Do you know your audience? If you don’t what do you have to do to know your audience? Knowing your audience makes a lot of difference in your business.
Ever wondered why some businesses hit the bullseye with their products or services while others miss the mark? They don’t have a magic trick—it’s about knowing who you’re selling to.
In this article, I will help you know and understand your audience and what makes them tick.
Knowing your audience is like making a new friend. You’d ask questions, and learn about their likes and dislikes, right? The same goes for your customers.
We will explore easy steps to get to know your audience better, like putting together their profile and understanding where they live and what they love.
Knowing your audience is the secret code that boosts your business success. And in the Start Your Business in 30 Days Course, I take our entrepreneurs on a whole different journey of customer discovery.
The participants of the Start Your Business in 30 Days program during the customer discovery module prepare their customer avatars which I review and give them practical feedback that helps their businesses stand out. If you want an expert to hold your hands and guide you in your business journey, click here.
Let’s dive in and make understanding your customers as simple as saying hello to a friend!
Questions That Will Help You Know Your Audience
As a business owner or aspiring business owner, you have to be clear about the people in your target market.
Think through the following questions:
- What problem(s) are you trying to solve with your business?
- Who are you trying to sell your product or service to?
- Do you have a wide audience?
- Do you need to niche down?
- What type of person will pay a premium for these services or products?
- Are there enough premium buyers for your products or services to sustain your business?
- Who has already bought or asked for these services or products?
- Is your service localized? (meaning, can it be sold anywhere or is it targeted to a particular location).
Ponder on these questions. There are still more questions you need to answer correctly so you can lock down your audience and provide a service or product they need and are willing to pay for. At the Start Your Business in 30 Days program, we dive deeper with the questions.
Know Your Audience and Build the Right Product
Quite commonly, services or products built by tech entrepreneurs in Africa do not serve the core needs of the African market as there is either no market for such products or they are a copycat of a Western world product.
Products built with Africans in mind to solve local and peculiar challenges are better appreciated. The challenges in the Western world are quite different from ours and so your product and service must meet the need(s) of the market where you operate.
For instance, entrepreneurs in Nigeria need reliable internet and electricity; the right resources to start and grow their businesses; the right visibility for their brands; and the right legal resources to register and structure their businesses. These are the problems that the ReDahlia brand is built to solve.
Answer These Questions For Your Business
Who are our solutions targeted at? Entrepreneurs. Is our audience too broad? You can say yes but we have products and services that are tailored to both established and small businesses.
Are our services localized? Given that our business is tech-enabled, we serve clients from all over the world through the Entrepreneurs.ng platform.
Who would pay the premium price for our service? Companies whose target market is the target audience we serve on Entrepreneurs.ng. Are clients asking for our service? Yes, they are. We have worked with and are currently working with lots of entrepreneurs and companies.
Follow the example above; ask yourself questions and answer them to get insights into who your target audience will be.
Create A Demographic of Your Audience
You may want to start by creating a demographic of the audience that you are trying to target. You cannot afford to do a mental calculation on this one. Write it down. Let us start with the basics.
What is the age, location, gender, income, education, occupation, marital status and number of children of your target audience?
Now, you might not have all this information but, you can try to find out online. This you can do by finding out who the customers of your competition are. You can also ask your friends. You can start to get an idea of the age range, and location of this demographic and from there, you develop a customer profile.
A Customer Profile
A customer profile is important for several reasons. It will help you make the right decision on how to brand, and how to target ads on social media and other platforms. Also, profiling your customers will help you develop a tone and personality for your brand across your website and other marketing strategies.
To create a customer profile, you have to combine demographic and psychographic information. The demographic information is what has just been discussed.
Psychographic information includes the personal interests, hobbies, values, attitudes, lifestyles, etc. of a person.
Example of A Typical ReDahlia Customer
To drive the point home, let us create a customer profile for ReDahlia.
A typical ReDahlia customer is an entrepreneur aged 24 to 64 who lives in Africa or anywhere else in the world but has business interests across the globe. The entrepreneur is interested in staying relevant in his business through continuous learning and putting a structure to his business. The entrepreneur could be male or female but is tech-savvy or wants to know more about technology.
You may ask how I know this. It is because I understand my industry and we conduct research regularly to stay relevant. And, we have raw data that we gather through Entrepreneurs.ng analytics.
Time to Create Your Customer Profile
You now have sufficient knowledge to develop a customer profile for your business. So, go out there and get to know your audience and develop a customer profile for them. Any starting point helps and the knowledge will help you create marketing content that will appeal to your audience.
Also, you will be able to create a website that feels and looks comfortable for that kind of customer. Because a website for a fourteen-year-old may not appeal to a sixty-year-old. This information will help you target your ads.
The key takeaway from this exercise is that you have to know who your target audience is, and profile them before building your brand strategy.
As always, to stay relevant, you have to monitor trends and evolve accordingly as time goes on. Do not get complacent. Track your sales, interactions, information requests, etc. Social media platforms have an insight tool that will help you keep track of things. You can also do that with Google Analytics.
When you analyse and track this data, you can see who your customers are and then, you can tweak your branding and messaging to match the profile of the customer. And you don’t have to do this alone, I can help you in my program- Start Your Business in 30 Days, a program that takes you from idea to starting your business in 30 days.
How I Can Work with You to Start And Grow Your Business
If you want to work with me to start a profitable and sustainable business, then enrol in the Start Your Business in 30 Days Program. I will take you from idea to starting your business in 30 days.
Every week, I teach practical business lessons that have helped thousands of entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses. If you want to benefit from my teachings, click to sign up for the weekly business lesson here.
I am an internationally trained award-winning entrepreneur running three profitable businesses and a member of the prestigious Forbes Coaches Council. I help aspiring entrepreneurs start and set up their businesses through my program- Start Your Business In 30 Days.
And, I work with companies and established corporations to scale their impact and revenue. Reach me at Florence@entrepreneurs.ng if you would like to transform your business.
See the different ways we can help increase your business success.
Photo Credit: Canva.com
