How to Find Your Target Audience

I ask small business owners how they plan to advertise or market their products/services to their target market. The number one answer is social media ads (Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok). It’s a no-brainer, right? Wrong! We are programmed to believe social media is the only and best way to reach our customers. Why? Because the platforms brag about the billions of active accounts and users constantly searching for content to consume. If you are not a fan of social media, hate posting daily, and don’t want to keep up with the latest changes in their fickle algorithms, you are in luck.

Your first task is to know who your customer segment is. Don’t generalize your offer, saying things like “my products are for anyone, or everybody could use my services.” That won’t help you when creating a sales & marketing strategy. You cannot advertise or market your business to everyone. Create a niche market by focusing on who would benefit from your offering the most. There are segments of people for your products or services that are the perfect fit. Focus only on those people. Here is a link to another blog post on how to pick a niche market. How to pick a niche for your product or service-based business?

Once you know who your niche market is, the next step is to research the habits, hobbies, and interests of the people in your niche. For example, if you sell book writing services to entrepreneurs who are leaders in the tech, creative, and marketing space who travel to business conferences for speaking engagements and participate on panels or are keynote speakers. That would be an example of a niche market. A hobby for that niche could be reading non-fiction books about business and leadership or attending leadership retreats for high-earning entrepreneurs. A habit of the niche market could be reading trade magazines, traveling regularly for work, attending networking events, or working 50-plus hours a week. The interests could be listening to industry-specific podcasts, reading popular news and blog sites about industry trends, booking more speaking engagements, or building their brand. All of this information is valuable because now you know where to show up to reach your niche market. 

I will build out an example for you using the niche market above. We know some business owners like to read books about other business leaders. Attend business conferences and book signing events; great places to meet others interested in writing a book about their experience in business or life. Having your information added to marketing materials for business retreats and industry leadership conferences is a perfect way to spend your marketing dollars. Running ads in trade magazines, news sites, and blogs targeting your niche market is another way to reach them. Try reaching out to specific business or lifestyle podcasts to be interviewed. It’s a great way to get the word out about your business. If you know your niche market works 50-plus hours a week, you know they don’t have the time to write their book. You could make your services attractive by speaking to the problem of needing assistance because of lack of time. Tell your audience how the lack of time doesn’t need to keep them from writing their book. Also, how being a published author can add credibility to their brand. Books are tools to generate interest for press features, interviews, and marketing. To add value to your business by creating another stream of revenue.

As you can see, there are endless possibilities for you to reach or sell to your target audience. You don’t need to only depend on social media. In my experience, social media ads will bring lots of traffic with little to no conversion. Meaning you end up with lots of looky-loos. If you are unfamiliar with this term, it means people who look but won’t buy.

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