How Did You Choose Your Target Audience

[najjabanks@gmail.com]

I am curious how others whent about choosing their target audience. 

Did you do some research in your niche to see who was buying in that niche?

Did you just say “Hey I want to target XYZ people”?

Did you use tools such as quantcast, alexa, google keyword tool etc.

For the most part i just said “I want to target XYZ” people and did a little research but not much.

I’m sure there is probably a better way to go about it.

What are your thoughts?

[rosauradobles@comcast.net]

For me the most important factor is:

1** Is about you!

2** Because you must do what you love to do

3** Because  that means you are or will be very good at it…becuase you love what you do

4** Because you will be passionate about what you do..and you can easyly become an authority in that field you love to do

5** Because you can easyly can find what is needed and provide a solution to easy the pain of your audience/target public

 

So for me all boils down to what you are good at!

The search start inside you!

 

Roger Aburto

Salem Oregon,USA.

[boel@kangendreamteam.com]

Hi Najja, 

I guess this seems really obvious, but I think first of the benefits/solutions my products offer, then think of who it is that would be looking for those benefits. I am having a bit of a hard time with it, because of the need to narrow in on a specific audience and I look forward to refining it with my lab-partner (Thanks Samith for partnering with me for this!)

I did look around a little bit in forums and discussion groups.

What is quantcast?

[Jim Yaghi]

forums are a great way to get ideas and to study your target audience. they’re my favourite research tool. just run a search on Google for a related forum adding the keyword “forum” on the end to find forums that are related to your market. then you can see what kind of people are in there talking and asking for help.

keep in mind this – when does a person ask a question in a forum?

usually it’s when they’re at a point where they havent been able to answer the question on their own or with regular internet searches. so they ask a community for answers and get the response they need from their “peers” – people they consider to be trustworthy as they have the same problem as them or faced it in the past and solved it.

eg, i’ve been finding it hard to find answers to questions about how Dubai works with my recent move here. like, where to go to get an electricity account setup, or how to attest a tenancy contract (something required for sponsoring my wife’s residency here)….the most valuable resources have been something called The Expat Forum, which is a community of expatriates generally in Dubai facing similar issues in getting setup.

they ask questions and people respond to them. i have found a wealth of info in these forums for my own research…which has made it even unnecessary for me to contribute to the forums with a question of my own. however, i’m sure that the day will come when i have a niggling problem i can’t figure out and will end up asking the community and getting responses.

in the same way, your audience is in special community forums looking for answers already, revealing their troubles in a very personal and precise way.

it’s much greater insight than what you can imagine on your own.

so i encourage you guys to use Forums for research.

 

jim

[wyla.green@gmail.com]

Hi Everyone,

I’m joining late, I’m Wyla glad to meet everyone.:)

Najja, I still have a hard time with this.

For me, I learned who I wanted to work with, and who I could help best by working for years
with the WRONG target audience. My product is my advice. It can come in the form of one on one consulting,
consulting with a corporation, or in books and DVDS I plan to launch. I have helped 20 somethings to 60 years olds. I have helped CEOS and I have helped small business start-ups. Maybe I need to pick one group? I don’t know. I didn’t really know who to target, so I tried to help everyone. Now, I can see who really needs me and will use my advice. I guess that’s called experience…

First and foremost they must want to make a change and be ready to take action. They must have integrity in their own business. I won’t help people who I think are scammers. They must be willing to pay for the service and aren’t looking for free consulting. They need to know what their problem is, and have a good idea where they are stuck, if not they have to be open minded to problem resolution. If not, I may not meet their expectation. This is what I think, it may not be correct.

While I can help a diverse audience, my process says to think of whats common among all the people who I have helped.

This may be too general.

Thoughts?
I have to be out Monday and Tuesday. I will do my best to log on. Will check back Sunday US Eastern Time.
Wyla

[wyla.green@gmail.com]

P.S. my note was written with spacing…it came out in one paragraph…

[marlousvanhaaren@yahoo.com]

Hi Najja, this is what i did (it might help you)

I first thought about the people i want to help through my site, I’ve seen these people in real life before so it wasn’t that hard to picture them and built persona’s around them.

I ended up with a few different persona’s (male v. female / younger v older/working v retired/experienced traveller v new traveller) then used those to come up with 1 more general persona with characteristics from all (i’ll keep the individual persona’s too).

