How to refine your target audience

Before you start writing copy for any platform, you need to know exactly who you are writing for. 

Refining your target audience is critical to business success. It’s easy to take a ‘broad strokes’ approach; your product or service is the best in the market, so it appeals to everyone – right?!

Well, no. 

The reality is, if you try to target everyone, you won’t end up targeting anyone. The marketing world is a crowded space, and you need to do everything you can to stand out from the crowd. One of the best ways to do this is to have a clearly refined target audience. You might have different products or services that appeal to different groups of customers – but they are exactly this: different! So you can’t speak to each group in the same way.

Not quite sure where to start? Here are some top tips that will help you refine your target audience.

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Use Your Data

No matter what stage your business is at, you will have plenty of sources to analyse your data. These will vary by industry, but a few popular ones that provide plenty of insight are:

• Your email sign-ups 
• Your existing customers 
• Google Analytics 
• Your Social Media channels 

If you find yourself lacking in data, take a look at the wider marketplace. Who are the main customers that your competitors target – what do they look like?

Find any patterns and look at the groups that are appearing most often – it is safe to bet that they are your customers. From here, you can take steps to learn as much as possible about those people. The more detail you have on your target audience, the more effectively you can create content with them in mind.

Also keep in mind that your product user might not be your product buyer. If this is the case, make sure you understand the differences between the two.

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Create an avatar 

One of the most effective ways of refining your target audience is to literally have a picture of your key customers in mind. Assign a name, an age, an occupation, and a location as a starting point, then dig a little deeper.

Try to take a holistic approach to creating your customer avatar. Keep your relationship with them in mind at all times:

What problems are they facing?

How does your product or service solve their problems?

And most importantly, what is the outcome if they choose you?

Once you have all of this information for your different customer groups, you can tell a story that is specific to their needs - and why you, and you alone, are their perfect fit.

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Think Quality over Quantity 

When it comes to refining your target audience, customer value is key. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself:

• Which customers do you have the longest relationship with?
• Who appreciates what you do the most? 
• Who is most likely to provide repeat business and recommendations?

Compare this group with your lower-value customers – the ones that perhaps engage with you once and then move on. What similarities and differences are there between the audiences – is there opportunity to convert your lower-value customers into the highest value groups? Gleaning this insight will help you to understand how to speak to each audience. 

And think about who you like working with the most! The more you enjoy working with your customers, the more both parties will get out of the relationship. The more of those customers you can get, the better.

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Evaluate your audience regularly

Perhaps you have clear customer profiles in mind already for your product or service. When was the last time you updated these? The likely answer is that you haven’t since they were first created.

I get it! You have so much on your plate that it’s hard to take the time to really look closely at your customer data. But it is essential to continuous business success. Go back to the data sources I mentioned previously, and any new ones you have picked up along the way. Keep an eye out for anything that has changed, and update your customer profiles accordingly. That way you can make any tweaks required to your messaging, product or service in real-time.

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I hope this blog has got you thinking about refining your target audience and making all of your marketing more specific to your key customer or customer groups. Do you have any other tips that you would like to share? 

It’s also okay if this information is a little overwhelming. It’s a lot to get your head around! Let me help take this weight off your shoulders. 

Work with me on a website copywriting project, and we will take the time to together to figure out exactly who your target audience is – and all of your copy will be written with them front of mind.

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