How To Identify Your Target Audience

When it comes to marketing, identifying your target audience is the key to getting the results you are looking for. If you are marketing to everyone, you are marketing to no one. The most important part of your marketing strategy is identifying your target audience.

JUST SAY “NO” TO KEYWORD STUFFING

Unfortunately, a lot of content creators believe that keyword stuffing their sites will get them a lot of traffic. Not so. Concentrating on a particular audience is more powerful than concentrating on keywords alone.

As a real estate agent, it is important to know your target audience in order to place the correct keywords in your content. Keywords drive traffic to your site but a target audience will engage with your site.

Producing fun-to-read, educational content will resonate with your audience as well – resulting in more organic traffic, social shares, and increased overall engagement.

Investing in audience research is investing in a loyal audience.

DEFINING YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

Target marketing allows marketers to focus their message on a defined market that is more likely to purchase from them than other markets.  By identifying and defining your target audience, you tailor your message, increasing efficiency while decreasing costs and wasted time efforts.

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

The first step in identifying your target audience is by understanding their problems and needs. They have problems. You have solutions.

List your audience’s specifics needs and identify the products and services that you offer that would address those needs and help solve their problems.

CURRENT CUSTOMERS VS. TARGET AUDIENCE – REVIEW & ANALYSIS

A common challenge that I have seen in with my clients is  understanding their current customers.

A customer analysis can help you identify customer psychographic and interest trends, demographic patterns, lifestyle preferences, and other key indicators that you may have overlooked.

A customer analysis also allows you to see any gaps between your current active customer base and your desired target market. If your business isn’t where you want it to be, you could be tailoring your message to the wrong people, or targeting the right people with the wrong message.

It is very common for many business owners to think they know who their ideal client is, and when the data comes back, their customer is a bit different from what they thought.

While I use paid programs to help run Customer Analysis profiles for my clients, here are a few free tools I recommend to help get you headed in the right direction.

3 TIPS TO IDENTIFY YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS

Social networks are key target audience research opportunities.Your social media posts will tell you which content is performing well with which audience, revealing audience pain points that can be used in specializing your offers to your market

By listening and interacting with your audience on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn – wherever your audience hangs out really. You can also analyze your Social Media posts and channels to help you understand the language and colloquialisms your audience is using.

Using similar language in your posts, your emails, marketing messages, and one-on-one interactions will help your audience to feel like you are part of their tribe – a psychological concept called mirroring – which can grant you more trust in becoming “the expert” for your service for that target audience.

Social Media polls are another great way to gain valuable insight into what your audience wants to know more about.

If you want to know how you can serve your customers and your audience better – just ask.

MARKET RESEARCH

Surveys

If your target audience is in alignment with your current customer base, you can use customer surveys to find out what they love (and don’t love) about your service.

I like doing these on an annual basis. It helps me discover ways that I can serve my clients better in the future, as well as reveal new service opportunities for the coming year.

Survey Monkey is a great, free tool that you can use to start compiling the answers you need to shift your marketing efforts.

Gaining a better understanding of your audience’s characteristics with a survey is an easy win.

Interviews

Interviews, while more time-consuming, reveal  terrific insights about your target audience.

As a realtor, you are already doing this during a potential client meetup for coffee, or when a prospect enters your office or calls you on the phone to learn about your services. Listen closely and have a few regular questions that you ask every prospect.

Examples include:

“How did you hear about me?”
“What made you decide to reach out to me?”
“What 3 things are most important to you when buying/selling/renting your home?”

(Example answers: “Time – I need to move fast so sell it quickly. Time – I don’t like a lot
of interruptions, so 5+ showings a day will make me feel anxious.”)
“Give me an example of what you think 5-star service looks like.”

Benchmarking

“Imitation is the greatest form of flattery.” Charles Colton

I’ve also heard it said that we “find our voice by imitating the voices of others” though, the author of that quote was harder to nail down.

Your USP is you.

Your unique audience and how you serve them – also you.

But if other realtors in your farm area are going after the same audience as you, a SWOT analysis is in order.

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It’s a simple template that  can help you review your competition against yourself and find the ways that you can soar above them with your messaging and offers.

WHY IS KNOWING YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE IMPORTANT?

A target audience helps a company develop an effective marketing strategy.  You will be able to craft the message that will appeal specifically to them.

Not all companies have the resources to reach everyone, and identifying a target market enables them to market efficiently and save money.

Real estate businesses of any size can compete very well when they serve a particular market.

CONCLUSION

• Marketing to everyone at once is costly. The most efficient and affordable way to reach your consumers is to target a particular group.
• A target audience could share characteristics such as location, profession, marital status, income, age, and education level.
• Market research can reveal audience characteristics and pain points. These tactics provide a business with information on the people who really need their products or services.
• Narrowly defining your target customers will enable you to craft compelling advertising campaigns as well as be more specific in your offers
• Identifying a target audience helps confirm you as the market expert, reduces marketing costs, gives you clarity to say “No” to marketing efforts and sales tactics that wouldn’t appeal to your market, and helps you focus on the key social platforms that your market is on – deterring you from having to maintain every social media marketing channel.