Think of your favorite book. Something drew you in when you first bought it. Maybe a friend recommended it, or the title caught your attention during your periodic browse for self-help books on Amazon. Whatever drew you in, the author, publishers, and public relationship specialists accomplished a magnificent goal: they knew your desires, hopes, fears, and dreams better than anyone else.
Successful authors, thought leaders, and businesses dial into their customer’s needs because this information is critical to market and sell effectively. They know their customer’s purchasing behavior better than anyone else. They know the exact words their customers use and how to align their product or service with their customer’s needs.
Speak to your customer with truth, authenticity, and power, without manipulation or brainwashing. Knowing your audience lets you communicate better than your competitors. Your customers need to think, “Wow, they understand me better than anyone else!” This is how you put excellent customer research and validation into practice.
Now for the million dollar question: “How well do you know your audience?”
Defining an audience, customer segment, or niche is a challenging step in business development, entrepreneurship, and branding. Thankfully, there are several easy steps to define your audience, or dive deeper if you already know it. Here are the steps:
Step One: Decide Your Audience and Be Specific!
The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make is marketing their product or service to everyone! I hate to break it to you, but you’ll never successfully sell anything if you market to everyone. For example, would the diaper brand Huggies succeed selling diapers to a 9 year old boy? Probably not. Huggies is way more effective selling diapers to the parents of newborn children. “Parents of newborn children”…wouldn’t you say that’s pretty specific?
Here are a few more examples of successful businesses and entrepreneurs with specific audiences:
- Nike inspires professional and novice athletes to perform their best with branded shoes, clothes, and accessories.
- Jenny Blake, the founder of “Life After College,” publishes blog posts, courses, and informational products for college graduates lacking personal and professional direction.
- Coava Coffee Roasters crafts artisanal beverages for urban dwelling coffee lovers.
There are many identities and factors to consider when you decide who your audience is. You can specify your audience by gender, age, profession, interests, location, socioeconomic background, hobbies, or lifestyle attributes. However you label and identify your audience, they have to say, “Yes, that’s me!”
Step Two: Perform Deep Audience Research
Think of yourself as an anthropologist. An anthropologist makes observations without drawing opinions or being judgemental. That’s how to act when you research your audience. Nina LaCour says, “How amazing it is to find someone who wants to hear about all the things that go on in your head. You just think that things will stay the way they are.” Once you identify who you think your audience is, research and validate your hypothesis in as much detail as possible! This is when you go to the source and interview your customers.
The best practice to interview your customers is in person, over the phone, or on a video call like Zoom or Google Meet. This is your opportunity to ask thoughtful, insightful questions. Keep in mind you’re not selling anything at this point. Here are questions to ask during these interviews:
- What challenges are you dealing with right now?
- When and how did these challenges come up?
- What have you done to solve these challenges?
- Did the solution(s) work? Why or why not?
- How would you describe your ideal solution to your challenge?
- What’s holding you back from solving your challenge?
- Can you tell me about your experience dealing with…?
- What’s the best product you’ve used recently? Why?
- What’s the worst product you’ve used recently? Why?
- How do you describe yourself?
- Tell me more about…
Tailor these questions to the people you are interviewing. When your interviewees are not talkative, ask open ended questions rather than closed ended ones. This means avoiding yes or no questions.
The primary objective of these interviews is to capture the exact words and phrases your audience uses, which you can later use in marketing and sales copy. To keep track, ask permission to record your sessions or take detailed notes during and after each interview.
Interviews are still the gold standard, but they’re no longer the only place your audience talks. Your customers are describing their problems in product reviews, in forum threads, in the subreddits where they vent, and, increasingly, in the questions they type into AI assistants. Go read that language. Notice how people phrase a problem when they think nobody is selling to them, because that phrasing is exactly what you want coming back at them in your copy.
It takes at least 20 interviews with your prospective audience to determine whether they’re the best audience for you. You’ll know you’ve found the right audience when you start hearing common challenges and phrases in your interviews. Keep in mind this is an iterative process: your audience definition and customers constantly shift and change.
**Step Three: Complete the Audience Power Formula
**
By now you should have a solid definition of your audience. You know what they struggle with, what their challenges are, and the exact language they use. You should be able to tell whether your audience wants what your business offers.
At Peaceful Media, we recommend our clients complete the Audience Power Formula:
I [Thought Leader or Business Name] help [audience] achieve [result] by offering [product and/or service].
Here are several examples of our clients who completed this formula:
- Brendon Burchard helps experts build lucrative empires through Experts Academy.
- Marni Battista shows dignified women how to succeed in love through coaching and her various digital products.
- Jeff Walker shows business owners how to launch an online product with the Product Launch Formula.
The Audience Power Formula is essential when defining your audience, because they need to know how and why you’re helping them. It also lets you align your products and services with your customer’s burning pains and desires. Knowing the answer to this formula is the golden key to marketing and selling successfully.
Step Four: Test, Market, Sell and Analyze
After developing your audience and customer segmentation, you’re ready to start marketing and selling! Now you can use all the information you’ve gleaned through research, interviews, and product development to reach and connect with your audience.
There are many marketing and selling channels to connect with your audience. You can:
- Set up a website
- Build landing pages
- Create social media pages
- Launch online and social media advertisements
- Go direct to the consumer
- Establish affiliate relationships.
Track which channels attract your audience most. This is an ideal time to develop a simple sales funnel to attract the right customers who keep coming back for more. Whichever channel you choose, keep in mind that your activities are always a test. Keep what works, eliminate what doesn’t, and always try new strategies.
Step Five: Repeat Steps One Through Four
As your business grows and demand for your products and services increases, repeat steps one through four. Why? Because trends and buying behavior are in constant flux. What works today won’t necessarily work tomorrow. You’ve heard the phrase, “Keep up with customer demand!” Some businesses go out of business because they’ve failed to stay up to date with their customer’s needs.
Repeating the audience research and interview process gets easier as you develop your customer base, because you’ll better understand their demographics and characteristics.
Another ideal time to repeat these steps is when you release a new product or service. You can always launch a beta version to test whether you’ve reached the right audience.
Defining your audience is the key to increase revenue and skyrocket your business. That’s why this part of your business development is essential to your online and offline success. We created a downloadable cheat sheet with these steps to use in your audience research.