Know Your Target

Communicating and getting your message, product or idea across to other people is a challenging task. Unlike, the old days when the word of mouth or simply TV advertisements were enough to attract your audience, nowadays, selling your product, service or even a piece of information needs a lot of pre-planning. The first and foremost step when pre-planning something is to know who you wish to target and to find out what your specific target audience is looking for.

Getting to know your target is not as easy as it is to know who you want to target. Knowing your target means that you are aware of what they want, what they don’t want, what they like about your company/ industry or what they dislike; where do they rank you in comparison to other competitors in the market. Therefore, finding out answers to all these questions is important when it comes to selling your brand/product/service, etc.

Following is a list of ways through which you can find out answers to the questions mentioned above. All you need to do is to read them carefully.

1) Market Research in Specific Industry: One of the most important steps that you have to take before coming up with something is to research. Market research is very important because it tells you what your audience expects; whether they want something better or something completely new.

In a complex society, one cannot definitely go door-to-door for surveys i.e. if you plan to do something on a big scale. This is when and where technology knocks your door offering you help doing market research in your industry. There are many sites where you can find a lot of research material. A few of them are as follows:

1. a) eMarketer- is a place where you can get free articles related to your industry. eMarketer is not limited to articles; it also gives detailed reports, but these reports are charged and are costly.
2. b) Plunkett Research- is another website that will give you a detailed analysis of your industry and relevant insights that will help you grow your business/project. Plunkett Research also gives paid reports.
3. c) Hitwise- This website is also a good source for market research. They charge for reports and for conducting research.
4. d) Valuation Resources- is another website that provides free online industry information, economic data and lots more. It is a good guide that you can have but like other websites, Valuation Resources also give paid reports.
5. e) Forrester- Forrester helps you gain insights into specific industries so that you can know what direction to take. It gives you free reports and that’s a plus point.

2) Social Media Research Strategy– Another way of knowing your target is to know what they think, write and feel about your industry. Social media is a great way of connecting to your brand advocates. Additionally, social media is a great platform for gathering insights about your industry.

This strategy will help you to collect enough information so that you can analyze it and extract information relevant to your industry. This way you can take a preplanned approach when entering your industry with calculated risks or if you are already in the industry, social media insights will be of great help when it comes to improving your current position in the industry.

3) Knowing through On-site Search Queries– Knowing your target means that you know them enough to actually come to some sort of a conclusion as to what the majority thinks about you and your brand. A good way of knowing your audience is through site feedback.

Keeping track of what people are looking for on your site, what they could find; and what they were unable to find is a useful piece of information which in technical terms is your site’s feedback. With the help of the feedback, you can decide what to do next and how you can make your site/product better.

4) Using Tools to Know Your Audience– There are many tools that can help you gather some deep insights and strong feedback from your industry. Click-tracking and heat maps are very popular tools that gather site feedback for you. These tools tell you whether:

• You are getting views on primary CTAs or not.
• If there are any links that are not being viewed entirely.
• If you are getting visitors to those pages you wish to attract them too.
• If there is any content that has not been seen by the visitors or has not been viewed at all.

In a nutshell, knowing your target means that you work to find out about their like, dislikes and wants. Once you know this, that’s when you really know your target.

InView Marketing welcomes your queries. Call us to sign up today!