Given the current state of the economy and amid the COVID-19 pandemic, having a well-defined target audience is more crucial than ever. You must take the time to identify the specific characteristics of your ideal customers. While demographics and the location of your prospects is important, you have to know as much as possible about them, so add to this list; personality traits, motivations, goals, interests, values, opinions, competencies and brand affinities. The more you can possibly find out about your audience, the more powerful your branding and messaging efforts will become.

What are some of the methods that are used to help define a target audience?

After many years helping clients to understand their target audience and aide in creating persona profiles, we use a combination of the following techniques, research methods and resources:

• One-on-One Key Stakeholder & Team Interviews

• One-on-One Customer Interviews

• Customer Online Surveys (e.g. Audience feedback with Mailchimp or Google Forms)

• Brand Strategy Sprint (Team Workshop)

• Google Analytics

• Social Analytics (e.g. Facebook Insights, Twitter Followers Dashboard)

• Talk to Social Followers

• Analyse Competitor Social Activity & Followers

• Analyse Customer Purchasing Data