One of the most critical factors you should consider when building a successful brand is identifying your target audience. This will allow you to develop effective marketing strategies and increase brand equity. Any good marketing agency will be able to advise you that understanding your audience’s persona is not the end of the process.
This process should be regularly reviewed and refined to ensure you still get the most out of it. It’s also essential to keep up with the latest industry trends and social behaviours. Reviewing your audience persona will allow you to keep up with your audience’s evolving needs. Your brand could be in danger of stagnating or declining if you don’t have a well-defined audience persona.
Having an audience persona is like having an imaginary friend; instead, this is a marketer’s imaginary friend. This make-believe character allows marketers to identify their ideal customers. It’s super helpful to keep around when it’s time to create marketing campaigns and content strategies to target your target audience better. Get in touch with a marketing agency today for expert advice on building the right audience persona for your brand.
This article will teach you what a target audience is and how best to identify your audience persona.
What is a target audience?
A target audience is a group of people to whom your products or services are most useful and who will likely become customers of the business. When thinking of your target audience, they will likely share similar demographic traits such as:
- Age
- Education
- Location
- Gender
- Likes & dislikes
- Social status
- Hobbies & interests
However, as a marketing agency, whether you are a B2C company or B2B will depend on what traits your demographics may share. If you are a B2B business, some of the demographic traits you might want to review are as such:
- Location
- Industry size
- Company revenue & size
- Position within company
These demographic traits are not limited to the list above; you should gather as much information on the person(s) your company’s product or service is made for.
Steps Your Business Can Take To Identify Your Audience Persona
There are a few steps in which you can take to identify your audience persona before beginning to build it. These steps will help you breakdown what is in front of you to develop a better understanding of how to create the best-suited audience persona for your business.
Step 1 – Examine Your Business
Firstly, you’re going to want to examine your business inside and out. Explore what it is your business provides, and who your business naturally attracts.
Step 2 – Look At Your Competitors
Dive into their customer base and explore the type of people that it is built up of. This can give you an understanding of the type of people who are interested in the industry your product or service falls into
Step 3 – Analyse Your Current Customers
What do your current customers look like? Take a look at them and analyse the different types of people who are interested in your business.
How To Research Your Audience
When creating your brand strategy, you would have already considered things such as brand values and purpose, amongst other aspects. Using your understanding of those aspects, you can better research the persona of your audience.
You will want to ask questions about who that customer is and what they want. This could look like this:
- Who is my ideal customer? Gender and age?
- What products or services do they want or need?
- How can I reach them?
- How much do they earn? & are they willing to spend?
- Do they have children?
- What do they work as?
Building Your Buyer Persona
Consider as many personal questions about your ideal customer and be as detailed as possible. Then once you have answered as many questions as possible, you should begin building your audience persona in a written format. This doesn’t mean you should note, “My target audience is between the ages of 18 and 35, and they enjoy…”. Our advice is to get into the details and build this persona with the below examples in mind:
- Meet Elle; she is a 27 year old marketing executive who works remotely in London. She is single with no children and lives a fast-paced life with a busy social life. Elle enjoys visiting new restaurants with friends that are also dog-friendly and loves talking about all things fashion.
- Meet Mark. They are a 19 year old university exchange student from Spain studying architecture in London. They are in a long-distance relationship and currently live by themselves. Besides learning, Mark works long hours to afford his passion for travelling worldwide. When he’s not working or studying, he enjoys exploring the city.
- Meet Sarah; she is 45 years old and a CEO of a brokerage firm in London. She is married with no children and doesn’t have a healthy work/life balance. She spends most of her time in the office, meeting clients and running her own business. She is a decision-maker and doesn’t have much time for a social life. If she is not in the office, she is in the gym, and if she is not at the gym, she is at home tending to her garden for downtime.
To Conclude
Understanding your ideal customer is the first step in how best to create your audience persona. Remember to ask everyone you might ask someone you’re meeting for the first time and begin building them from scratch. The more personas you create, detailed with your audience’s shared demographic traits, the easier it will be to target them! If you want more help, contact a digital marketing agency for guidance.
Article by Born Realist