If you were to ask me, the best online marketer is the ones who have aced their targeting game. And those who are likely to ace their targeting game are those who have a strong presence in the offline world. Online targeting tools are merely reflections of the real world, and though it can help you identify your pool instantly with a simple click, the full 360 view of your potential lead is always much easier observed in the real world.
What do I mean by that? Listen on to find out.
⬇️ Hear the full episode or read the full script below. ⬇️
What are target audience personas?
Fast Fact
Key takeaway
First of all, welcome to Targeting 101.
Let me emphasize to you why you should care about targeting more than anything else, particularly before you begin any sort of content creation. You most likely speak to your friends, your boyfriend, and your boss in a fairly different way.
Why do you do that?
One of the main reasons is because you believe the way you speak to them affects how well they respond or understand your message.
Your boss would not like to be screamed at, and your boyfriend is much better with straight forward directions. This is the first important thing about recognizing who your target audience is because then you’ll know how to speak to them.
In the same scenario, you also know that your boss prefers to be communicated to via email, whereas emailing your boyfriend would be rather strange. This is the second important thing about recognizing who your target audience is because then you’ll know what platform or channel you should use to communicate to them.
If you have a favor to ask these people for, you’ll know what kind of conversation opening gets them happy or interests them the most. This is the third important thing about recognizing who your target audience is because then you’ll know what content is more likely to get them to listen.
And lastly, by knowing who are you speaking to, you will know what words to use and if you can be more casual or you need to be more professional. This is the fourth important thing about recognizing who your target audience is because then you’ll know what your tone and manner should be.
Simply put, if you don’t ace these elements by recognizing who your target audiences are, you end up speaking to everyone like a rebel teenager speaking to his or her parents. You’re simply screaming out your thoughts and what you want to do without caring about how the receiver feels. This flushes all of your content down the drain because no one wants to listen to you.
Instead of letting that happen, here is my Targeting 101 checklist for you to consider.
Recommended Tools List:
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Creating a Target Audience Persona
1. Demographics are just basic facts
Age, language, and geography are just facts. So are occupations and other descriptive traits, taken perhaps from existing consumers. Though you still need to list these out clearly, the idea of a target audience extends way further than that.
2. Genuinely ask yourself if you are your brand's target audience
Would you buy your product or your service? Why would you and why would you not?
If you realize that you are a target audience, write down as much information as you can about yourself. If you’re not, think of a celebrity that you feel would buy your product or service and write down as much information about them as you can.
3. Where do your target audience hang out online and offline?
Are your target audiences young?
They are most likely spending a lot of their time on Tiktok.
Are your target audiences older?
Then Facebook would be a safe bet.
What if you aren’t targeting a specific age?
Then consider approaching this as though you are a Costo or a mall.
A lot of people of various age groups visit the place and have their reason why they love the place, but what you can recognize is that price is a common key factor for this specific audience group. Learning where your target audiences hang out offline can help you derive key learnings that the online world may not be able to provide.
4. What are their struggles and desires?
Like I always say, customers are not interested in your product, they are only interested in a solution. Find out what is bothering them by visiting forums, groups with subjects related to your product or industry.
Source: Unknown
If you can’t seem to identify it online, look offline. Is your friend a target audience? What do you find them struggling with a lot of the time? What do they buy to ease or solve that problem?
5. What are they searching for online?
Now that you have all this information, justify them by seeing if people are searching for these keywords online. Answerthepublic.com is the perfect tool for you to see that. You can then see if your assumptions were correct and if there is anything completely off your radar.
6. Now, imagine your target audience persona's regular day
If you can write out an overview of their day, you will spot where the best posting time is. On top of that, you will also see activities which they do, pointing towards potential B2B or influencer collaborations. You will start to truly understand why they aren’t already buying your product and be able to see how you can be more relevant to them.
A good content marketer will use all this information as the backbone for his or her content creation. It becomes very clear what content should be produced, what keywords should be included, what platforms should be invested in, when should they post, and what topics should be talked about. Not to mention, this information all point towards certain behaviors, which can then be used in targeted ad buys.
Anything from the level of education, to the age of their children, to which brand pages they have liked, and even if the person has purchased anything online can be used as a targeting behavior on Facebook. In this case, the content marketer can be sure that he or she has the right content for the right target audience with the right ad-buying target to drive the right leads at a very low cost.
Remember how I mentioned those content marketers who can ace their targeting game are usually people with a strong offline presence? This is because if you already know a lot of people, it makes it much easier to make assumptions on what traits and behaviors the target audiences are likely to have. Having a physical memory of this person allows one to recall how they look, what brands they like, how their friends are like, so on and so forth. This saves a lot of time trying to look for all of the traits online, and such offline experiences point to minute details which can then be used for Facebook targeting. This makes the idea of a target audience turn into a complete 360 persona that makes the whole content marketing strategy as effective as it can be.
So, my recommendation is to spend time and effort in acing your target audience first. Once you get that right, content creation becomes much easier and more straightforward. If you wish to learn tips and tricks on content marketing, keep yourself posted for my next podcast episode, or visit me at joycetsangcontentmarketing.com, where I have written explanations of different online strategies, blog posts, and uploaded free downloadables for you to try and kickstart your content.
Until then, I am Joyce Tsang, a content marketer here for entrepreneurs.
Still have questions? Simply schedule your free 30-minute diagnosis session with me and get your answers on spot!