What Does It Mean To Understand Your Audience?

Matt Bell-Watson   •   12 August 2020

Effective communication starts with understanding who you are talking to. That begins with asking questions, listening and showing empathy.

It doesn’t start with making assumptions, using stereotypes or general audience groups. After all, not all millennials like eating avocado on toast. While not all financial decision-makers make decisions based on price.

Understanding your audience means building a three-dimensional picture of who they are. It means narrowing down your audience and identifying strategies to connect on a deeper, more emotional level.

Define Who You’re Selling To And Who You’re Not

Thinking about what your ideal and non-ideal customer looks like is a good way to narrow down who you want to target. Talk to your colleagues in sales and support to get a broader perspective.

Find out which customers value your product or service most and which don’t. Which customers collaborate well with your business and which are more transactional? Which customers convert quickly and which don’t? Which customers recommend your business to others and which don’t?

Asking a few questions such as these can help you to create a brief profile of your ideal and non-ideal customers. Using this as part of campaign planning can prevent you from wasting time and money marketing to buyers that are bad for business. But you need more insight to truly understand and define your audience and to effectively communicate with them.

Expand Your Thinking With Audience Psychographics

It’s easy to think about audiences using job roles, sectors or demographics. For instance, HR managers at software companies in Cambridge or single women aged 18-24 who earn £20-30k per year. But this is rarely the best route to understanding your target audience.

It’s better to consider psychographic attributes when defining who you’re talking to. These might include values, interests, motivations and challenges, for example.

Ask yourself, what do you know about your ideal customer? This is a great way to gather existing data, create hypotheses to test and identify knowledge gaps to fill. You should consider:

Goals Pain Points Information Needs
Priorities Interests Social Channels
Needs Personality Traits Behaviour
Wants Values Perceptions
Challenges Information Sources Attitudes and Opinions

You can find answers to many of these points using CRM data, analytics, social listening and audience insight tools. Customer interviews, focus groups and questionnaires can provide more insights too.

Use Insight To Connect With Priority Audiences

At a basic level, audience insights can ensure that you are creating relevant content and promoting it in the right places. This can help to improve engagement by ensuring that communications resonate with audiences and maximise investment by focusing media spend, outreach and partnerships.

Psychographic insights are also useful when developing or refining messaging and positioning. This can help to articulate your value and differentiators to potential customers. That’s powerful stuff when buyers are weighing up their options and making decisions.

What Does It Mean To Understand Your Audience?

Matt Bell-Watson   •   12 August 2020

Effective communication starts with understanding who you are talking to. That begins with asking questions, listening and showing empathy.

It doesn’t start with making assumptions, using stereotypes or general audience groups. After all, not all millennials like eating avocado on toast. While not all financial decision-makers make decisions based on price.

Understanding your audience means building a three-dimensional picture of who they are. It means narrowing down your audience and identifying strategies to connect on a deeper, more emotional level.

Define Who You’re Selling To And Who You’re Not

Thinking about what your ideal and non-ideal customer looks like is a good way to narrow down who you want to target. Talk to your colleagues in sales and support to get a broader perspective.

Find out which customers value your product or service most and which don’t. Which customers collaborate well with your business and which are more transactional? Which customers convert quickly and which don’t? Which customers recommend your business to others and which don’t?

Asking a few questions such as these can help you to create a brief profile of your ideal and non-ideal customers. Using this as part of campaign planning can prevent you from wasting time and money marketing to buyers that are bad for business. But you need more insight to truly understand and define your audience and to effectively communicate with them.

Expand Your Thinking With Audience Psychographics

It’s easy to think about audiences using job roles, sectors or demographics. For instance, HR managers at software companies in Cambridge or single women aged 18-24 who earn £20-30k per year. But this is rarely the best route to understanding your target audience.

It’s better to consider psychographic attributes when defining who you’re talking to. These might include values, interests, motivations and challenges, for example.

Ask yourself, what do you know about your ideal customer? This is a great way to gather existing data, create hypotheses to test and identify knowledge gaps to fill.

You should consider:

  • Goals
  • Priorities
  • Needs
  • Wants
  • Challenges
  • Pain Points
  • Interests
  • Personality Traits
  • Values
  • Information Sources
  • Information Needs
  • Social Channels
  • Behaviour
  • Perceptions
  • Attitudes and Opinions

You can find answers to many of these points using CRM data, analytics, social listening and audience insight tools. Customer interviews, focus groups and questionnaires can provide more insights too.

Use Insight To Connect With Priority Audiences

At a basic level, audience insights can ensure that you are creating relevant content and promoting it in the right places. This can help to improve engagement by ensuring that communications resonate with audiences and maximise investment by focusing media spend, outreach and partnerships.

Psychographic insights are also useful when developing or refining messaging and positioning. This can help to articulate your value and differentiators to potential customers. That’s powerful stuff when buyers are weighing up their options and making decisions.