4 Must-Know Facts About Your Ideal Client for More Effective Marketing
Understanding your target audience is more than just knowing their A/S/L (or if you weren't in Internet chatrooms or MSN years ago, that's age/sex/location for you).
So often, the first thing you're told to think about when figuring out your target audience is, “where do they live?”, “how old are they?”, “what's their gender identity (or sex)?”
And of course, you should know these things about your target audience… but they shouldn't be what you base your entire strategy on.
So today, we’re going to talk about the four things you need to know about your ideal client so you can market more effectively to them!
Why you need to know your audience’s psychographics to market effectively
It’s helpful to know your target audience’s geographic location, age, and gender, but those details alone don’t paint a clear picture of who your target audience is.
For example, if you were scoping me for your target audience based on this advice, you'd say:
Gender identity: woman
Age range: late 20s
Location: city in Canada
Education level: Master’s degree
If you’re reading that thinking, “those details don’t really tell me much about who you are”, you’d be right! They’re helpful in context to help you understand who I am, but they don’t paint the entire picture at all. And there are many women in their late 20s living in Canadian cities with a university education. I’m willing to bet we are all completely different! We all want different things, we're all at different places with our careers, and we all have different interests.
So while knowing your audience is women aged 30-40 living in Saskatchewan can be helpful, we need to contextualize it with other, more important details.
Four things you need to know about your target audience so you can market more effectively to them:
What do they want (that’s relevant to your business?):
People buy products or services because it fixes a problem or fulfills a need. What does your target audience truly want (that you can help them with)?
For example: you're a website designer for service-based businesses, and your audience wants to feel confident sending people to their website (instead of relying on Instagram or praying people don't Google you).
2. What are they interested in? What are they passionate about?
Understanding your target audience’s interests will help you write better copy that speaks directly to them! It will also help you understand what their priorities are, so you can include it in your copy.
For example: your target audience loves anything local. You'll find them downtown at their town's boutique Pilates studio, exploring their small town bookstore, and grabbing an iced vanilla latte before their workday starts.
3. Where are they at right now in their business/life (that’s relevant to your business)?
Get descriptive: what does a day in their life look like? How would your service or product make their life so much easier or better?
For example: you're an OBM, and your audience is struggling to balance admin tasks and client work, specifically client onboarding and management. By the time lunchtime rolls around, they're skipping lunch so they can send their onboarding doc to that new client. Their email inbox is full of clients with issues or even worse, clients sending, “hey, checking back in on that email I sent 2 weeks ago…”.
4. Who do they trust or interact with?
Understanding who your audience interacts with or trusts will help you figure out where they’re hanging out online! Bonus: it can help you figure out who to interact with online so your target audience sees your content (think collaborations)!
For example: you have a podcast for moms looking for the honest truth about running a business while being a stay-at-home mom. Your audience interacts with and trusts mom content creators, large toy companies like Lovevery, and educational parenting content.
Understanding your target audience is more than just rattling off details like their age range and location.
It's understanding your audience as people so you can truly connect with them through your marketing.
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