Create the most relevant marketing content and grow your business by knowing who your target audience is. This information will influence your marketing materials, your website design and social media campaigns.

What is a target audience?

A target audience are the people who are most likely to be interested in your products or services. The shared traits or interested in this group of people will draw them to your brand.

Some of these traits can include:

· Age

· Gender

· Location

· Hobbies and interests

· Education

· Profession

· Purchase intention

Why is it important to define your target audience?

When marketing your products or services, you want to get the most out of your marketing efforts. You want to reach the people who are most likely to be interested in your products or services. Not only cost effectively meeting your audience, knowing who your target audience is can also help you develop personalized marketing campaigns, improve your products/services to better meet their needs, and establish your brand identity.

How to define your target audience

Here’s how to define your target audience:

Who are your existing customers?

If you already have an established business, look at your existing customer data.

If your business is already up and running, you can look to your existing customers to form your target audience definition. Gather data from your website analytics and your social media to answer these questions:

· What common traits do my existing customers share?

· How do people find me?

· Where do visitors spend the most time on my website?

· Which of my products or services are most popular and with whom?

What’s your competition doing?

Look at your competition’s audience because they could be your customers too.

How does your competition engage with its audience? What types of marketing strategies are your competitors using? What market segments do they not target?

By answering these questions, you can see what methods and messaging works with your desired audience.

What is your audience’s pain points?

This is the most important information you need to uncover. Once you understand their pain points, you are able to position your brand as the solution.

Create a buyer persona

Your target audience is a vague group of people. A buyer persona goes deeper by

representing your ideal customer in a semi-fictional way. More than just demographics, your buyer persona should also include behavioral information.

Regularly revisit your target audience

Your target audience is fluid. Your need to revisit your target audience yearly (or more frequently) to look for changes in your customers’ problems.

accordingly. You can also look at your data over time and pick up on any changes in your audience.