Starting and running a new business involves a lot of moving parts. You have your marketing, accounting, operations, human resources, and the product or service itself. One aspect of running a business that is integral to success is choosing a target audience and reaching them effectively. If you have a product specifically for high school students but aren’t getting them to your website, something is wrong.

Finding the right target market and the right message for your website is not an easy task. It involves a lot of strategy and communication so that you can reach your target audience and boost sales. To help you find the right target audience for your website, we have a list of things you can do that can help narrow it down.

Digital infographic displaying plan for increasing web traffic

What Is A Target Audience?

To truly identify the best target audience for your website, you have to first understand what a target audience is. Basically, your target audience is who you want your website to reach. Think of it as an ideal customer that you’d want your website to attract.

Your exact target audience is a precise group of people that you want to cater to with your product or service. It could be as specific as middle-aged men who enjoy football or new moms who are looking for clothes for their babies.

Why Is A Target Audience Important?

Even though it may seem like a simple aspect, your target audience is a foundational component of your business. This audience is who your product or service is for. You want to suit their wants and needs.

When you focus on a specific group of people, you are able to create marketing material that directly reaches them. You will want to understand a lot about this group of people, which is why market research is so important when it comes to your advertising efforts. Separating your target audience into segments (through market segmentation) can help you define your audience even further. Ideally, you want to be pretty specific when it comes to segmenting your audience. This can help when marketing to your audience through different channels and methods.

If you do not have a solid grasp of your target audience, you may find that your marketing efforts are not yielding great results. Whether that means your website isn’t gaining traffic, your product isn’t selling, or your social networks aren’t growing, understanding your target audience can make a huge difference.

Digital marketer identifying target audience on social media

Finding The Right Target Market For Your Website

Do Your Research

The target audience research phase is an integral step when deciding which target market is right for your website. Before you find your target audience for your website, you will want to gain as much information about potential audiences as possible. Some of the information that you will want to pay attention to can include things like:
  • Audience Behavior
  • Income Level
  • Spending Habits/Purchasing Power
  • Interests
  • Education Level
  • Demographic Data (location, age, etc)
  • Social Media Habits

Ask Questions

For marketers, asking questions about an audience can help when creating materials to put out to the public. Some questions that you can ask when defining your target audience include:
  • What are their needs? What are their wants?
  • What type of person are they?
  • Where do they usually shop?
  • What are they like on social media?
  • How does your product or service meet their needs and wants?
  • What differentiates you from your competitors?
Answering these questions can not only help you narrow your audience but can help you understand your own brand even better. Specifically, understanding how your brand can meet their needs and how you differ from the competition is important information that can help you throughout all of your strategizing.

Keyword & SEO Research

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an extremely vital step, especially in regards to increasing traffic to your website. To optimize your website content, it’s important to conduct keyword and SEO research. Having quality content is great; but, if it’s not optimized and doesn’t include effective keywords, your website will not gain traction with your target audience.

This kind of research also goes hand in hand with keyword research and your SEO efforts. Understanding the topics that these consumers search for can help you with your content marketing strategy. Inserting keywords that your target market regularly looks up can help draw them to your website with relevant content for them to peruse. Reviewing your google analytics and SEO score can help you create a content strategy that increases website traffic.
All of this data can help you narrow down a wider audience to a more precise group that you want to target with your website.

Searching for SEO keywords on Google

Look At Existing Customers

Another form of audience research involves examining your current customers. To help you find your potential customers, it’s helpful to also look at the customers you already have. If you have a particular group viewing your website, clicking on your landing pages, and following you on social media, it’s smart to look at their information and see exactly what kind of habits, interests, and behaviours they have.

Think back to the questions that you asked when researching. Answer these questions again but with your existing followers or clients in mind. In other words, put yourself in their shoes. Examining these answers can provide important insight that can shape your advertising strategy.
These audience insights and demographic characteristics can paint a picture of the ideal consumer and can help you determine the right marketing message that is needed to reach the target audience.

