Creating your target audience does take some time and research. But with these steps you will be on your way.

Compile data on your current customers. Write it down, create a list, or input it in a spreadsheet. It’s important to know their demographics, psychographics, and their spending habits. Information about your customers will help you create the right messaging for your brand to connect with them and to attract new customers to your business. 

Look at website and social media analytics. Connect your website to Google Analytics. For Instagram, make sure you have at least 100 followers and a business account to access your profile’s insights. It’s a lot easier to read the analytics on Twitter if you log in to your account on the website versus the mobile app.

Check out the competition. How are your products or services different from your competitors? What problem are you solving that your competitors are not solving? The uniqueness of your business is your competitive advantage. This means that your brand has an advantage over the competition because you have something that they don’t. Your uniqueness factor is what you can use to attract a specific target audience.

Be clear about the value of your product or service. How does your product or service improve your target audience’s life? The people who need this are part of your target audience.

If you created your business to solve a problem for yourself, then you are part of your target audience.

Find the commonalities between you and your customers to create a profile to describe your target audience.

Create a target market statement. It’s one sentence. It’s not really for external use; add it to your brand guide. Here’s an example: {name of business} target market are {gender-omit if not gender specific} ages {age range} who live {location or area} and like to {name some of their favorite activities}.

Test social media ads on your target market. Do some ads geared towards a few different audiences. The engagement will give you a clear idea of which content performs better with your target audience. We suggest an A/B test. 

Revisit your audience research as needed. Is this target audience still part of your customer base? Have you added new target audiences because you’ve grown? Take a look at how your sales have changed over the past few months and figure out if you’re attracting new types of customers or if you are losing customers because your products or services are relevant anymore. 

Your target audience is not a “set it and forget it” component of your business.

Your target audience changes and your brand needs to change to stay relevant. Get to know your customers as much as you can to find similarities between your brand and your customers.