The more defined your target audience, the better your marketing.
The definition of your target audience is the basis from which you build texts, pictures, and other marketing materials, so the better defined your audience, the better your ability to attract its members, and the more sales you’ll make.
It’s impossible to direct your marketing at everyone.
You’re never going to reach every single person, and if you try, you’ll usually end up not reaching anyone at all.
The opposite is correct if you direct your communication at a specific group of people. In this case, you can hit the mark and get your message out there.
When you get to know your specific target audience and find out which needs you can meet, you create value.
Getting to know your audience is the very foundation of your marketing.
It also makes your job simpler because you learn how to better sell your products and services to more members of your audience – so you can help more people.
Studies show that the more specific your target audience and the better defined the challenges facing its members, the better your chance of success.
When you aim to serve a set group of people with particular needs, you create demand for your specific skill, making it much easier to attract, sell to, and communicate with your clients.
The more niche your business, the easier it is to define your target audience and identify its needs.
The same is true for your target audience – they’ll have an easier time figuring out what you do and choosing you as their preferred supplier.
As an example, it’s a lot easier to become successful as a website designer for Scottish painters than as a designer for all sorts of websites.
Generally speaking, the more particular your niche, the better. If you have a highly specialised niche, it won’t take long for your target audience to find you or for you to receive expert status.
It’s possible to become an expert as your niche centres on your why and because nobody has created more websites for Scottish painters than you.
When you find your niche and do the exact kind of work you’re meant to do – and make an effort to do a good job – it won’t be long before you’re your only competition.
As long as you keep being passionate about your niche and helping your target audience, you won’t struggle to retain your status and develop in the direction you want.
You can even consolidate your position in the niche by, for example, writing a book for your specific target audience, creating courses for them, or doing just about anything else you feel like doing along the way.
To sum it all up: having a well-defined target audience is the key to happiness!
You have to learn as much about your target audience as possible because the more you know, the easier it’ll be to provide your service and create value.
When you know your target audience inside and out, you know its frustrations and motivations, and you know which of its problems you can solve – and that’ll really come through in your texts, the products and services you offer, and so on.
Or as David Brim says in the fishing metaphor:
Know What You’re Fishing For
When you go fishing, you always use the best type of bait for the particular kind of fish you want to catch.
So, it’s good to know something about:
- the problems facing your target audience.
- the primary demographic and psychography (interests, values, lifestyle, preferences, etc.) of your target audience.
- where your target audience seeks out information.
- your target audience’s purchasing patterns.
- potential objections that your target audience might have to your product.
- what affects the members of your target audience (e.g., their heroes and idols, the series they love, the websites they visit, the magazines they read, and so on).
Although your product might appeal to ‘everyone’, in most cases 20% of your audience will be responsible for 80% of your income. Your job is to find out who makes up that 20% and how you can find the kind of bait that appeals most to these specific people.
The bait that attracts trout won’t necessarily allow you to catch a great white shark.
– and Know Where to Fish
Choosing the right location to fish from can make the difference between a successful trip and going home hungry.
If you know where your target audience hangs out online, the odds that your marketing will be successful are significantly higher. Find out which websites your target audience tends to visit, and you’ll have a much better chance of catching them.
Try to figure out which:
- blogs they read.
- forums they participate in.
- social networks and other groups they’re in.
- types of entertainment they seek out.
If you want to catch a fish that finds its food at the bottom, it’s no use fishing at the surface.
In a way, it’s simple and most likely something you’ve heard about before.
What I’m going to add is that it isn’t enough to sit and imagine who your specific target audience is; you have to discover your target audience by listening to its members. The magic happens in the interaction between you and your target audience.
This interaction is where you uncover your specific target audience and what you have to offer. It’s is a crucial component of the trust-based marketing method.
It’s not enough to look inwards and figure out what you want to offer; you also have to find out if there’s anyone who wants it and establish answers to the following:
- What do people want?
- When and how often do they want it?
- How do they want it?
- How much will they pay for it?
If the answers to these questions align with what you can and want to offer, you’ve found the sweet spot where your business becomes a reality, and its success is almost inevitable.
To sum up: Start with your why and figure out if what you want to offer is something that your specific target audience (i.e. the target audience you currently imagine for yourself) wants and is willing to pay for.
How can you turn what you have to share into a reality? Where is your market? Your niche? You neither can nor should cater to everyone but rather to the specific demands of your target audience.
If your target audience is an undefined ‘everyone’, it’s challenging to do targeted marketing. It’s also difficult to remain focused on and excited about the work that goes into your marketing – even if you have great products or services to offer.
If you want to help everyone, you run the risk of not helping anyone.
If you stick to a specific group of people instead, you’ll find it easy to remain focused and excited as time goes on. You’ll have an easier time coming up with new products and services because you have a clear sense of your specific target audience.
Whereas it can be incredibly difficult to help all sorts of people with all kinds of needs, it’s relatively easy to support a particular group of people with specific needs. And when you do that, your work generates more demand all by itself – and that makes it easier to market your business in a way that hits the mark.
If you have a well-defined niche for your business, defining your target audience is easy, and it’s simple for your target audience to identify you. So, when you describe yourself and your products clearly, you’ve done a lot of the work that your target audience puts into searching for them, increasing the probability that they’ll find you.
To put it briefly:
The better you know your specific target audience, the higher your chance of success.
Where to Go From Here
The following excerpt is from my book, Build Your Audience, which you can read about here.
When you buy the book, it comes with a workbook and an invitation to join the Build You Audience workshop.
When you’ve bought the book, you can head over to this website for your exclusive bonuses, including the link to the workshop.