Simple Tools to Better Understand Your Target Audience

No marketing plan, campaign or strategy is worth anything if you don’t know who you’re marketing to. It’s that simple. Your return on investment, and we’re talking about a lot of time, energy, and money, will not even come close to positive if you aren’t creating marketing efforts that appeal to your target audience.

Unfortunately, many companies completely miss the mark on their target audience or they underestimate them. And let’s face it, your target audience can change and evolve over time. The following tools will help you get a good grasp on your target audience now and, if you continue to use them, a good understanding of your future target audience too.

Your Own Analytics

Please, if you don’t have some sort of analytics system installed on your website already, install one right away. Google analytics is free. It’s also quite powerful, and you can learn more at: https://www.google.com/analytics/. When reviewing your analytics you can learn a lot about your audience.

You can see what keywords and phrases they used to find your information. You can learn what websites they were visiting and links they clicked to get to your website. You can also learn what they read, how long they read it, and where they go next. All of this information is powerful information. It helps you understand the mindset of your target audience.

And you also glean those demographic tidbits that can help you further enhance your understanding. For example, maybe you learn that most of your audience comes from the upper northwest or Canada, and that can be really useful information.

Surveys

Surveys are underutilized. Yet they can provide an abundance of information about your prospects and customers. Consider creating quarterly surveys and incentivize them. Turn them into contests, give away coupons or discounts for responding, or enter respondents into a drawing for a prize. Motivate people to reply to your survey and benefit from their information.

Trends and Alerts

If you know what keywords your audience uses (look at your analytics), then you can also leverage those keywords to more information. Use Google Alerts and create notifications for those keywords. Learn what your prospects are learning, and tap into that information to stay fresh and in touch with their wants and needs. You can also search social media sites for hashtags and trending topics. Learn what your audience is responding to.

Online Services

Finally, leverage sites like Compete.com, Alexa.com, or Quantcast.com can help you better understand your audience. Their research services provide a perspective that you may not be able to get on your own.

The bottom line is that a better understanding of your audience will help you create stronger and more effective marketing pieces. You’ll be able to create a more targeted strategy.

Call us today to speak to one of our PR specialists: 1-800-713-7278

Anthony Santiago

Anthony Santiago is Director of Marketing at Newswire. With over a decade of experience in PR, he helps ensure that clients understand the value of brand messaging and reach.