Are You Marketing to the Right People? How to Better Understand Your Target Audience

You can have a great product, an excellent service and a strong marketing strategy — but if you’re putting your message in front of the wrong people, your marketing is unlikely to deliver the results you want.

One of the most important parts of effective marketing is understanding who you’re actually trying to reach.

Your target audience isn’t simply “everyone who could buy from us”. In reality, different customers have different needs, priorities, budgets and reasons for choosing a business.

The better you understand those people, the easier it becomes to create marketing that speaks directly to them.

So, how do you get to know your target audience?

 

Start With Your Existing Customers

 

You don’t always need to look far to find out who your target audience is.

Start with the people who are already buying from you.

Look at your existing customer base and ask:

• Who are your most frequent customers?
• Who spends the most with your business?
• What products or services are most popular?
• Where are your customers based?
• What do they have in common?
• Why do they choose your business?
• What problems are you helping them solve?

Your existing customers can give you some of the most useful insights into who your marketing should be targeting.

This doesn’t mean you should ignore potential new audiences, but understanding who already values what you offer is a great place to start.

 

Don’t Just Look at Demographics

 

Age, gender and location can be useful when defining an audience, but they’re only part of the picture.

Two people of the same age and from the same town can have completely different reasons for buying from you.

Think about your customers’ needs, interests, behaviours and motivations.

What are they looking for?

What problem are they trying to solve?

What influences their buying decisions?

What might stop them from choosing your business?

For example, a local hotel could have couples, families, business travellers and groups all staying there. They’re all customers, but their reasons for booking and the type of content that appeals to them could be completely different.

Understanding these differences allows you to make your marketing more relevant.

 

Think About the Problem You’re Solving

 

One of the simplest ways to understand your audience is to stop thinking about what you sell and start thinking about why people buy it.

People aren’t always buying a product or service for the product itself. They’re buying a solution to a problem, a way to save time, an experience, convenience or something that makes their life easier.

Ask yourself:

What does my customer need?

Why do they need it?

What is stopping them from getting it?

How does my business help?

Once you understand this, you can build your marketing around your customers rather than simply talking about your business.

Instead of constantly saying “We offer X service”, you can communicate how that service benefits the people you’re trying to reach.

 

Look at What Your Audience Is Searching For

 

Your customers are already telling you what they need through their online behaviour.

Think about the questions they might type into Google.

What are they searching for?

What information do they need before making a purchase?

What questions do they ask when they contact your business?

What problems are they trying to solve?

This can provide useful ideas for your website content, blog posts, social media and SEO.

For example, if customers regularly ask the same question before booking your service, that’s a sign you could create content answering it.

Not only does this give your audience useful information, but it can also help your business appear when potential customers are searching for answers.

Not sure what your customers are searching for? Back Office Marketing can help you identify content and SEO opportunities for your business.

 

Use Your Social Media Insights

 

Your social media platforms can provide plenty of information about the people already engaging with your content.

Look at your analytics and consider:

• Who is following you?
• Which age groups are most engaged?
• Where are your followers located?
• Which posts receive the most engagement?
• What type of content gets people clicking?
• Which posts lead to enquiries or website visits?

Don’t focus solely on follower numbers.

A post with fewer likes could still be valuable if it drives website traffic, enquiries, bookings or sales.

Your social media insights can help you understand not just who is following you, but what they actually respond to.

 

Pay Attention to Your Competitors

 

Your competitors can also provide useful information.

Look at the businesses targeting a similar audience and consider:

Who are they talking to?

What type of content are they creating?

What offers are they promoting?

What questions are people asking in their comments or reviews?

This isn’t about copying what another business is doing.

Instead, use it to identify opportunities.

Perhaps your competitors are focusing heavily on one particular customer group while you’re better positioned to appeal to another.

Or perhaps there’s a question customers are repeatedly asking that nobody is answering particularly well.

Understanding the wider market can help you identify where your business can stand out.

 

Listen to Your Customers

 

Some of your best marketing research can happen during everyday conversations.

Pay attention to the questions customers ask, the language they use and the things they care about.

Your sales team, customer service team or anyone who regularly interacts with customers can be a valuable source of information.

Ask them:

What do customers ask about most often?

What concerns do they have before buying?

What do they value most about our business?

Why do they choose us instead of another business?

The answers can help shape everything from your website copy to your social media content.

And importantly, use the language your customers actually use. Marketing can become much more effective when it sounds like it was written for a real person rather than a generic audience.

 

Create Different Content for Different Customers

 

Once you’ve identified your key audiences, you don’t necessarily need to choose just one.

Your business may serve several different customer groups, and that’s completely fine.

The important thing is to make sure your content speaks to them appropriately.

For example, a tourism business could create content for:

Families — things to do during school holidays.

Couples — weekend breaks and experiences.

Groups — activities and packages suitable for larger parties.

Visitors from overseas — practical information about visiting the area.

The business hasn’t changed. The audience has.

By changing the message to reflect what each group cares about, you can make your marketing much more relevant.

 

Don’t Try to Appeal to Everyone

 

It can be tempting to make your marketing as broad as possible.

After all, if more people see your content, surely that’s better?

Not necessarily.

If your message is so general that it doesn’t speak directly to anyone, it can become much less effective.

You don’t need to appeal to everyone.

You need to reach the right people.

A specific message that resonates strongly with your ideal customer can be far more valuable than a generic message that gets seen by thousands of people who have no intention of buying from you.

 

Review Your Target Audience Regularly

 

Your target audience isn’t necessarily fixed forever.

Your business might introduce a new service, expand into a new area or start targeting a different type of customer.

Your customers’ habits and expectations can also change.

That’s why it’s worth reviewing your audience regularly.

Look at your sales, website data, social media insights, customer feedback and marketing results.

Ask yourself:

Are we reaching the people we actually want to reach?

Are they engaging with our content?

Are they becoming customers?

What could we be doing differently?

Marketing should be an ongoing process of learning and improving.

 

The Better You Know Your Audience, the Better You Can Market to Them

Effective marketing isn’t about shouting your message to as many people as possible.

It’s about making sure you’re saying the right thing, to the right people, in the right place.

By understanding your existing customers, researching what people are searching for, paying attention to your analytics and listening to customer feedback, you can build a much clearer picture of who you’re trying to reach.

And once you know your audience, everything else becomes easier — from deciding what to post on social media to writing website content, planning advertising campaigns and creating offers that actually appeal to your customers.

 

Need help reaching the right audience?

At Back Office Marketing, we help businesses develop marketing strategies that are designed around their goals, customers and wider business needs.

From social media and content creation to SEO, digital advertising and marketing strategy, we can help you make sure your marketing is reaching the right people and working towards real results.

Not sure whether you’re targeting the right audience? Get in touch with Back Office Marketing today and let’s talk about your marketing.