Innovation & data-driven digital marketing.
A vital key for digital marketers to increase brand awareness and conversions is understanding a consumer’s expectation for your business. This specific element of your audience profile can help you create content that your customers will be drawn to—and drive action.
A “target audience analysis” is a research-based initiative that exposes the core characteristics and needs of your consumer (or client) base. This includes compiling a series of demographic and psychographic details that help you understand your audience’s online and offline behaviors.
With this data, you can tailor marketing efforts to build traction and outpace your competitors. Still not sold? Here are six ways a comprehensive target audience analysis can maximize your overall digital marketing success:
1. Revamp Your Social Media Content
How well do you know your social audience? What do they like? What are they sharing? What do they engage with most? According to SproutSocial, 57 percent of people follow brands on social media to learn about what they offer, while only 40 percent follow for entertainment.
A target audience analysis will clarify why your brand resonates with your followers—and how you can keep their attention. Start by asking these questions about your audience:
- What types of users interact with your content regularly? Where do they live? How old are they? What are their interests?
- What do their interactions tell you about the information they’re looking for? Which social networks do they visit for this information?
- What are they talking about and what trending topics do they follow?
- What conversations do they participate in?
- What or who influences purchasing decisions?
- What content formats yield the most engagement?
Use the answers to these questions to help you optimize your social media strategy. Remember, platforms and features are constantly changing in the social space, and to be in front of your audience, you need to be on top of the newest trends.
2. Boost Your Search Rankings
A target audience analysis will help you identify the keywords that your customer/clients frequently leverage. With this information, you can SEO the text on your website to rank higher for their individual search results. Keyword research effectively increases organic traffic and conversions because it helps your digital marketing team use specific language to connect queries to brand content.
3. Expand Your Audience Reach
A target audience analysis not only supports existing customer/client retention but can improve acquisition, too. This research will help you discover niche or untapped markets who can benefit from your products or services. You might even gain insight into your competitor’s lead generation strategy, further helping you to refine your own tactics. The more relevant markets you’re able to reach, the more prospects you stand to gain.
4. Create a Cohesive Brand Message
One of the most common marketing errors is to create content before you think about who for, shared Stan Meytin, CEO of True Film Production. You can avoid that issue when you genuinely know your target audience. Instead of just “churning out texts and pictures,” you can craft a “thoughtful brand message” that your ideal customers/clients will gravitate toward. This will inform your brand’s core values, mission, tone and visuals, creating a consistent experience across your digital footprint.
5. Target Specific Interests
It’s simple: the more in-depth your analysis, the more personalized your content can be. Go beyond basic search queries and online behaviors—view your prospects as humans and communicate in a way that’s relational, not transactional. Meaningful data can take a variety of forms and can include:
- Preferred music, film, TV and book genres;
- Hobbies, sports or subcultures the participate in;
- Political views and social causes they support;
- Restaurants and retailers they purchase from;
- Communities or organizations they belong to.
Not all of these details can be mapped on a chart or graph, but as part of your target audience profile, they can still inform your decisions.
6. Refine Your Communication Strategy
Finally, once you gather all the data, synthesize it into a fictional framework that “embodies the characteristics of your best potential customers,” as Hootsuite explains. This creates your buyer persona and reminds you to tailor content to that audience. This exercise also helps you develop a communication framework that produces actionable results, allowing you to:
- Identify the traits and behaviors of your target audience that will bring more authenticity to your communication;
- Understand which consumers/clients are most likely to engage with your content and follow your brand;
- See how users interact with your website or social media channels and identify where they’re at in the sales funnel.
Actionable data from a target audience analysis has the power to impact sales and marketing functions, ultimately creating a healthier pipeline of qualified leads.
Jump Start Your Target Audience Analysis
If you want to learn more about conducting a target audience analysis but you’re not sure where to start, our expert team at 10x digital can help. We’ll assist you in each stage of the process, from researching consumer behavior to collecting key data points and creating buyer personas.
Our comprehensive marketing strategy will help you lock in your brand goals and buyer needs, all through targeted research and content.