Audience research helps you identify and understand your market. The knowledge you gain allows you to fine tune your marketing, products, and services to better address the needs of your target audience. You can uncover new marketing opportunities and make a stronger impression on potential customers. Here’s how.
What is Audience Research and Why Do It?
Audience research involves learning more about your target audience. It requires you to research and analyze the characteristics of a specific group of people.
Researching your target audience helps you determine their biggest sore points and attitudes on various subjects. The research also helps marketers determine how consumers spend their time online and offline.
Using surveys, questionnaires, and other resources, businesses can find out where a target audience gets its information and how best to reach them with advertising.
For example, you may find that your target audience prefers to use a specific social media platform or connects more with a specific type of content.
Your target audience’s sources of influence include the marketing channels and types of content that they are likely to use and rely on. Some consumers only trust information from specific sources. Understanding where to advertise can dramatically improve your marketing efforts.
Taking the time to better understand your target audience can provide you with a competitive advantage. You can focus on a niche group of potential customers and establish the authority of your brand.
So, how do you perform audience research and use it to boost your marketing efforts? Use this free step-by-step guide to easily research your audience’s sources of influence.
How to Research Your Target Audience’s Sources of Influence
Researching your target audience’s sources of influence involves multiple steps:
- Define your target audience
- Research your audience’s habits
- Identify the right type of content
- Choose the best marketing channels
- Experiment with different strategies
You need to identify your target audience and find out where they spend their time. Your research will help you determine what type of content and channels to use for your marketing campaign. Here’s a closer look at each step.
Define Your Target Audience
Your target audience is the group of consumers who are most likely to want your products or services. Marketing to a broad audience results in wasted spending on ads, as a larger portion of your advertising fails to connect with consumers.
Businesses often define target audiences based on the following details:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Income
- Profession
- Interests and hobbies
You may define your target audience using several of these characteristics. For example, you may choose to target men over the age of 40 with a sizable income or in a specific city.
A target audience is a segment of a broader target market. Your target market is the general group of people who are likely to use your products or services.
For example, if you design websites, your target market may include small business owners. A target audience within this market may include small business owners in a specific industry or small business owners in a certain region.
Your target audience may depend on your business goals. If you want to increase market penetration, you should focus on your existing customer base. If you want to reach new customers, use competitor research and existing market data to analyze your new target audience.
Create a Buyer Persona
Creating a buyer persona for your target audience can help you and your team maintain consistency throughout your marketing campaigns. A buyer persona provides a clear description of the type of consumer that you want to target.
A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. Create a buyer persona using the defining characteristics of your target audience. You give the customer a name, age, gender, profession, interests, and hobbies. Include as many details as you think are relevant.
Research Where Your Audience Spends Their Time
Learn more about how your target audience spends their time, both online and offline. Here are some of the main sources for learning more about your customers:
- Customer surveys
- Questionnaires
- Online feedback
- Market research
- Competitive analysis
Customer surveys and questionnaires allow you to receive answers to specific questions. You can directly ask customers about their preferences and interests.
For example, you may ask customers how they search for new products, what social media sites they prefer to use, and what sources they trust the most for information. The answers that you receive can help shape the direction of your marketing campaigns.
Online feedback is also a good source of information about your audience’s habits. Use online reviews and social media posts to read honest opinions from your customers.
Use market research to uncover gaps in service that your products or services can fill. Market research can also help you determine the size of your target audience. You can analyze the potential room for growth based on the size of your niche market.
Whether you plan on increasing your share of your current market or reaching new markets, you should perform a competitive analysis. Look at the marketing tactics used by your most successful competitors to find out how they connect with customers.
Identify the Type of Content Your Audience Finds Engaging
Along with knowing how your audience spends their time, you should learn what type of content they trust most. The main types of marketing content include:
- Blog posts
- Emails
- Social media posts
- Video content
- Webinars
- Case studies
Here are a few methods that you can use to determine which type of content your audience will find most engaging:
- Analyze your best-performing content
- Review statistics for your target audience
- Look for trends in your target audience
- Review statistics for your target audience
Start by analyzing your best-performing content. If you use Google Analytics or another web traffic analytical tool, you can sort traffic based on demographic data to focus only on traffic from your target audience. The best-performing content may include articles or landing pages that resulted in more conversion rates or greater traffic.
Use existing statistics to determine the type of content that your target audience consumes most and least. For example, 50% of podcast listeners are between the ages of 12 and 34. If your target audience is older, you may need to rely on a different type of content.
You can also analyze the latest trends among your target audience. Use tools such as Google Trends and Sparktoro.com to receive the latest insight into how your audience uses the internet. You may find specific keywords, searches, or topics that are popular among your chosen audience.
Determine Which Channels Can Best Reach Your Target Audience
Identify the channels that you should use to reach your target audience. The most popular marketing channels include:
- Email marketing
- Social media marketing
- Online advertising
- Influencer marketing
- Content marketing
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Direct selling
- Offline marketing
The demographics of your target audience will help narrow down the selection of marketing channels to two or three of the most popular options.
People between the ages of 35 and 44 use email more than any other age group. People 65 and older are more likely to respond well to traditional offline marketing, such as direct mail and direct selling. Direct selling is also a popular choice for high-ticket items for those with large disposable incomes.
While most internet users have social media accounts, different age groups prefer different platforms. YouTube is the most popular among teenagers and young adults. Facebook tends to skew older.
Identifying the right channels allows you to find your target audience’s sources of influence. This includes the websites, social media accounts, and publications that your audience trusts most.
Experiment with Different Strategies
Start experimenting with different marketing strategies while incorporating the information that you uncover from your target audience research.
Continue to test strategies until you find what works best for your business. However, avoid making too many changes too quickly.
A/B split testing is a common method for testing marketing strategies without making drastic changes. Running a split test involves releasing two versions of the same marketing material.
The two versions contain one noticeable difference, such as a different headline or graphics. You can then analyze the success of each version to determine which tactic worked best. With each new A/B split test, you learn a little more about what works and what doesn’t.
Audience Research Tools
You should use a variety of target audience research tools to learn more about user behavior and demographics. Two of the most used options include Google Trends and Sparktoro.com.
Google Trends
Google Trends provides data based on search requests made to Google. Marketers can use the data to analyze the latest trends, such as popular search queries.
Sparktoro.com
Sparktoro offers accurate market insight and audience research. You can review demographics, sources of influence, text insights, and more.
Along with Google Trends and Sparktoro.com, you should use our free step-by-step guide to research your audience’s source of influence. Follow clear steps for learning more about your target audience and how to reach them.
Conclusion
Knowing how to research target audience trends and sources of influence can boost your marketing. It helps you determine which sources your audience trusts the most for reliable advice and suggestions. You can identify the best types of content and marketing channels for reaching new customers.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.
Along with our step-by-step guide to audience research, you can find a variety of lists and templates for streamlining your business in our marketplace.
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