6 Steps to Defining Your Target Audience

If you’ve ever been that “new” kid in school you’ll know the importance of intensive observation to pick out potential friends immediately. Defining your target audience for social media marketing works much the same way.

Your targets are more than just potential fans. You want them to share the same interests, the same passions, the same desires. You want them to be your friends. So take a seat at your proverbial school-desk and let us run you through some ways to help you make new friends.

1. What do you think?

First write down what you imagine your customers’ traits to be. How old are they? Are they male or female? Married? Engaged? Single? What are their interests? Where do they live? What are their job titles? Who is their daddy? And what does he do?

2. Common search phrases

Create a list of phrases people may use on social media that could identify them as potential customers. For example, if you work for a marketing agency and are looking for potential clients you would search for phrases like “Does anyone know where I can find cheap marketing?” and “Marketing in Toronto?” on Facebook/Twitter.

Regularly searching for these phrases functions in a similar way to SEO. If you can identify a potential customer who is nearing the point of purchase, then it’s a much easier conversion. Once you find people using these phrases, make sure to connect with them on a personal level.

You can even bid on these phrases for Facebook and Twitter advertising so that if someone searches for a similar phrase in the search bar, your ad will appear directing them to your site.

3. Popular interests

Read through your competitors’ followers. Write down a list of the most popular interests mentioned in their Twitter profiles. Heck, even follow them on Twitter. If your content is good and you offer them value, this is an easy way to build a following.

4. Speech profile

Make a note of how your competitors’ followers speak. Do they use profanity? Are they often humorous? More business-like? Do they use lol-speak?

5. Most talked about

Make a list of the top 10 things their followers talk about. You may find some interesting crossovers. For example, although I work in marketing I may discover that my competitors’ followers are really into Movember. Also take note of how much they talk about current cultural events.

6. The amalgamation

John Steinbeck once wrote “Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person-and write to that one.”

With this piece of wisdom in mind, it might work for you to take all of this new-found information and amalgamate it into one potential client profile.

via Business 2 Community http://www.business2community.com/strategy/6-steps-defining-target-audience-0668696?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=6-steps-defining-target-audience