Who are you actually talking to? How to understand your target audience
- Mar 17
- 3 min read
Before you post, send or spend anything on marketing, there's one question worth answering first - who is your audience, really?
In our last post we talked about why you don't need a big budget to do great marketing. But budget aside, even the best-crafted campaign will fall flat if it's aimed at the wrong people. You need to understand your target audience, which is the foundation everything else is built on.
The good news? You probably already have access to more useful information than you realise.
Here's where to look.
Your social media insights
If you're already posting on Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn - even just occasionally - you've got access to data that tells you a lot about who's paying attention.
Each platform has a free analytics section that shows you things like:
Who your followers are (age, location, gender)
Which posts got the most reach or engagement
What time of day your audience is most active
You don't need to dig deep into the numbers. Even a quick monthly look will start to show you patterns, what content resonates, who it's resonating with and when to post for the best chance of being seen.
Your website analytics
Your website is collecting useful data around the clock, you just need to look at it.
Website builders like Wix have their own built-in analytics dashboards that show you how many people are visiting your site, which pages they're spending the most time on and where they're coming from. It's free, it's already there and it takes about two minutes to find.
If you want to go a step further, connecting Google Analytics gives you even more detail. The most useful things to look at are:
Where your traffic is coming from - search, social, direct, referrals
Which pages are most popular - this tells you what people are actually interested in
How long people are staying - are they reading, or bouncing straight off?
Both are free and between them paint a really clear picture of who's finding you and what's catching their attention.
Customer surveys and feedback
Sometimes the simplest approach is just asking. A short survey sent to existing customers or followers can tell you more than any analytics tool, especially when it comes to understanding why people chose you.
You don't need anything fancy - Google Forms is free and takes minutes to set up. Ask things like:
How did you find us?
What problem were you trying to solve when you got in touch?
What would make our service even better?
Even five or ten responses can give you genuinely useful insights. And as a bonus, asking for feedback shows your customers that you actually care about their experience, which goes a long way.
Pay attention to your enquiries
This one gets overlooked all the time. The questions prospects ask when they first contact you, the words they use to describe their problem, the reason they say they chose you over someone else - all of that is valuable data.
Start keeping a simple note (even just a Google Doc) of the common themes that come up. Over time you'll start to see patterns that can shape your messaging, your content and even your services.
Look at who your competitors are talking to
Have a look at who's engaging with your competitors on social media. What kind of businesses or people are commenting and sharing? This can give you a useful steer on who's actively looking for what you offer and whether there's a gap you could fill.
You don't need a huge amount of data — you need the right data
It can be tempting to try and track everything but a handful of simple data points looked at regularly is all you need to start building a clearer picture of your audience.
Once you know who you're talking to, everything else - your content, your messaging, your channels - becomes a lot easier to get right.
Understand your target audience for successful marketing
This is something we work through with every client before anything else. Get this bit right and the rest tends to follow.
If you're not sure who your audience really is or how to find out, we're always happy to have a chat and point you in the right direction.
Sound like something you need a hand with? We'd love to hear from you.
