Understanding Your Audience
Whether you are writing an article or selling a product, the ability to reach your target audience comes down to how well you understand to whom you are speaking. It’s not enough to look at data insights for demographic descriptions and characteristics, you must find out what makes them “tick” and how what you have to offer brings value to their lives.
As consumers, we endure a constant barrage of branding, advertising, and marketing and have become quite effective in ignoring those things that are not relevant to what we think, live, or believe. The same is true for the person you are trying to reach.
Sure, we can use catchy ad phrases or click bait, but just as you feel annoyed when the product does not deliver what the tagline promised, so shall your audience quickly leave your presence and be very reluctant to trust anything else from your brand.
If you are already established, one of the best ways to understand your customer base are short surveys and polls. These can be two or five questions that take a deeper look into a specific area instead of generic questions to determine whether they like you. Instead think about their experience with your brand and ask if any aspect can be improved.
For example, here are questions related to a retail customer:
1. When you last visited our store, how easy was it to find an associate to help you?
a. Very easy
b. Somewhat easy
c. Never found anyone to help
d. Didn’t need help
2. Did they take you to what you were looking for or just give directions?
a. Took me to the item
b. Gave directions
c. Didn’t know where it was
d. Found it myself
3. Did they smile and greet you as you approached?
a. Yes
b. No
c. Don’t remember
4. How satisfied were you with how long it took to check out?
a. Very satisfied
b. Somewhat satisfied
c. Took way too long
5. What would have made your last visit better?
a.________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
As you can see, this poll used a variety of response techniques from a Likert scale to typing a response. This method will keep the customer more engaged than simply rating from 1 to 5. The questions are also very specific to the process of them making a purchase, which makes it easier for the customer to recall the experience.
Once you have this data, you should not only be looking for opportunities for improving customer experiences, but a better understanding of what is important to them as individuals.
If you received 100 surveys and 85 said the associate smiled and greeted them when they approached, you can use images of smiling employees in your marketing. Give your team buttons with a smile on it and the phrase “because of you”.
Combining that information with demographic characteristics will make your branding and marketing more effective as you engage your customers and potential customers on the various forms of media from texting to social media. More importantly, it gives the customers the feeling you understand who they are and what is important to them, which can lead to loyalty to your brand and long-term sustainability.
If you are a start-up or new to a market, take the time to look at your top three competitors. Go to their Google Business page and read the first twenty or so reviews. Find out what is being said in social media groups and how each company responds. Click on the name of the person leaving the review or comment and look at their posts to get a feel for who they are. If you do that for ten or twenty people, it will give you a starting point for your marketing and branding that you can adjust as you gain customers and data.
Startups can use polls as well, but I would keep it to one question geared around your specific industry and what the customers are interested in seeing change or be added. For example, we were building a restaurant concept for a client and posted the question, “what types of food would you like to see added to our city”. We received over 200 suggestions and more than 1,400 people who liked the post responses.
The purpose was not for our client to create one of the concepts suggested, but to understand what types of cuisines the market was missing and what items to add to his menu as a new restaurant. As he grows, he can use surveys and polls to gauge performance, customer satisfaction, and their overall brand experience.
We must remember our audiences are people just like us and want to feel valued and appreciated. By taking the time to get to know them better, we can not only make more money, but grow as we provide what is important to them and they share their experiences with their friends and family, as well as on social media.
