Know Your Target Audience

Posted on 07. Aug, 2009 by Charly Leetham in Marketing

I have a theme that permeates all of my business building and affiliate marketing ethos – KNOW WHO YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE IS.

Who is it that your product or service can help today?  So many business people fail to understand this concept and, as a result, they are not as successful as they could be – in fact many fail.

Let’s look at the definition of a Target Audience and how know this can help your affiliate marketing efforts.

What is your Target Audience?  Many of us would define our target audience as the group of people who could benefit from our product.  This definition is often incredibly general:  Women, Men, Children, Bald Men, Short Women, People Who Like Golf, People who like to surf….

The problem with that, is that it is so incredibly broad that our advertising and the information we provide is broad and general.  Visitors to our websites don’t find the answers they are looking for and they don’t request more information or make a purchase.

We end up trying to be all things to all people – and FAIL.

Your real target audience is the percentage of visitors that will actually buy your product or service.  It is those few (or hopefully not so few) that you need to be refining your advertising and information for – you want to speak directly to those people.  Does this mean that you are ignoring the others who visit your site?  Possibly, but not really – they aren’t ready to make a buying decision yet and whilst you need to feed them information, you need to focus your attention on those who are ready to buy.

Let’s look at an example.  I am a business coach who helps people get their business online.  Now that’s a really broad definition and my target audience is “people who want to get their business online”.  Given such a broad definition, how do I describe my services in a way that someone will want to hire me?

Let me assure you that there are business people who I wouldn’t resonate with – they wouldn’t want to work with me and I wouldn’t want to work with them. The match just isn’t right.  By having such a broad definition, I am then faced with the challenge of where to advertise, what services should I be offering etc.

However, by refining my target audience a really specific definition – Women between 25 and 35 years old who have home based businesses and wish to widen their market by placing their services online – I now have a much better idea of where I can be advertising and what type of services to offer.

Does this mean that this is my only target audience?  Absolutely not!  I may have a second target audience – Men between 25 and 35 years old who have a small business and they wish to tap into a broader International market by harnessing the power of the Internet.

You really aren’t limited by the number of target audiences you define – the fact is that you should be defining these target audiences.

By defining your target audience with such specificity, you can speak directly to those who are ready to buy your product or services.

An Example always helps….

Let’s assume you have a product that teaches someone how to get their bird to sing.  The first thing to note, is that you are looking for someone who wants their bird to sing.  It’s not worth advertising to someone whos bird already sings and it’s not worth advertising to someone who doesn’t own a bird, or even wants to own a bird.

However, think of the possibilities if you refine the Target audience down to Teenagers who want to teach their bird to sing; or Single Moms who want to teach their bird to sing; or Dads who want to teach their bird to sing.  Each of these three groups have different interests, different langauge and ‘hang out’ in vastly different places.  By creating such specific definitions you are able to refine your marketing to the areas that will bring you the best Return On Investment.

So tell me, who are you talking to when you market your product or service?

Tags: business marketing, marketing your business, niche marketing, target audience

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