Then asked a few questions my persona would ask in google and did what Jim said to do and checked the forums, here i found out that a lot of people want to hear from others what to do instead of thinking/researching for themselves.

I also learned here that people want to do unique things, preferably discover something themselves without much effort if they can help it 🙂 so I’ll use that bit of info too

Another thing i noticed while checking the forums is that there were people asking questions about what to do and regular contributors complaining that they didn’t check the forum before they asked their question which tells me this happens a lot.

I worked these insights i got from the forum into my target audience persona and in my offer (helped me figure out how to make my site unique)

it’s not tight enough yet but when i get people coming through my website i get to know them better and i can narrow it down a bit more.

The google keyword tool might give you some ideas on what kind of questions to ask so you can check the forums and if when you run the site your promoting through quantcast or alexa you might get some demographic data you can use.

Basically i just followed Jim’s instructions (i have to admit i read the pre course posts at least 5 times before i really understood what to do and hopefully i got it right)

Marlous

[campers@gmail.com]

I had a number of potential markets for my product, being the the flagship anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-aging and sports performance product, which is a bit general. Going by that people buy to gain pleasure or avoid pain I wanted to target people who are experiencing discomfort, quality-of-life issues eg fatigue, on a daily basis who want rapid, simple relief.  There’s high relevance to medical conditions but had to skip those for the legal reasons.

I did some keyword research to see what kinds of search numbers there were for a few areas (anti-aging, sport/excercse recovery) and detox related terms were up the top of the list.  (A hangover cure/remedy was a runner up, probably best to just run the ads on a saturday and sunday for that one!)

I did a bit of research i n the forums (Jim, killer tip to filter the serach resutls by discussions only!!) to get some ideas of what peoples experiences, mindset, doubts and queries are when looking for supplements/diets to detox.  I also liked this market because I have an idea for releated valuable free report with an associate affiliate offer.  Also ties in to the hangover niche if I do that next, will have some content to leverage.

[najjabanks@gmail.com]

Ok….thanks for the great feedback.  I just read again where Jim says “you want to sit down with yourself and decide who you want as your audience.” And this is primarily the point I was referring to because once I know WHO I want to target THEN i can go and search the forums, come up with google searches etc… please forgive me for not making myself clear. 

Based on the feedback that some of you gave it appears that the process some of you followed was;

1. What is my “Product/Service/Opportunity”

2. Did some type of research OR based on experience figured out WHO is CURRENTLY buying similiar product

3. Once you found out who is currently buying that product you chose them as your TARGET audience.

3A. Some did not do ANY of that and just said “Hey I want to target XYZ” ** This is pretty much my method, not sure if this is right **

4. Then you started the process of becoming intimate with this audience. i.e. visiting forums, google searches etc…

So when I ask how did you “Choose” your target audience I am referring to HOW you decided on a target audience to become more intimate with in the first place.

I really appreciate all the awesome feedback here.  Enjoy your day!

[angels_715@hotmail.com]

i JUST decided to go after what Im most passionate about. BUT really it should be about choosing an audeince that you can help based on your STRENGTHS.  At first I was going to go after the “hardgainer” market helping skinny guys gain muscle. This is one of my strengths that I’ve developed as I went thru the journey myself.

BUT, Im not that passionate about it anymore.

What I ENJOY doing is reading up on marketing, copywriting, business strategy ect. So just as I turned directions and will do whatever it takes to turn my marketing weakness into my STRENGTH. And target people which would benefit from it.

I have been studying ALOT so i know im improving. IM just planning to be an affiliate until i am 100% competent at it.

Rich schefren says that hobbies are just interests….but STRENTHTS are business ADVANTAGES.

SO, To find out your target audience….I would Find out what your STRENGTHS are (or develope them FAST) Then target a group of people that would benefit and BUY from you because they value that strength.

[goldcoastnz@gmail.com]

I just thought about what I would do if I ever found myself out of a job at my age.  There aren’t many options, therefore what would I do? I need to point out that I have been self-employed for 34 years, so I am really guessing I suppose.

I do have a close friend who found himself in this situation at age 55. He has started his own business successfully, so I used him as an example.

I chose my online business opportunity because of what I am good at and enjoy doing. My target audience however is people that I can identify with. That is professionals (of any age) that suddenly find they have no job. 

That’s about as far as I got. 

[Author]

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