How to: Find out what your target audience wants

Find out what your target audience wants

Target audience is one of the crucial factors in any marketing campaign. If you don’t know who your target audience are, or what they want, or to who you intend to market your product, then you leave the results to dumb luck. And luck isn’t usually on the side of people with such an approach.

But even when you’ve already defined a target demographic that may be interested in your product, how are you supposed to get an insight into what they really want? There are always ways of doing things better, and getting some feedback is one of the best ways to do so. Here are some of the different ways you can get a glimpse of what your customers, existing and potential, think:

1. Surveys

Let’s start with something obvious. Surveys are an old and tested way of learning what people think and want. Yes, their efficiency is questionable: many people treat them as a part of information noise surrounding us at all times and hardly even register their existence before continuing about their business. However, among those polled there is always some percentage of those who answer, and if they take it upon themselves to spend time answering boring questions it probably means that they have some special interest in the subject matter.

Better yet, you are not limited to arranging your own surveys. You may study surveys carried out by others too.

2. Search for relevant keywords

This can help you find out what your market looks for, literally. For example, if you are selling dog food, you simply type ‘dog food’ into a keyword research tool of your choice and see what kinds of dog food people are mostly looking for. Of course, this example is a bit simplistic, and in reality you should carry out a more extensive research of your semantic core, but in the end it boils down to the same thing.

3. Web presence of your competitors

Another excellent source of information on your market are your competitors and websites associated with them. Some people consider this approach to be somewhat controversial, but I don’t think so. After all, business is based on competition, and what better way to compete with somebody than to find out how they do business? If, for example, their clients are obviously annoyed with some of their business practices, you can use this information to improve your own performance in this field and leverage the difference between your two business to your (and your target audience’s) advantage.

4. Comments

Comments exist to give people an opportunity to express their opinions, and very often they will use them to say what they think about your product, its positive and negative features. Moreover, your own websites and blogs are not the only place you can go looking for insightful comments. Take Reddit, for example – hundreds of thousands of people use it every day to discuss all kinds of things, and you can easily single out threads dealing with problems in the area of your business and look for valuable information. In addition to their primary promotional goal, they may be written in such a way as to encourage comments that can be of use to you and your business.

5. Social media

You probably knew it was going to come up sooner or later. Social media is a defining phenomenon of today’s world, and omitting it as a source of information would be foolish.

However, few things can compete with social networks for their sheer randomness – to an inexperienced eye they look and feel like a seething mass of senseless, inane chatter. Fishing out bits and pieces of useful data from this rambling mass of white noise requires skill and experience, so you should either go about acquiring them or hire somebody who is already there.

The easiest place to start is probably Twitter with its hashtags: they are easy to find, sift through and analyse, and you are likely to stumble upon conversations not only between your potential customers but also between industry experts who can give you some good ideas.

Facebook is another treasure-trove of potentially helpful data. Businesses often try to reach out directly to their customers on their pages, and customers are sometimes pretty direct about discussing their wants, needs and suggestions. Listen in and you will get an excellent opportunity to improve your business.

6. Forums

Mining for data through keyword research and Twitter hashtags can bring great results, but a personal touch may bring results that are just as good, if not better. Forums are places where people discuss their problems, ask for advice, look for solutions and mull over their positive and negative sides. A well-organised forum is a prime source of relevant information about your industry and what concerns people interested (or potentially interested) in your product. Listen to what they have to say, join the conversation and suggest a solution if you know you can help. Ask for their opinions and wishes – most of them will be happy to share their thoughts with somebody who has something to do with the industry they are interested in.

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