Finding your perfect match - Identifying your ideal audience

You may have landed on this article hoping for a guide to finding true love, or as the title says, your perfect match. You weren’t entirely misled. You see, marketing or even running a business for that matter is similar to dating. It’s all about finding the perfect match. The customer that will come to you and love you for who you are, warts and all. You want that special someone who shares similar interests to you and knows what you stand for and gets you.

In 2022 we’re lucky to have apps that allow us to find potential lovers without having to leave our house or office. They allow us to profile people: discovering what their hobbies are, their occupation, how many kids they may have, if they like long walks on the beach or prefer staying at home to game. We may even get their phone number without having met them in person. No, not Tinder, Bumble or Hinge but Facebook, Instagram, Google, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tiktok, and much more. 

So, you’ve put on your Sunday best and are looking stunning in 1080x1080, you’re ready to put yourself out there and find the love of your life. The question is where do you start?

Identify your niche

Tall, dark, and handsome? Am I right? When it comes to creating a targeted and effective marketing campaign, you can’t start strong if you don’t know who you’re trying to reach. Identifying a niche for your business is about knowing who will be most interested in what you have to offer, that may not be everyone! Being able to hone in on a specific group of consumers will help form an effective strategy and keep you focused when developing content.

Identify who shares similar interests

Unfortunately long walks on the beach isn’t, in fact, a target audience; however, there are lots of other conversation/thought starters to get you going. What are their demographics? What’s their income range? Where do they live? What kind of education do they have? Are they married or single? Do they have kids, pets, hobbies, and so on? Think through all these topics—and any others that are relevant to your business.

I know what you’re thinking. This is old school demographic and psychographic targeting. You’re right, but they still form the foundation of any campaign setup. Google and Facebook for example have thousands of topics you can choose from - too many to list here. My main piece of advice would be to take your time and manually look through all the options available.

One more thing - don’t lump all the variables into one audience, break them out and test what works. 

Know what you stand for

You must have an understanding of what you stand for, who you serve and how you intend to make a positive impact in their lives. This will help you refine your target audience. If these people don’t want something new in their lives, they aren’t a good fit for your product or service. Without knowing what makes them tick, how can you figure out which type of marketing would be most effective? There’s no point making your new romance a daisy chain when they are highly allergic to pollen. 

Marketing like a lot of situations in life (relationships) is a value exchange. You have to be as much of a fit for them as they are for you. 

Find out where they go online

No, you’re not being clingy! It’s honestly for the best. When you want to appeal to a specific audience, it’s important to know what websites they visit and how they spend their time online. Are they more active on Facebook than YouTube? More likely to log onto news sites or blogs? Do they prefer professional networks or forums like Reddit? Finding out where your target audience goes online is step one of planning a successful digital marketing campaign.

It can help when splitting out your budget. We, for example, have tech clients who are much better off going after the researchers and googlers who are information seekers versus our eCommerce clients whose target audience respond well to placements across social as that is where their audience hangs out. 

Marketing is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get. You never know who is actually going to respond well to your product or service and the ads promoting them. The key thing is to get in there and get started. Use all the resources at your disposal. There are heaps of free tools out there to aid you. Moreover, go on YouTube and see what others did, or even better, contact the Attention Agency and let us help you find your perfect match!