Figuring Out Your Target Audience

Recently, we received the question, "How do I figure out who my target audience is?"

When starting a business one of the first two things to plan & understand about your business is what & who. What will you offer & to who? This is the foundation for planning the rest of your business. 

In this article, we will discuss the different ways to identify your target market & how it can become more niched as your business grows. 

Before getting into how to identify your target audience it is important to understand what a target audience is. 

A target audience is the people you are marketing and gearing your messaging towards in order to grow your audience full of people who are interested in what you have to offer. 

When starting your business this is typically a generalized audience and as your business grows you then narrow down to a more niched persona which is known as an ideal client avatar. 

Your ideal client avatar is defined as the primary audience that you wish to target through marketing and your messaging to niche your business creating a more personalized experience for your ideal client. 

When starting your business, there are two main ways to identify your target audience. 

If you are starting your business based on skill to provide a specific type of service or because of a specific mission, then identifying your target audience is basically just a simple act of common sense and can be easily done by asking the simple question of... 

"Who can benefit from your services or the mission of your company?"

By answering this one simple question, you come up with a list of different possible avatar personas that combined can create your audience of followers. 

If you are starting your business based on your current network because you have already grown an accidental following of people and would like to monetize it, then identifying your target audience will begin by conducting market research and observing analytics to identify your audiences needs to create an offer. 

Another question we often get is "Should your target audience be more generalized when starting your business?" 

There is no right or wrong answer here. 

Some business coaches will tell you to niche with a specific ideal client avatar from the beginning. 

However, here at Passion Profit CEO, we believe in generalized audiences because it's how the majority of our clients are able to get their business making profits rapidly which is the perk to going with a generalized audience and then niching down. 

I did a podcast episode where one of the topics discussed was the appropriate times to use target audience vs niched ideal client avatar, you can listen here... Episode 5 - Starting Your Business Vs. Scaling 

Once you have a general idea of who your business is for, you can then start creating the different personas that will make up your audience. 

You typically will have a primary and secondary persona. 

The primary persona is who you wish to target most and think you would be able to serve the best. In theory it's similar to your ideal client avatar but your ideal client avatar builds itself throughout working your business and looking at the analytics and demographics of the clients you absolutely loved working with (which you want all clients to be just like them) whereas your primary target audience is a guess based on your own desire to serve others and who you feel would  most benefit from the work your business is going to provide. 

When creating these personas you can also conduct market research if you do not know enough about these people to learn more about them. 

In the Passion Profit CEO In-Depth Business Planner, I have created a section that walks you through with coaching questions and bullets to help you identify your primary and secondary target audience personas. A persona (avatar) is created by defining demographics and characteristics of that type of person so it's easy to identify them in a group of people whether that be in person or online. Although, the ultimate goal is not to go out & find them but to attract them to your business though attraction marketing strategies. 

Identifying your target audience is as simple as deciding who you want to target based on who your business is to serve and adjusting the avatar as your business goes which is why business planning is never done. 

In the beginning, identifying your target audience is all about asking who would benefit from being in my audience. 

As your business grows and you have worked with clients you love, your target audience will change and become more niched with an ideal client creating an even stronger foundation for messaging and attraction marketing to scale. 

Still not sure who your target audience is or ready to create your ideal client avatar but not sure how to make the adjustments and replan your business?  Schedule a Free Consultation and let's assess what is best for your business together. 

New wisdom & tips are released throughout the month.