How to Use Digital Tools to Define Your Target Audience

Your audience should be the driving force behind everything you do in marketing your business. Every word of copy, every design choice, and where you choose to spend your budget should be decided with a very specific target audience in mind to be successful.

As a digital agency, when we work with clients, understanding their target audience is one of the most important factors we consider when building a website or developing a digital marketing plan.

Some clients, especially those who haven’t had a specific marketing plan or resources to put towards marketing, have trouble defining their target audience.

Most business owners have a picture of their typical customer in mind, which includes:

• Geographic location
• Age
• Income level

But they might not have a full picture of what other parameters define their target audience.

With the targeting options available in digital platforms like Google and Facebook, the better defined the target audience you use, the more effective they will be. Luckily, if you are having trouble understanding or defining your target audience, there are also many digital tools we can utilize to learn more about your target audience.

Google Analytics

Google analytics should be your first stop to learning more about your audience.

If you’re not familiar, Google Analytics is a free tool that tracks and analyzes your website traffic and data. If you had Google Analytics set up, you can start using valuable demographic data being collected on users coming to your website. If not, you’ll need to set it up (we can help!) and start collecting data that you can utilize.

The “Audiences” tab on Google Analytics is full of valuable information that will tell you who is coming to your website, including:

• Where they live (country, state, city)
• Age
• Gender
• What devices they are using (mobile vs. desktop, browser)

There’s also the “interests” tab, which offers a more specific profile of the users on your site. Google’s data is based on users’ browsing habits and product purchases. Using this knowledge, people are placed into 2 types of audience categories.

Affinity and In-Market Audiences

Affinity audiences tell us who users are in terms of lifestyle. Examples of affinity audiences are: Movie Lovers, Home Décor Enthusiasts, Technophiles, and Travel Buffs.

In-market audiences tell you what people are shopping for and what they are interested in purchasing. Examples of in-market audiences are – Apparel & Accessories, Dating Services, Residential Properties, and Home Décor.

These are just a few of the features that Google Analytics has that can help you learn more about your audience. The Acquisition tab can also tell you where your traffic is coming from. Whether it’s organic search, direct, or referral traffic.

By setting up goals to track conversions, you can see who of this audience is actual completing a goal action (like a purchase, form completion, or a phone call) to see which audience is turning into a new customer.

Social Media Analytics & Facebook Insights

While your website traffic gives you a great picture of your target audience, social media is also a great marketing tool where many users are engaging with your business that you can use to analyze your buyers.

Most social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn) come equipped with some insights or analytical tools to help you learn about who is interacting with your business. There are also other third-party tools like Buffer or Hootsuite that can provide extensive analytics and information on your social media accounts.

Depending on your industry, different social media platforms will be better for you. As the biggest social media network, Facebook is a popular social media in most industries. Their “Insights” tool offers an abundance of valuable information.

The tool is more focused on how people are interacting with your page, like when users are taking action on your page, what engagements you are getting, how many likes you are getting, etc.

By utilizing Audience Insights you can see your audience demographics like age, gender, parental status, job title and most importantly, interests. Facebook has a wealth of interest and behavior categories from the type of food and drink people enjoy, to their hobbies, technology habits, and more.

Work with A Digital Agency to Develop A Digital Marketing Plan

All the data you have available to you through digital tools is very powerful, but it can also be very overwhelming.

As a business owner or manager with limited time and technical knowledge, you might not be able to take on the task of defining your target audience and develop a strategic marketing plan. Atilus is a digital agency that can work with you to understand your business and your goals and develop a tailored digital marketing strategy that works for you. To learn more, call us at (239) 362-1271 or contact us online today.