How well do you know your target audience

You’ve likely spent countless hours building your brand, honing your sales process, and training your team – just as I have. Yet, how well can you define your target audience? If you can’t accurately and specifically define your potential clients, you’ll spend a lot of time talking to the wrong people. Many of my clients have difficulty defining their target audience which can lead to wasted marketing dollars and pointless sales conversations. Don’t let this happen to you!

Even to the most tenured professional, it may seem like an obvious step to define your target audience, yet, more often than not companies and individuals don’t know their potential customers as intimately as they should. As you continue to reach out to prospects and build your business, you’ll need to gather as much information as possible about your target audience. To get started, use the following questions to define your client personas.

1. What’s their job title? What does that mean within their company? – Recognizing what your clients do and understanding their role within their company or business will go a long way in helping you talk to the right people each time.
2. What are their demographics? – Are you targeting women, teenagers or only people that meet a certain income threshold? When you have detailed information who you want to reach, you’ll be able to identify the most appropriate avenues for contacting them.
3. What are their values? What is their “why”? – Connecting with your audience means connecting what you both value. Understand what they value, and why they do what they do – then, use this to create a bridge between your values and theirs. This will ensure your partnership is productive and meaningful to both of you.
4. What are their pain points? – You will not be able to increase the value of your services until you understand your clients’ pain points. You have to understand how they have tried to solve these problems in the past, and where they attempted to find those solutions. With this information, you will be primed to address their concerns, and explain how you can create a beneficial partnership.
5. What, if anything, will stand in the way of them doing business with you? – If your potential clients have a strict budget that your services exceed, or they cannot legally work with corporations outside of their home state, these might be nonnegotiable barriers to working together. The important thing will be to recognize the barriers that are negotiable and work to render them insignificant.
6. What are their preferred media channels? – Does LinkedIn top their list of most visited sites or do they prefer to engage in short Twitter conversations? Know your clients media choices and you will better understand where and how to engage your leads.

After you have spent time collecting all of this information about your target audience, think about creating particular client personas that you can use to segment your audience. This approach can be beneficial for executing target marketing and sales, and keeping each client persona up to date with relevant information and messaging.

Did you know that I address this topic in the 10 Tools for Sales Success? If you haven’t previously, I highly encourage you to download a copy of the 10 Tools now. Just click here and it’s yours, for FREE!