Knowing your target audience is an extremely important part of your business success that cannot be undermined.

Why?

Because they are your potential customers.

It’d be a futile effort to chase everyone online for your business because there is no way you can chase everyone and catch anybody.

And, It would be hilarious to see anyone do this. If you doubt me, imagine seeing many birds on a tree and attempting to catch them all with a sling and stone.

What will be the result? You’ll catch no bird!!

Why?

The reason is that you didn’t have a target. If you had aimed for one of the birds, you’d have had a good chance to catch it.

Unfortunately, the end result is zero.

This illustration was to give you a clear picture of what it means not have a target audience for your business.

To avoid wasting your time, resources, and ultimately becoming frustrated, it’s best to have a clear picture of the target audience you’re out to serve in order to have a share of the market.

This is extremely important, regardless of whether your business is online or offline.

It’s a standing principle for success.

If you have started your business or you are a  blogger and have not yet defined your target audience, then you have to do that urgently.

Defining your target audience should be the first step in your business development.

Your target audience is that person that is most likely to connect with your business or service and eventually become a paying customer.

The first thing to consider when you want to know your target audience is your niche. This is where you have your strength and where you want to operate from.

Knowing your niche is the first step in being able to identify your target audience. 

Want to know how to find a profitable niche? Check this out.

Let’s take an example to make the picture clearer.

Assuming you are in fashion. We know fashion is wide. Certainly, nobody will come into the market to sell something as generic as “fashion”.

But for the purpose of this example, let’s assume you claim fashion.

The first person you meet will most likely ask, “what kind of fashion are you into?”

Now, this is where you’re required to define your niche. That ‘s the specific area where you have your core competence.

Again, let’s assume you say, “men clothing.”

The person may go further to ask you, “what kind of men’s clothing are you into? Casual, corporate, plus size…?”

At this point, you’ve got to think hard.

What would you answer be – casual clothing for men?

Great! We’ll assume it’s casual clothing for men.

Perhaps, you may not want to cater to all men. Therefore, it’s necessary to define the age bracket for your business. (maybe age 18-35).

I hope you are beginning to get a good picture of your target audience?`

Let’s take it further, you may also decide to cater to the people in your locality alone.

To make the picture of your target audience clearer, you assemble your target audience profile using demographic factors. In other words, the basic background of  the audience you intend to aim at.This helps you know how to communicate with them.

Using the details you gave concerning your niche we should be able to create a good profile of the person you want to sell to using demographic factors. Such as; age, gender, income, location…

This is how easy it is to identify your target audience. And it’s applicable to every business irrespective of whether is online or a brick and mortar business.

Considering the information you provided us, let’s move on to create a profile of your target audience.

You target audience is a male in your locality that is between the age of 18-35 years, looking for casual wears.

In addition, seek to know their educational level, income level, and marital status.

When you are able to put all these together, then you would have succeeded in sorting out the profile of your audience according to demographic factors.

Having done all of the above, you should at this point have a vivid picture of your target audience.

Presumably, you should have built a good picture of the kind of person that will be buying your product or service. And you are able to fix a price range.

Now that you have a good picture of your target audience, how do you connect with them?

When you know all the above, you are on your way to connecting with the right customer for your business.

To connect with your target audience you have to know where they hang out?

• Look for the influencers in your niche. Google has made it very easy for us. Go to google and put in the keyword of your business, You find the influencers on the first page.

Go to their sites, and find out more about your target audience there. Find out what makes them tick; how these influencers relate with this audience, and where they meet. Do whatever it’s needful and ethical to locate them and identify with them. If you identify with what they identify with, you will be able to get them.

For example, if you know that they like a particular influencer, you have to learn how to get to that influencer. Perhaps, offer to guest post for the influencer and begin commenting on the influencer’s blog.

Just be there, make yourself known. They will identify with you; they will know you are there.

A hypothetical example of my experience

One lesson I’ve learnt as an online entrepreneur is that blogging is not a stand-alone business. You need to leverage on other bloggers to become successful. With this in mind, I decided to look out for influencers in my niche to connect with, by commenting on their post, following them on social media and also sharing their content with my readers when applicable.

The result from this is been awesome! I discovered most of them reciprocate my kind gesture.

This gives a synergistic effect because their followers also identify with my blog.

This is an effective strategy to drive traffic to your site immediately you publish a new blog post.

• Another way to find them is by checking newspapers, forums, and social media.

In which social media can you find and connect with your target audience?

Statistics show that highly educated and high-income users tend to adopt LinkedIn, women are skewed more to Pinterest, while teenagers use Instagram more.

Assuming, your target audience use facebook and not twitter, you will be wasting your time and resources trying to connect with them on Twitter.

If your target audience is a female, then you will definitely be looking at  Pinterest more to connect with your target audience.

Your target audience is very, very important to your business, influencers can help you. Knowing where they hang can help you identify with them.

It’s an indisputable fact that knowing your Target audience is instrumental to the success of your business and maximizes your revenue.

We learnt that knowing your niche is the first step in identifying your target audience.

In addition, we learnt that identifying with influencers in your niche and hanging out in the forum and social media they belong to can also help you locate your target audience.

There is no need wasting your time starting a business or blog and not knowing your target audience.

If your business is not gaining traction,  this may be the time to look more closely at the type of audience you’re pursuing. Are they the target audience for your business? I would recommend looking into this to get better result.

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