How to Get to Know Your Target Audience
When it comes to winning an election, selling a product, or communicating a message, you must know who your audience is and what motivates them.
Understanding your target audience’s pain points or problems helps you speak directly to them, so that your message resonates and gets them to act.
Often, when businesses or campaigns struggle, it is due to targeting the wrong people with the wrong message. This post outlines how you can get to know your target audience and how it will help achieve your goals.
The importance of knowing your audience
You wouldn’t try to sell a two-seat sports car to a mother of four toddlers – she’s unlikely to be in the market for that kind of car. Time that you spend trying to sell her a Lamborghini when she needs a minivan or SUV is time wasted. Knowing your audience helps you narrow down your focus, so that you speak to the right people and get them to take the action you want – like buying your product, voting for your candidate, or supporting your issue.
If you are campaigning on the issue of homelessness or addressing the housing crisis, you’ll need to figure out the people or voters who are most likely to be open to your message and vote for your cause. In addition to targeting people by political party, you could also use income level or zip code. You likely don’t want to send a message about homelessness to a zip code where residents are likely to oppose any support or measures to create affordable housing. These are just a few ways to segment your audience to deliver the most convincing message and nudge them to take your desired action.
How to learn about your audience
Once you’ve identified your audience, it’s extremely valuable to learn more about their preferences. One of the best ways to get to know your target audience is to conduct a poll. A standard poll in politics can be pretty expensive, but there are other options if you aren’t prepared to spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.
You can conduct an online poll directed to your target audience. Sent through email or via social media, you can work with a polling firm to come up with a series of questions to inform your understanding of your audience. Maybe there are some key issues that you’d like to draw a contrast to – come up with questions that help inform those issues and start soliciting feedback. Polls should inform you about top priorities or pain points – those are the areas that can motivate people to act. Make sure you ask the right questions to best understand your audience.
Even easier and more affordable – especially if you already have a following on social media – is conducting your own poll, without a firm. Using a tool like Survey Monkey or even the polls built into Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, you can poll your followers to learn more about their priorities, interests, or problems. This is a valuable way to learn where to focus your messaging or sales.
What to do once you narrow down your audience
Once you have a better idea of what your audience cares about, it’s time to start communicating with them. Depending on your target audience’s demographics, you can reach them in a number of ways.
In politics, direct mail is still a very valuable way to communicate, especially now that people are generally spending more time at home. Create a mail piece with a target message for your audience – getting something directly in their mailbox is a powerful way to meet them where they are and get on their radar. If you are a business, you could include a coupon or some other interactive item that gets the recipient to take an action, which can create a connection.
Digital advertising is another way to communicate. Using the poll-approved messaging, create a series of ads targeted to your audience. Facebook and other platforms allow you to target down to the zip code. Depending on the audience, you can, for example, target women with a focus on health care, men with a focus on small business support, and older adults with a focus on Social Security. This ensures that you aren’t generalizing but rather drilling down on the issues that matter to each group.
TV ads are another way to communicate with your audience. They tend to be more expensive and you can’t tailor them to your audience – you are casting a broader net with a more general message – but TV ads grab attention and raise name recognition and can often garner additional news coverage or interest to boost your brand awareness.
Conclusion
Once you’ve found a tool that reaches your audience, it’s critical that you repeat your use of this tool. Communication, no matter how well-crafted, can’t be a one-off strategy. Consistent, sustained exposure to a message is what breaks through.
You might not be able to afford to deploy your targeted messaging for months on end, so it’s equally important to be strategic about how you communicate based on your goals, and to adjust as you go. You can measure if your message is breaking through using polls, canvassing, or sales as barometers. If something doesn’t appear to be making it through the noise, try a different channel, and if people don’t seem to be resonating with your message, try a different one.
Ultimately, speaking to the right people is critical. The more you know about your audience the better – whether you are selling a product or a candidate, make sure you do the research to ensure you know your audience and are speaking directly to them.
