When thinking of target audience, marketeers are often quick to jump into the what-s and the why-s — what your audience wants to purchase and why. It’s a common mistake to assume that you already know who your brand is speaking to.

Your target audience is a specific group of people you want to reach with your marketing message. These people are the most likely to buy your products and services, and may belong to the same demographic group or share similar behaviours or traits.

Defining your target audience is the foundation of our marketing strategy in AKIN. Understanding who we are speaking to helps us carve out a niche and communicate directly with the consumers that matter to the brand. In today’s oversaturated online marketplace, a more granular approach to identifying your target audience is crucial for high-impact marketing. Our first step is always to collect existing data that can give us insight about who’s interacting with the brand.

Gathering demographic data for focused ad targeting

Some useful platforms to audit include the brand’s website, social platforms and apps. Each of these provide useful touchpoints to understand your audience’s behaviour and engagement with your products. This valuable information can easily be obtained using the right tools.

Understanding the demographics of your target audience is a crucial first step, as the information can be used for more accurate ad targeting. Social media analytics can help you identify the demographics of your social audiences, as well as the type of content that gets their attention and engagement.

Google analytics can also collect demographic data such as age range, gender and specific interests as inferred from other websites that they visit. Comparing this demographic data set to that of your social platforms will give you a clearer picture of who your brand interacts with. For instance, if the demographic data sets of your social audiences match that of your website, you’re likely to have a distinct idea of who you should be reaching out to. Don’t fret about being too specific about your target audience. It doesn’t mean you’re stopping others from buying your product or service – you’re just being focused in crafting your strategy.

If the data from your socials and website do not align, think about why different platforms are attracting different audiences, and how you can use this information to direct your audiences across different platforms. For audiences that have already interacted with your website and are familiar with your brand, you can easily retarget them on social media (given the right martech or retargeting tools) until they’re ready to purchase.

Now that you know who’s actually interested in your brand, you can easily focus your ads to reach only the audience that is most likely to convert into your customers. This will translate to higher conversion rates and more efficient use of your ad money.  

Decoding audience behavior on your website

Assessing how well your target audience is engaging with your platforms is also key. Look out for information on how long they dwell and on which pages, as well as whether your audience is engaging in desired actions on your website. Understanding this behaviour can help you improve the UI/UX of your website to meet the needs of your audience.

Check if the data reveals any blindspots that hinder user experience and whether the information is organised in a sensible way. Google analytics can also identify the source of your web traffic. There are many ways to utilise this info. For instance, if your main web traffic is coming through your social pages, take it one step further and identify which types of content pieces they are responding to or where they tend to drop off. This will help you uncover themes, formats and topics that appeal to your ideal audiences.

Understanding the customer journey through empathy

When you’ve identified the people who are interacting with your brand, the next step would be to map out the customer journey of your ideal target audience. We do this through a process called “empathy mapping”. Aside from listing out the key interaction and touch points, we ask questions that require us to empathise with the customer. What does your customer experience throughout the journey of purchasing your product? What do they say, think, do and feel in a particular scenario?  

A deep understanding of user behavior and of the problems they face in everyday life can help you better position your product or service as the ideal or best-fit solution. Ultimately, the objective of this process is to help your brand become more human — which will in turn win you more loyal brand advocates.

When you’ve gone through the hard work of identifying the who, you’ll be ready to delve into the what-s and the why-s. We’ve got a handy template to help you along with that here.

If you're interested in discussing how to better identify, nurture and convert your target audiences for business impact, reach out to us for a free consultation. Hit us up below.

Written by Miranda Yeo