target audience

The vast majority of the time when I ask clients who their target audience is the answer I get back is: anyone who wants my product or service. That sounds kind of right on the surface. After all, you wouldn’t want to target someone who doesn’t want what you’re selling! But once you dig past the surface you start to see all sorts of flaws in this reasoning. Today we’re going to explore why the “anyone” approach is faulty reasoning and how you might want to think about your target audience instead.

What I often see with business owners who aren’t selling is that they haven’t given enough thought to who their customers are, what motivates them, or what they are thinking about. Everyone wants to own the mass market and focusing your audience is viewed as giving up on everyone else. Not so. If you try to sell to everyone, you risk homogenizing your message and becoming boring. Here’s some insight into how people make decisions and how you can capitalize on each phase of their thinking process.

Do you sometimes sit and stare at your Facebook page or blank email template and wonder, “Now what?” It’s one thing to know that your customers are on Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest or awaiting your next brilliant email campaign. It’s another thing entirely to know what the heck you’re supposed to do about that. If you occasionally find yourself stuck, not knowing where to go with your marketing or how to grab your customers, try a survey. Here are some tips for implementing a survey and a couple of things you can learn along the way.

Businesses spend a lot of time answering “what” and a lot of money answering “how,” but perhaps the most important question you can ask is “who.” After all, what good is the perfect product if nobody buys it? So just WHO are your potential customers? The more details you know about your target market’s daily life, the better you can understand and predict their actions which in turn will help you determine the best time and place to reach them. Find out how you can determine “who” your audience is and where to start looking for them.