What does determining a brand audience have to do with creating a strategy? By establishing who we are reaching and who we want to reach, we’re able to create and target content and campaigns toward a specific group, which is a far better use our time and effort instead of trying to create a message that will hopefully appeal to the masses.

Here’s an example: after reviewing a client’s in-take questionnaire, I like to dig a little deeper by asking a few questions before I start auditing their platforms to get a better sense of and to hear them verbalize goals as well as wants and needs for their brand’s digital marketing. For a past client, I wanted to find out more about her intended - aka targeted - audience goals. She had recently opened a wellness studio that had a good amount of word of mouth referral traffic from her private sessions, but she wanted to grow her business and online audience. Since her digital platforms were fairly new, it allowed us a lot of room to create a brand awareness strategy. I asked, “Who do you think you’re currently marketing toward? What kind of person do you think is reading your posts?”

Her response: moms in her neighborhood and general area of the city; late 30s to early/mid-40s; either they have steady childcare help, or kids in school, so they have time and some form of disposable income to take her sessions a couple times a week. Maybe stay-at-home dads too, but she really wanted to focus on moms. It matched what she said in the form, but at first glance at her platforms, the answer felt off for what I was seeing on the public-side of who was actually engaging on in her social media platforms.

About a week later, as we were getting ready to review the audit’s findings, I asked again, ““Who do you think you’re currently marketing toward - or creating posts for?”

She responded with the same answer as before - moms. Then I asked, “And who takes your classes now?”

She said “A mix, but most of the classes and private groups are C-suite type of indiv—.” She suddenly stopped. She realized who she was actually marketing toward.

The platform audit’s results allowed us to see a baseline of who she was already reaching - men; 45-55+; high-level white-collar jobs - and where she needed to focus brand awareness and growth. While she had an idea of who she wanted to reach - neighborhood moms with time and disposable income - she wasn’t creating content that captured their attention nor knew how to capture their attention. In effort to fix that, we determined who she wanted in her ideal audience and built a portion of the strategy around reaching them by using client personas.

How? We answered these 5 questions that help narrow and determine her brand’s audience: 

1. Who does your already audience include? From the audit, we can see who a brand is already reaching and engaging with; this is the core audience.

2. Who do you want to reach? Also from the audit, we’re able to see and pinpoint who is missing from the audience and where we need to expand.

3. Where are they located? This includes both an audience’s geographical location and where they spend their time online in general and how they engage with brands.

4. How do they learn about you? Think of all ways your current and potential audience learns about your brand, ranging from word of mouth to articles in magazines to social media to forwarded newsletters.

5. Who is your ideal client/customer? This answer will directly tie into your client personas; the more you can pinpoint your ideal client, the better.

It doesn’t matter if a brand is freshly launched or well established, determining and updating a targeted audience is important for its growth. By saying, “this is who I want my brand to engage with” and answering the above questions with clarity, the better in creating a focused digital strategy.

bottom line:

By determining your brand’s audience, it will be easier to create content and campaigns that will better establish and grow brand awareness while building a loyal community made of followers, customers, and ambassadors.

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