There are many things that need to be considered by a business owner when it comes to making a business plan. However, it is not all about business plan that should be well-thought out about. With the growing technology in this era where almost everything is digital, many business owners start making bigger efforts for their business, starting from hiring an agency that provides SEO services, web design or web development, arranging social media campaigns, hiring social media influencers, even to collaborating with other professionals in order to boost their business. However, if you are observant, you will see that above all that, there is just one thing that matters the most that they are willing to take up big efforts for their business. One thing, one sole purpose and one goal is; the audience. If you are a business owner, no matter how big your company is, if you don’t have any audience and prospect, it is just the same as nothing. For that reason, those kinds of efforts mentioned above (and there are still many more!) are required to be done in order to find audience.

That being said, finding audience is actually a step further. Before that stage, a business owner must first understand and identify their audience so that they will find the right target for their business, especially in SEO purposes. There are ways to understand and identify them and you can find out in this article. Keep reading to find out!

When it comes to finding a target audience, knowing the demographics and location of your prospects is not enough. So, I am going to say this once, you have to know about them as much as possible, including their interests, personality traits, values and opinions. Why? That’s because if you know about those mentioned above, this will help you find an accurate list of topics and keywords to target, make a high quality user experience, make a perfect message to encourage users to take action, optimise your content better, and find the key points in your market. For that reason, before proceeding further in business, you have to get to know your target audience better than even they do themselves.

Conduct a research

When you are looking for more information about your target audience, you need to conduct a research. The purpose of this method is to collect as many details as possible about the group of people you are targeting. From this, you can build personas that can be used as benchmark or guide for you to provide better services or products or marketing efforts for your target audience. There are many ways you can do to conduct this research:

• Social media. Yes, social listening is one of the best parts in “investigating” your target audience. By exploring through social media, you may find more useful and helpful information about your target audience. You can find what they like, what they don’t like, what they follow and what they are interested in.
• Reach out to your employees. Even though they are your employees, they are customers to the other businesses out there. Therefore, they can put themselves in customers’ shoes, including you. They know what they want as a customer, so you can ask them the “what ifs” questions and from there, you can take a note of what you should and shouldn’t do when you want to improve your business quality.
• Make a conclusion. After gathering as much information as possible, write them down and outline the whole points, so that you can make a conclusion from them.

Build personas

Now that you have all the data and the research you need, you can start creating your personas. So, what is a persona? A buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customer, based on market research and actual data about your existing customer base. While in the step one you collect more information about your target audience’s demographics, motivations, behaviours, and interests, this step is the voice from your ideal target audience. It is the depiction of your target audience that can be used as a bridge to more genuine conversations with your current and potential customers.

Building personas can be done by:

• Identifying all the personas you are targeting
• Writing a detailed description of each persona (basic demographic data, interests, goals, likes, dislikes, concerns, personality traits, problems)
• Acting on it based on the personas

When you put all of the personas you have built, you can view them as your real customers and find how you can interact with them better.

Find the right influencers of your target audience

Last move but not the least, you can find the right influencers based on your target audience. Influencers can help you increase your brand’s awareness and visibility. The way to find the right ones is by looking at your target audience. Find who have a direct influence on your target audience because they are the ones who may directly or indirectly influence your audience for purchasing decision. Influencers can be anyone on social media, such as celebrities, famous people on the internet, journalists, or even experts. It should be noted that social influencers don’t have to be actors, singers or anyone in the same entertainment industry. They are basically the ones who have built a substantial social following and engage with their audience on a regular basis.

How to find them, then? Here’s the example; if your business is about sport gears or sport wears, your target audience is most likely someone who is, let’s say, a health freak, someone who has absolute and strong passion in sports. Therefore, the right social influencers you should get are those whose page is about healthy lifestyle and those who love gym with daily content about healthy lifestyle, sports, gym tutorials and inspirations.

That’s how you understand and identify your target audience for your business. When you truly understand them, you can provide better quality of your business. No matter how big your marketing efforts for your business, the target is always the same; your audience. Therefore, keep your eyes open wide and be all ears.