Check Out The Competition

Another way you can start defining your target audience is to look at direct competitors and their websites. Let’s say you’re a female clothing brand and you want to narrow your scope. Looking through competitors’ websites, social media following, and brand image can help you identify their target audience. This, in turn, can aid you in determining the target market for your brand. You do not have to target the exact same segment as your competitor, but looking at them can give you an idea of what works and what doesn’t.

Review Your Social Media Marketing

If you want to see who is already interested in your brand, a great way to find this out is to look at your social media sites and look at the type of people that follow you. Your target audience matters and it’s important to look at your social networks to see how they interact with your brand. Sometimes you will find that your intended audience is not the same as your real audience.

Review your Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook insights to see what kind of interactions you have on these social media platforms. You will also want to look at your google analytics and see how your ads are performing. All of this review is beneficial when crafting material for your social media accounts and website.

If you’re not reaching your potential customers, you may have to make some changes. This is yet another form of audience research that is needed in this stage. Doing so can help you improve your messaging and narrow down your target audience for your website.

Building blocks with social media platform logos

Build Buyer Personas

A buyer persona is like an industry secret. These personas are abstract representations of your ideal audience that can help advertisers and marketers focus their time and attention on them. These personas are crafted after real customers and are meant to be standards for a target customer. Creating personas can help marketers identify their target audience, craft messages that specifically reach their target audience and bring in more traffic to their website.

These buyer profiles are popular in the marketing industry because it allows marketers to develop a deep understanding of their customers. Ideally, the more specific a profile is, the more you can create advertising materials that will cater to your audience. To create a persona, look for a free template online and examine your current customer base to figure out what your target audience is.

Digital marketing agent developing buyer personas

Developing A Marketing Strategy for Your Target Audiences

Once you have identified the specific target audience for your website, it’s time to develop a digital marketing strategy that can drive the customers to your website landing page. Taking advantage of things like Facebook ads, swipe-up features, and email marketing techniques with clickable ads can help you determine where your visitors click. Understanding the types of marketing materials that work for your audience can help you craft effective messages that reach the intended audience.

Use Your Date Effectively

Using the data that you mined about your target audience can also help with your advertising techniques. Call back to the spending habits, behaviours, and purchasing power that your audience has and create material that correlates with this information. Refer back to the questions and answers that you asked along the way. Make sure you take the data and implement campaigns that are backed by research. There has to be a connection between the data and the marketing messages. If not, you will miss reaching your target audience and research will not be useful.

Evaluate Your Efforts

When creating your strategy, it’s important to evaluate before and after you run campaigns. Reviewing your Google analytics, interactions on a Facebook post, website traffic, and other social media stats can assist you in developing content that is effective and draws people to your landing pages. Evaluating your marketing plans can help you:
  • Avoid costly mistakes before they happen
  • Craft alternative strategies
  • Increase marketing efficiency and effectiveness
  • Identify response models for your target audience
If you fail to evaluate your advertising efforts, you may miss out on reaching your audience or increasing website traffic. This missed step could end up costing you in revenue and marketing expenses in order to bring back your audience.
Blueprint detaling web traffic projections
Overall, each of these things will help you bring your target audience to your website for your product or service. When defined correctly, your target audience can help grow your business and increase website traffic.

Caseo Is Here to Help

Finding a target audience and developing campaigns that effectively reach them can be a tricky set of tasks. Hiring a digital marketing agency can help make this task easier for you. If you’re ready to start finding your target audience for your website, Caseo is here to help.

Who Are We?

Caseo is a team of digital marketing professionals that specializes in Search Engine Optimization services to help businesses grow online and reach their intended audiences. With services that include website building, social media marketing, SEO solutions, brand design, and online advertising, we are qualified to help you reach your goals.

Get In Touch With Us Today

Invest in your future with Caseo! We’d love to meet with you to discuss your goals and how Caseo can help your business reach its potential. Connect with us today and get started on your business plans for the future!