If you're starting a business or revaluating your business, it's important to know who your target audience is. It's not just about knowing your market; it's about knowing what makes them tick. What do they like? How do they like to be marketed to? And most importantly: how can you reach them? In this blog, we'll explore what exactly makes up your target audience and how best to find them online.

Know where to look.

If you're not sure where to look, here are some options:

• Look at your own data. If you have data about your customers and their behaviours, this is a great place to start a market research project.
• Look at competitors' data. If you know who your competitors are and what they do, it can be easier to figure out what the target audience for your product/service might look like by looking at who their customers are (and why those customers choose them).
• Look at industry trends to identify what is popular and who is interested on those trends.

Define your audience.

It's important to be as specific as possible when defining your target audience. You can start with demographic questions, such as:

• Who is it?
• What do they look like?
• Where do they live? (For example, if you're a local shop selling personalised photo products and photography services, you would want to begin to target the individuals in your local area)
• What do they do for a living? (If there are any companies or organisations who might benefit from your product or service, include them in this step.)
• How old are they? (This is to further understand the age demographic and to know what products or services are best suited for that age group)

Create buyer personas.

Creating buyer personas is a great way to understand your customers better and make better decisions. A buyer persona is a fictional character who represents a specific segment of your ideal customer base. For example, if you’re a digital marketing agency like ourselves Merali Digital, one possible buyer persona might be “Tasnim, a 40-year-old entrepreneur for a medium bus skin care products with little to no experience in marketing.”

By creating these profiles and thinking about them as real people with real goals and needs rather than market segments, you can create content that is more relevant to them (and thus more likely to resonate).

Establish a voice and tone guide.

A voice and tone guide is a solid base for your content. It's what you'll use to determine whether or not content aligns with your brand's goals, mission, and personality.

A good way to think about a voice and tone guide is like the style guide for a book publisher—it gives writers instructions on how they should write their work (what words/phrases are preferred) and what their writing should sound like (tone).

This ensures that all of the books published by that publisher have similar voices, making it easier for readers to recognise them as belonging under one umbrella brand.

As a result, your brand needs something similar if you want people who come across your content online or in person know where it came from.

Consider audience feedback.

Listening to your audience can, in some cases, be a great way to find out who they are. If you're looking for feedback on what works and what doesn't work, ask them! Listen to the feedback you get and consider it carefully.

Also make sure that when you're listening, you're listening to the right people—people who reflect the diversity of your target audience—and that they understand what they're saying.

You should also be sure that when asking for user input or feedback about your product or service; there's no one-size-fits-all approach during this process—some customers will prefer email while others may only post comments on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter. 

Identify your competition.

This is the most important step, and it's also the easiest. All you have to do is look at your competitors and understand what they are doing.

• What are their strategies?
• What are their marketing tactics?
• How does their product/service compare to yours? 

Once you've identified why people buy from your competitors, it will be easier for you to figure out how you can be better than them or different from them in some interesting way that makes you stand out from crowd—and that makes customers want to buy from you instead of them.

If you want to stand out in a crowded marketplace, then you need to know who your audience is. Without this knowledge, it will be difficult for you to identify the best way to reach them and communicate with them on their terms. By following these tips, you’ll be able to find the right people who are interested in what your business/ company has to offer—and they’ll love what they see!

That's it for this blog! Thanks for reading and letting us share our knowledge with you. If you found this helpful, do let us know by connecting with us on our Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok or LinkedIn!

If you need marketing help for your business, feel free to call us on 01923 823577 or email us at info@meralidigital.co.uk and we would be more than happy to help!