What You Need to know about Your Target Audience

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What do you know about your target audience? - Building a successful blog that attracts a ton of targeted traffic and a ton of comments is no easy achievement by any means. The key to building a successful community driven blog is by understanding your target audience. When I say understanding your audience I mean understanding the five W’s –

Who is coming to your blog?
What are they looking for or reading or doing? Or what inspires and influences them? What are their goals and ambitions?
When are they coming to your blog the most? (Time of day, night)
Where are they coming from? (Referral, Search engine, Social etc)
Why are they coming to your blog, why are they reading your content, leaving, signing up to your email newsletter etc…?

Why is this so important?

Knowing your target audience will make it much easier for you to steer your blog in the right direction for success. For instance –

Knowing what your target audience wants can help you cater for their specific requirements i.e. create more relevant content that they want to read. If they’re looking for a solution, provide them with the best possible and honest alternative, if you can’t provide them with a solution of course.

Target Audience

Knowing the wants and the needs of your target audience can also help you decide what features to enhance, for example optimizing your opt-in form at the end of your post or in the sidebar of your blog, or improving a sales page, a recommendation link or an affiliate link placed at the end of a product review post etc

The more you can find out about your audience’s specific needs, the clearer picture you can build of how you can cater for them better. As a blogger one of the things you need to accept is that, whilst you’re doing your best to understand your target audience, and putting out the most relevant, most resourceful and readable content, topped with enhanced features, you can’t please everyone.

Understanding a large part of your target audience however will certainly help you attract new readers and keep them coming back to your blog as regular readers. With the knowledge about your target audience you will be able to provide them with the best content possible. Understanding your target audience can help you identify the best products to recommend, and convert more clicks into profitable sales.

How do you approach your target audience to find out more about them?

I’m sure you’ve been thinking well, it’s all good and well saying we should understand and find out more about our target audience but how exactly? Here are some tips and ideas –

  1. Use the social media platforms to conduct a survey. Post questions to your fans on Facebook or followers on Twitter, or send a short questionnaire to your email subscribers asking them what they enjoy reading the most about on your blog.
  2. If someone subscribes or comments on your blog for the very first time, email them personally and thank them for opting in or commenting. Then ask them a few questions, but do it in such a fashion so that it appears that you are genuinely interested in finding out more about them, which you are.
  3. Analyze your statistics in Google Analytics to see what pages your readers are drawn to the most, and what pages have the highest exit rates (bounce). What search queries are being used to find content etc…
  4. Post a reader’s poll on your Facebook page or in the sidebar of your blog.
  5. Host a blog contest; give your readers the choice of one of three different prizes in the form of premium products they’d like to win should they win the contest. Ask them to place the product of their choice in the comment section when entering the contest. This is a great way to help you decide what products you should promote and share with your target audience on your blog as an affiliate.

These are a few ideas and suggestions you can use to find out more about your target audience.

So over to you readers! Do you have any of your own tips and ideas that you’d like to share, what do you do to understand your target audience better? Are you catering for them in the best possible way? As usual please leave a comment in the section below.

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  • http://www.seoallrounder.com/ saad naeem

    Facebook has been great for me and about analytics , analysing the site takes time to master. one cannot decide after 30 days which page is performing or what not.

    I give my most exiting pages last chance by adding a them in a goal in analytic and then decide which page has to be improved.

    Thanks for an amazing post Fab!

    • http://www.magnet4marketing.net Fabrizio Van Marciano

      Hey Saad, thanks mate glad you liked the post. You made a valid point with adding a goal in your analytics, that’s a great tip so thanks.

  • http://www.guideandnews.com/ Ehsan

    Quite interesting post on understanding the target audience Fab. I think you did a perfect selection of specific keyword in this post which is “Target audience” :P

    • http://www.magnet4marketing.net Fabrizio Van Marciano

      Hey Ehsan, thanks for your comment as always, yes you’re right I did indeed pick this specific keyword for this post :)

  • Vishnitis

    Good and great tips on your blog about how are possible to target audience and which way. its amazing information provide on your blog.

    • http://www.magnet4marketing.net Fabrizio Van Marciano

      Hey Vishnitis! thanks for your comment and welcome to the blog mate. I’d love to know which point stood out most for you and if you have any of your tips to add please do :)

  • Samantha Wright

    Interesting post Fabzy, Some great ways on learning about your blogs audience :) I think once you’re aware of who your audience is its just a matter of making sure you fulfill their needs on a consistent basis.

    • http://www.magnet4marketing.net Fabrizio Van Marciano

      Absolutely Samantha, you hit the nail on the head :) x

  • http://www.rancorinfotech.com Aditya

    Hey Fab,
    Audience is the only way through which one can know where he/she stands when it comes to making a mark in the market.Understanding what audience wants and what you are providing are the two aspects to be considered which should be kept in mind before steeping into any niche.