How to Find Your Target Audience on Social Media

If you want to attract people who will become loyal followers or customers, you need to understand exactly who your brand serves and what type of content they enjoy consuming.

This process (arguably the most important step in any marketing strategy) is known as identifying your social media target audience.

To do this right, there are three parts that you need to focus on:

1. Mapping out your brand goals and doing market research
2. Discovering your social media target audience
3. Refining your social media customer avatar

How to find your target audience on social media

Your target audience is less about who you want to market to and more about who you should be marketing to. For example, you might want to market to millennial women. But a thorough market analysis may show that you’d have better success marketing to Gen Z.

Fear not! The following steps will help you get started in finding your target audience on social media.

Step 1: Review your offer and map out who it helps and how

In any marketing strategy, you want to start by reviewing your internal affairs before venturing into competition analysis. This way, when you start analyzing the big dogs in your niche, you’ll have a clear understanding of where you stand and what gaps you can potentially fill.

Start with the following:

• Think about what your offer is and what type of people might want to purchase from you. The more specific you can get, the better.
• Write down the types of problems these people are having before they find you, AKA what drove them to seek you out in the first place.
• Consider how their life will change after working with you or purchasing your product.

Step 2: Analyze existing social media data

If you’re a new business, this might be difficult. But if you have had a social media account for even a few months, you should have some data to review. Of course, the more, the merrier, but we all have to start somewhere!

• Check your Instagram dashboard and analyze your views, followers, interactions, and external profile link taps.
• Pay attention to the demographics such as age, gender and location of your current followers.
• Look into what posts have received the most attention. Keep in mind that saves and shares outweigh likes.

Note: When you’re looking over this data, ask yourself this: “Are these the people who should be following me?” If the answer is no, that’s a sign you’ll need to pivot your strategy in some way, shape or form.

Step 3: Perform a competitive analysis

Once you’ve got a good grasp on who your brand is, what you offer and the people you are currently attracting, it’s time to compare your business to other people in your niche.

Remember, this isn’t meant to discourage you! It’s to study what is already working for other people and see how you can put your own spin on those same strategies.

• Look at the top social media profiles in your industry and see who is commenting, liking and sharing their content.
• Browse through the Facebook Ad Library and see who your competitors are targeting in their ads
• Pay close attention to your competitors’ use of language, overall messaging and visual branding. The goal is NOT to copy them, but to find ways to differentiate yourself.

Building your Social Media Target Audience

Now that we have some data from our brand and our competitors, it’s time to write it all down and bring our social media target audience to life!

The main components of a target audience are:

• Demographics
• Psychographics
• Buyer Behavior

Target Audience Demographics

Your audience demographics are general data points used to categorize your consumers:

• Age: A small range of age groups that you’d like to target
• Gender: Think about who you’d prefer to work with
• Location: Consider what region your audience lives in, the language they speak, and whether they are in metropolitan or rural areas
• Education: Understanding education level helps you account for values/beliefs, challenges, etc.
• Marital/Family Status: This can heavily influence purchasing decisions.
• Occupation: Highlights needs, challenges and interests.
• Income: Determines whether they can afford your services.

Target Audience Psychographics

While demographics are essential for mapping your social media target audience, we need to go one level deeper to understand the content they consume.

• Values: Understanding what things your clients value helps tailor messaging to them.
• Beliefs: Think about beliefs they may have about themselves and the world, and how those impact their life and influence their content consumption.
• Interests/Hobbies: What types of things do they enjoy spending their free time on in life? Can you connect that to your brand?
• Personality: What type of personality do they have? Are they outgoing, introverted, brave, cautious?

Buyer Habits & Motivations

Next on the chopping block are buyer habits and motivations. Understanding these things can help you understand what type of content will lead your audience to take action. This is especially important if you plan to run paid ads or even boosted posts.

Some questions to consider when planning your social media target audience are:

• Where do they consume content and how much?
• Do they check for reviews? If so, where?
• What things cause doubt for them, and how can you address that in your content?
• What things in their life or around them motivate them to engage with people on social media or make a purchase?

Social Media Target Audience vs Customer Avatar

Your target audience helps you identify a broad group you want to reach with your social media marketing. Your customer avatar, on the other hand, is a single representation from that group.

Customer avatars are important because they allow you to develop a social media strategy that is hyperspecific for your dream client.

To do this, start by analyzing your target audience and creating a profile for your perfect customer, and don’t be afraid to get specific! It may help to give them a name, or even an image.

Most brands only need 1 customer avatar, but on occasion, larger brands may use up to three. Any more and you’ll end up with a muddy message that doesn’t bring in any social media engagement or revenue.

Hire a social media manager to find your target audience for you

This process is not for the faint of heart, and let’s be honest, most of us business owners don’t have enough hours in the day as it is. From social media strategies to full-scale social media management, our team at Do Epic Shit Media is ready to help you find your people and up your social game TODAY! Don’t be shy, apply here.