Social Media Guide: Targeting Your Intended Audience

Your target audience largely depends upon your business, the product or service you are offering, and the type of customer you have in mind. The better you understand your niche, the greater your chances to dominate it. Understanding your target audience also helps you craft relevant content, and create relatable ads that generate more engagement from your audience. 

Finding your target audience requires authentic research and a clear understanding of the market. Listed below are a few tips to help you define, identify, and target your audience:

#1- Build a Detailed Customer Persona 

You know your business better than anyone else. When creating the products or services, you must have a customer in mind. Based on the likes, dislikes, age, gender, education, work, and socio-economic background of that customer, create a persona that identifies with the unique segments of your intended audience. Be as detailed as you can by including their perceived aspirations, dreams, interests, wants, desires, and wishes. 

#2- Look For Them Online

Once you have built a persona, the search for your target audience online becomes fairly easy.  You can use social media tools like the Facebook audience insights tool that helps you narrow down your search to specific profiles for businesses. Once you know where to find them, your customer persona will help you identify your intended audience and how to approach them.

#3- Interview Your Existing Clients

Another effective way of determining your target audience is looking at who is already your customer. Their age, their residence, their interests, and other relevant information about them can help you learn about your target audience and give you a clue into where to find them online.

#4- Conduct Market Research

There is no parallel to the fruits of good old market research. Scour your industry with a fine-tooth comb, and determine the places in the industry that you think your services or products can occupy. The specific trends for similar products can give your a clear window into who is buying them and what are their interests.

#5- Analyze Competition

Another age-old method of determining your target audience is by scanning your competition. As a marketer, you can learn a lot by looking at your competitors and who they are targeting for their products or services. Notice the channels they are using offline, and the platforms they are utilizing online. 

#6- Identify who is not your target audience

Everyone cannot be your target audience. There are people who live just outside the limits of your target demographics but will not effectively act upon your messaging. When you nail down what does not constitute your audience, it helps weed out the unnecessary segments of your target audience, leaving out the ones you really want to target. 

#7- Leverage the power of social listening

Your target audience might not be present on one platform only. A great number of them might be scattered across different social media platforms, commenting, liking, and interacting in different formats. Use social listening to discover what people are saying about your products or services. Pay attention to what they are saying about your competitors as well. Reaching out to people in response to social posts will help you zoom into your target audience on social media, even when they are not following you anywhere.  

Why Does it Matter?

Social media marketing is not just about posting content online; It’s much more than that. When you put your products or services out on the internet to be discovered, you have to know who you are targeting. Narrowing down your intended audience is crucial to the success of your social media marketing campaign. You don’t want to shoot out campaign after campaign without having a clear target in mind. Moreover, identifying your audience will also help you create relevant and engaging content for your customer. Once you know who you need to interact with and who should be looking at your content, you are in much better control of your marketing campaign.