How to Identify Your Target Market

When you post about your online store, your products, and your sales, do you know who you’re actually talking to? A lot of business owners might answer, “everyone!” But even if you’re going for a large niche, it’s to your benefit to identify niche markets who will directly appreciate your product (and will want to buy it). Plus, it will help shape your brand voice, your marketing technique, even your designs. Here are a few tips on how to identify your target market and how to make use of this information!

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First: What does finding your target market help you do?

Knowing who your audience is affects everything you do to market your product. Marketing to the right (or wrong) audience can have a huge impact on your sales and your success.  Here are just a few things identifying your target market will help you do:

  • Find your voice. Knowing who you’re talking to can help guide how you actually sound. Is your target market an older crowd? Then a snarky voice and posting memes might not resonate with them.
  • Helps you stay consistent. Our social media expert Mercedes tells us, “When curating your personal brand, it’s so important to keep it consistent across every platform you’re operating on so that somebody could see something of yours and know immediately who it’s coming from!” Keeping your brand consistent across voice, look, tone, etc. solidifies your brand’s personality.
  • Knowing what products to advertise. Knowing what kind of audience follows you or that you appeal to will help guide what types of products, designs, and lifestyle images you should share on social.
  • Helps guide new designs. If you know exactly who your audience is, you can determine what they’re most drawn to, which might help you determine what types of designs and products to publish more of.
  • Helps determine your social posts & channels. Knowing all about your audience will tell you what kinds of posts on social – including retweets and shares – will most appeal to them, and even what social channels to use.

A few tips on how to find your target market

LOOK AT YOUR FOLLOWERS

Looking at who follows you right now can tell you a lot about the kinds of people who are interested in your work. Look at who likes/comments on your posts, look at who follows you, look at who your FOLLOWERS follow, etc. Basic stats in Facebook and Instagram apps are great to refer to, but you can also use tools like Iconosquare and Sprout Social to dive deeper into this info.

LOOK AT YOUR MOST SUCCESSFUL PRODUCTS & DESIGNS

Which of your products – both styles and designs – have sold the best? Taking a look at your best sellers can help you identify what most people who shop your products are attracted to, which can tell you a ton about what kinds of people are shopping your products! Knowing which styles and designs sell the best can also help you know what products to use in your marketing materials: Facebook ads, lifestyle photos, social posts, etc. Artist Shop owners can find info on which of your products and designs you’ve been selling the most of in the Artist Shop Dashboard.

LOOK AT YOUR MOST SUCCESSFUL POSTS

Knowing which of your social posts have performed the best can show you what about your voice is working and can show you what kind of content your audience is attracted to.

SET UP GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Track where traffic is coming from, what people are clicking on, and what people are interested on in your Shop! Here’s our guide to setting up Google Analytics.

LOOK AT YOUR COMPETITION

Scope out brands and people who you view as competition and look at the types of people who follow them. Is their audience more female-oriented? Nerdy? Younger? Looking at who is interacting the most with their posts and how they’re talking to that audience can help guide the kind of content, voice, and designs you present to your own audience. (It can also help you find people to follow who might like your work!)

CREATE PERSONAS FOR YOUR AUDIENCE MEMBERS

Create a persona for the type of customer and audience member you might be catering to. Coschedule recommends answering the who/what/when/where/why of your potential customer. Who are they? What are they interested in and looking for? Where are most of them located in the world? Etc.

NARROW DOWN BASED ON WHAT YOU KNOW

Once you have a general idea of who your audience is (for example, female gamers), you can continue to narrow it down further to find your niche. What’s your gender demographic? Age? What are some of their other interests? What kind of content do they like? This can help guide your Facebook/Instagram ads, email audiences, etc.

USE FACEBOOK INSIGHTS

Have you set up a Facebook Page for your brand and online store yet? (More info on how to do that in this post.) Coschedule recommends using Facebook Insights, which every Facebook Page owners is provided with. This gives you crucial demographic information all about your audience, who’s visiting/following your page, etc.

WHO DO YOU *WANT* TO BUY YOUR PRODUCTS?

We’ve talked a lot about finding your audience and who likes your stuff… but also think about who YOU want to buy your products. Are you a plant mom or dad with plant designs that you really want to resonate with fellow plant moms and dads? Knowing who YOU want to appeal to will help you seek out and find your audience as well. This will help shape what social channels you use (what’s your demographic using more of?), your voice, what types of bloggers and influencers you reach out to, etc.

ASK PEOPLE! 

Give the people what they want by ASKING the people what they want! Use Instagram Stories to take a poll and ask people what your next product or design should be. Ask your followers what they’d like to see more of. Not only does this make you interactive on social and makes your customers feel like you’re listening to them, but it also gives you some great insight into what they want to see more of.

CREATE A BRAND BIBLE

Identifying your target audience helps you identify your voice, personality online, what designs to push/discount, and who to target in ads. Once you’ve found that information, it helps to create a “brand bible” for your brand: a list of guidelines for how your brand sounds voice-wise, what kind of content you post, what your values are as a brand, etc. This forces you to sit down and think through how you want to come across to the world; What do you want people to take away from everything you say? Our social media expert explains that your brand bible should include the big picture of your brand: your purpose, goals. target audiences, content pillars, primary platforms, tone of voice, brand “always” and “nevers”, etc.

Do you have any techniques on how to identify your target market? Let us know in the comments!

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