How Do You Find Your Target Audience?

Finding your target audience may be incredibly challenging if you do not use market research. If you expect to get financing for your business, a lender will ask for market research information along with a good marketing strategy. If you do not even know who your audience is, you are in real trouble. To find your audience you need to start with a question: "what is my product going to solve?" As long as you have a product that is a solution to something, you will be able to find a target audience. Every single product out there is made for a specific purpose and for a specific group. It is up to you to do the research to figure out who and what your group is so you can make your business into a profitable enterprise. In this article we will explore several different ways in which you can locate your target audience and how you can start building upon your company's reputation.

What will attract customers?
Branding and good marketing is how you are going to educate your customers about your company and products but are they the only things that will attract customers to your organization? The best way to find out is to ask the customers themselves. How about using some market research surveys and other things to learn about your target audience and to find ways to effectively market to them? You can purchase or even download free software that will give you helpful insight into your customer's mentality. You can learn about your customer's interests by asking them directly through a market research survey. Keep the surveys short in order to gain information. If the surveys are too long people are not going to spend time on them. Depending upon your audience you might also need to focus on giving the customers some type of incentive. This is a great way to encourage them to take your survey and to get them to try out your products and services and to really see if you are using the right marketing efforts. Surveys can also give you clarity when it comes to future product development and marketing efforts.

Offline advertising efforts
A great way to find your target audience is to get out there and meet them. Offline advertising can be done in a number of ways. However one of the easiest ways is to send out print marketing messages and other things to see what type of response you can get. People that are interested in your products will end up responding and then you can start building relationships with them to see where to go from here. Do not engage in expensive marketing efforts like billboards and commercials until you are certain you have an audience to reach out to. Head to some conferences and events that you feel would be close to your niche market and rent a booth. This will allow you to explore your audience and to reach out to new people. You will be able to gauge the type of interest in your products and services and will be able to mingle with customers one on one.

Online advertising efforts
Your website will not get any activity if you do not promote it. You have to start advertising and really promoting your website in order to gather interest in your company. Target specific keywords and use social media and other places to start talking to your customers and learning if there is interest in what you have to sell. As you start to get traffic, your goal is to collect names to add to your marketing list.