The more you know about your target audience the easier it will be to sell products and services to them. Sending large amounts of traffic to an untargeted audience is like throwing mud at a wall hoping it will stick. You can easily waste lots of time and money driving traffic to your website resulting in little or no sales. You need to zero in on the wants, needs and desires of your audience if you want to improve sales.
7 ways to identify your target audience
1. Meet with your customer
Having a live conversation with one of your potential customers helps get to know him or her better than if you just relied on electronic communication. Picture the person in your mind next time you need to create new content.
2. Find out where they spend most of their time online
Visit the places where your audience spends most of their time online. These include Forums, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. Create accounts for each of these properties then interact with your audience by answering and asking questions.
3. Read trade publications
Read magazines, newspapers, books related to your niche. There’s a high probability some of your potential customers are reading some of these publications.
4. Survey your audience
Survey your customers by using a free online service such as SurveyMonkey.com. Survey your newsletter subscribers, or add the survey to your blog. Use multiple choice questions to make it easy for them to reply. Provide an incentive for them to participate by offering them a free report.
Watch on YouTube: How To Identify Your Target Audience
5. Yahoo Answers
http://answers.yahoo.com/
This a free online service where you can ask questions and get answers on any topic from real people. Studying this valuable information will give you great insights about your target audience.
6. Keyword Questions
https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/keyword-questions
Utilize the keyword question tool from Wordtracker to find questions people enter into the search engines. Simply enter your root keyword in the search box and it will display the questions and how many times they have been asked.
7. Quantcast
http://www.quantcast.com/
Use this free online service for direct audience measurement. It includes traffic, demographics, business, lifestyle, interests and more.
Read this quote from the Quantcast Website:
With Quantcast, take your audience of thousands engaging with your site or product. Amplify your targeting to reach tens of millions more new customers like them.
How to write for your target audience
Write from the viewpoint of your ideal customer. There’s an Indian saying that says “Walk a mile in my shoes to understand me”. For example, if I’m selling a weight loss product, I would not target skinny people, but target those who are overweight.
Create a thumb nail sketch
- What are the most obvious problems they are having?
- What are their wants, needs and desires?
- What are their emotional hot buttons?
By answering these questions you can offer solutions to their problems. For example, let’s make a sketch of an overweight person.
- 30-50 years old
- Out of shape
- Married with children
- Under a lot of pressure
- Stressed
- Looking for ways to improve health and wealth
- Poor self esteem
When developing a new product, address one or more of their problems. Always refer back to your thumbnail sketch as you write the content. Elaborate on the points that fit your product and what it delivers. As you start writing, new ideas will naturally emerge, but always keep focused on your target audience so you deliver what your customer wants.
Make Sure Each Page Sells
Each page should emphasize the benefits in the headline, to pull the reader into the contents of your page. It should answer questions such as:
- What’s in it for me?
- Why should I spend my precious time reading this page?
Write as if you are talking to your friend. Make your copy read like you’re having a one-on-one conversation. Write from the viewpoint what your customer wants to buy, not what you want to sell to him or her.
Deliver the content in a clear, crisp way, being careful not to stray from the central purpose of what you promised in the headline.
Finally, make your customer want to click through to the next page or click through to your order page.
When you’ve identified your ideal audience and written copy tailored to solving their real problems, you’ll put them in a buying mood and convert more traffic into sales.
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