Do the Owl Thing

Define Your Audience Activity:

How to determine your target audience

 

When a brand says “our ads are ineffective”, do you know what I’ve found to be the most common problem?

Their ads are all about them.

I don’t care if you’re running a single restaurant or a multi-national corporation, having a solid understanding of your audience is critical to your success.

As such, every single piece of content you put out should keep THEM top of mind.

It may be difficult to think about your audience as a whole, but understanding your customers will make your brand far more capable of adapting to changes in your audience’s needs and wants.

So what are the most important factors in understanding our audience? Here are the top ten insights you should collect and analyze to better understand your target audience:

  1. Age

  2. Sex

  3. Location

  4. Occupation (or industry of work)

  5. Hobbies

  6. Household income

  7. Social platform(s) of choice

  8. Favourite brands

  9. Their values

  10. Their desires

Writing these down together helps to form an example target audience persona. With this in mind, it will help you to focus your content and branding efforts to your ideal target market.

Now you may be thinking Great. This would be very useful, but I have little to none of this information.

If that’s the case, consider these questions while you dive deeper into available research or your customer data:

  • What is the problem in my audience’s life that I am solving?

  • What is the value that I add to my audience?

  • What would my audience say is the impact that I have on their lives?

Customers are the hero of their own stories, and we are merely the connectors to solutions. When you understand your answers to the questions above, you will be better able to speak to your audience even if you aren’t quite sure who they are yet.

Adam Rodricks