NOTE : If you’re here because you’re interested in what your existing Website Analysis is, then CLICK HERE. Otherwise, keep reading below for ways to learn more about your potential buyers and customers.
Audience Analysis: Concept and Objectives
According to Wikipedia, Audience Analysis is:
“ The set of research methods used to obtain information about the audience , and which allows to estimate the number of people who have been exposed to a media event at a given point in time .”
If we translate this into a language that we all understand, we could say that it is about knowing who is watching us, and who is listening to us, in order to get their attention not just once, but for life; to convert them from simple “ listeners ” or “ general public ” into “ loyal customers for life ”, that is, those who will buy and continue buying one or some of our products and services.
If we take this definition as good, then we can see very clearly TWO BIG OBJECTIVES :
I. Knowing our potential consumers : their needs, interests, characteristics, aspirations, as well as where they live, what they do and the environments they move in.
II. Translate the information obtained into actions . Advertising campaigns, brand positioning, sales promotions and all activities and messages that motivate them to buy and identify with our brand.
Everything else you’re told about audience analysis is theoretical and can be great for academic speculation, but for growing your business, developing your digital brand , and honing your social media presence , we need you to focus on those two goals.
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Audience Analysis: Knowledge
There is so much written about it and the topic is so broad that we can get lost. That is why my recommendation to the business owners that I have had the privilege of advising is always the same: answer the basic questions and with that you will be covering 80% of what really matters. In other words:
Who is your Audience
It’s very easy to say: ” my product is for women ” or ” my clients could be business owners “, but that’s not what it’s about. We’re not talking about the ” could bes “, but about who your messages are actually reaching (or at least, should reach) through the web, because that is an essential component of Digital Marketing.
In my practice of almost 20 years as a Consultant in several countries, one of the things I find most frequently is that a significant part of entrepreneurs do not know their audiences . They think they do know, but either they generalize too much, or they underestimate or overestimate some of their characteristics.
The more specific your knowledge of your digital audiences is (interests, needs, demographics, geographic data, etc.), the better you can focus your efforts and investment.
What Motivates Them to Act
Ok, you know them. You know who they are… but what motivates them to take action : price, fashion, status, the introduction of advanced technology gadgets, being the first to be able to show off something, and so on?
It’s about identifying the trigger that leads to the decision to buy, or at least to follow your brand. It’s not easy to identify them. Surveys and questionnaires help, market studies help, observation even helps; but nothing and no one can instantly give you a list of the specific motivators of your specific audience (and note that the word is repeated on purpose).
There are many audience measurement tools and a lot of academic content that I could recommend to you (and in fact you will find it in many places on this website) but I am going to give you the key, the only true key to knowing what triggers your market’s performance:
Test, Test and Test Again
Yes, it’s as simple as that. Reading my article or watching a video from one of the Digital Marketing gurus will not get you to the truth. Your path to the light goes through ” trial ” and ” error “. By ” correcting the shot ” and ” continuing to try “. There is no other way.
Only then will you know what works for them and what doesn’t. Of course, it’s about testing based on what you’ve already learned when identifying your audience and on the experience of others. But nothing can replace the information you gain in your attempts to conquer the market. Attempts that you should start… yesterday!
Where You Can Find Them
Until a few years ago, in the real world, we were basically dealing with geographic location parameters. Now in the virtual world, it’s all about digital platforms. Where are my potential customers? On Facebook or Linkedin, on Twitter or Instagram, on Youtube or Bettizens…?
Human groups are no longer distributed solely by gender, or by age, or by country or city. Now we are on one network or another, we are more adept at Snapchat or Linkedin… and your job is to identify where your prospects are most frequently and in the greatest volume. That is where you should put the emphasis of your investment.
I once had a client who swore to me that advertising on Facebook was enough to achieve his goals. It took me 5 days to prove to him that Linkedin was the best option for him. And it didn’t take me any work to convince him when he saw that he doubled his return on every dollar invested. And the opposite has happened to me as well. And in all the variations you can think of, because each business is specific and each audience is specific (and you already saw how I repeated the damn word twice).
