Do you struggle with finding your target audience? Wait. Let's go back one more question than that. Do you know who your target audience is or who your ideal customer is? If you answered NO to any of those questions, let me help you out by giving you a few questions to ask yourself when looking for your target audience.

Before I get straight to the questions, I strongly advise you to grab your notebook or journal and write the questions down and leaving space, so that you can answer the questions in detail, after you finish reading this post. As a bonus upfront, write down your target audience age, gender and geographical location first, so that you can really narrow down your ideal customer.

What or who does my target audience value the most currently?

Last year, my target audience (African American women, ages 34-45 in Chicago, IL) really valued our former First Lady Michelle Obama's new book called Becoming and attended her book tour that commenced around the country, especially when she visited Chicago. Of course to date, they still value her and the hard work she continuously does. As a blogger, I used that moment to create content around what my target audience valued. I read her book Becoming and did a three part book review that you can find here in my book category posts.

Doing this, allowed me to effectively target my audience, found them and from there, I gained new followers, subscribers to my mailing list who then converted to paying customers. I encourage you to stop saying "I want everyone to buy my products or services or read my blog posts" because you'll learn real soon with that mindset, that whatever you're selling or creating content for your blog, is not for everyone!

What or who is important to them?

Still using Michelle Obama as an example to help you understand these questions to ask yourself, we know that eating healthy, staying fit and being present with her family is important to her. So again, knowing my target audience means knowing that those same things that are important to her are also important to them. I create content that not only shows you various ways to stay healthy and fit that you can check out in my wellness topics here but I also added a food category on the blog here to further assist my target audience by being an actual resource and problem solver for their health, and wellness needs as well as delicious foods and beverages to check out.

Why is it important to them?

Why would eating healthy and staying physically fit be so important to our former First Lady and my target audience? Seeing the obese rates rise in our country over the years was very sad. People they loved so much were passing away from illnesses that could have been prevented had they had the proper education about their health issues or access to supermarkets with organic foods to nourish them and their families. When finding your target audience, always find out their "why." You can do this by creating brief surveys, polls on social media or gather this information during your consultations.

How does your target audience prefers to be spoken to?

I love Instagram, I really do. BUT my target audience prefers to be spoken to via Facebook. So instead of marketing my services only on Instagram which would be like a death sentence to my business. Now, I could do live videos and still engage with my target audience who use Instagram daily (usually business owners, bloggers and influencers) but the bulk of my time is spent on Facebook where my inquires and conversion rates comes from. Considering their ages again, most of my target audience are not active on social media and prefer to be spoken to via email marketing or texts. None of us can control social media algorithms so, knowing how and where (online and offline) your target audience prefers to be spoken to, is very important.

What is going to cause this person to take action towards your offer?

You've found your target audience, now what do you want them to do? Posting a pretty picture of your product or services is not enough. You literally need to convey in your messaging or copy, what you want them to do. Taking action could be as simple as directing them to the link in your bio to sign up for your freebie. Your target audience is all eyes and ears now from seeing your posts or emails and they are still left with pain points that only you can solve for them but you haven't stated that in your long post with your cute professional picture. Knowing your target audience from the inside - out, is how you can get them to take action towards your offer or lead them in the direction you want them to go (ex., landing page, blog post, etc.).

I hope these questions have really sparked you to revisit who your target audience is and how to find them. If you have any questions, please feel free to post them in the comments or email them to me at info@feliciatsimpson.com

I want to leave you with this quote by one of my favorite businessmen and authors Brant Cardone:

“Be more interested in the customer than you are in yourself, your sales process, your product, or your commission and you will make more sales.” – Brant Cardone