When is the Best Time to Get Their Attention
Okay, so we know where our prospects and customers’ “ digital existence ” takes place, but that’s still not enough. We can’t be there 24 hours a day, every day of the week. No one can.
So we need to determine what times we can reach the most members of our target audience. Mondays or Fridays? In the mornings, afternoons or evenings? And believe it or not, at 10:00 or 10:15? (I’ll write a little article explaining that difference at some point, but I won’t distract you now.)
The fact is that our audience analysis must once again be about TESTING . Testing and measuring the reaction, the response, the behaviors. And that is what will tell us the best times to publish our content or launch our advertising campaigns. Tools like Hootsuite and Buffer can help you a lot in that endeavor.
Why He Might Be Interested In What You Do
In traditional marketing, perhaps this question would have been answered when we talked above about “ who is your audience ” and “ what motivates them ”. You know them, you learn their needs and interests and you already know the reasons for their actions.
However, in digital audience analysis you need to go a step further and understand the virtual behavior of individuals and communities. The reaction to a real-life stimulus (say, for a sinister example, witnessing a murder) is not necessarily the same as the reaction to its digital counterpart, the video of the murder. And the same applies to the various promotional actions of your brand and your sales management.
Just as an isolated anecdote, I’ll share with you that I’ve had clients who have invested a lot of money in paying an actor to make a commercial for them with very modest results, far surpassed by a ” homemade ” video that I took with my cell phone and uploaded to the networks, where the owner appeared – shy and without any makeup – but speaking sincerely about the benefits of his product and the story that made his small brand important.
How to Integrate What You Know About Them into Your Business
If you’ve been doing all of the above, then you already know a lot about your customers and potential buyers. A lot. But what good is it if you don’t incorporate it into the content that makes up your Digital Presence?
Now is the time to redesign and map out a strategy for constant improvement of your website, your social media pages, your blog, and your advertising campaigns. Even if you are a very small company or just one person, you will have to accept this reality: whether you have ONE dollar or A MILLION to invest.
It’s not about knowledge out of curiosity, but out of necessity. You’ve learned all of this, through long sleepless nights and investing everything you have into applying it to what you do, because that’s the only way you’ll be able to get a truly worthwhile Return On Your Investment .
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Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
As you answer each of these questions, you need to be very clear about a concept that is vital (life or death) in audience analysis: Key Performance Indicators ( known as KPIs ).
Neither you nor anyone else, including the world’s largest corporations, can track, keep up with and follow up on all the indicators that generate audiences. Therefore, you will have to make a list of all the data you can collect about your target market and/or potential customers and define those 10, 15, 20 indicators that define the survival, expansion and development of your business. That is where you should put the emphasis.
It is with them that your “translation” efforts begin and should be strengthened.
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Audience Analysis: Translation into Actions
Yes, “ translation ,” but not from one language to another, but rather the translation of all the knowledge you have accumulated in your audience analysis into effective, measurable, replicable and expandable actions that can get you more clients and more sales.
Although we had to talk about KPIs in the middle of the process, this section is the logical continuation of “ integrating what you have learned into your business ” that we saw above.
Each piece of knowledge, each component of your audience analysis must be translated into a concrete action, or into many and very varied ones, which can range from the type of content you prioritize (articles, videos, memes, etc.) to the duration or size of each one of them, the time you publish them, the colors you use the most and the “ anchor ” words that carry the weight of your messages.
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By way of conclusions
Professional audience analysis is the job of consultants and experts in the field, but basic audience analysis is part of your daily bread. If you subscribe to our newsletter you will see that it is not as difficult as it seems, that there is no excuse (not even “ I don’t have time ”) for not doing it, and that it is highly profitable.
Anything you change, once you’ve analyzed your audiences and tested the correctives, translates into a change in the color of your business outlook… it becomes a little greener. Is the green the additional dollars you’re now bringing in?