Developing a articulate understanding of your social media target audience may exist the most of import thing you exercise every bit a social media marketer. Your target audience informs all elements of your social media strategy.

Here'south a hint before nosotros dig in: Your target audience is not "everyone" (unless yous're Google). Your task in defining your social media audience is to place and sympathize your niche and then you lot tin can dominate it.

Audience enquiry will help you craft relevant content, messaging, and ads. All of this can lead to higher conversion rates and better social media ROI. Of class, these are fundamental metrics for all social marketers (and marketing bosses).

Bonus: Get the free template to easily craft a detailed contour of your ideal customer and/or target audience.

Target audience definition

A social media target audience is the specific grouping of people you desire to reach with your social channels. They are the people who are most likely to be interested in your content, products, or services. They are probable united by some common characteristics, like demographics and behaviors.

As you develop your target audience definition, don't exist agape to get highly specific. You tin can kickoff with broad categories like millennials or single dads. Simply practiced social media audience research will allow you to become into much finer item.

Retrieve: Y'all can sell to everyone, but yous can't target everyone with all of your social content. You can't speak direct to your best potential customers if you're trying to speak to their kids and parents and spouses and colleagues at the same time.

How to notice your social media target audience

Social media audience research isn't complicated. Information technology's mainly about narrowing your focus while expanding your achieve.

We've created a free social media audience research template to assist you keep track of all the information you learn as you lot comport your research.

Bonus: Go the gratis template to easily craft a detailed profile of your ideal customer and/or target audience.

ane. Compile data on your existing customers and social media audition

Who most wants to engage with y'all on social media? Start with the people already buying from yous, following you, and interacting with your posts. Some data points you might want to consider are:

  • Age: You don't need to become too specific hither. Focus on learning which decade of life your social media target audience is in, or their generation.
  • Location (and fourth dimension zone): Where in the world does your social media audition live? This helps y'all empathize which geographic areas to target. You'll as well acquire what hours are most important for your customer service and sales reps to be online. And when you should schedule your social ads and posts to ensure all-time visibility.
  • Linguistic communication: What language does your target audition speak? Don't assume it'south your language. And don't assume they speak the ascendant language of their current physical location.
  • Spending power and patterns: How much money does your target audience for social media sites accept to spend? How do they approach purchases in your price category? Do they have specific financial concerns or preferences you need to address?
  • Interests: What does your target audience like to exercise? What Goggle box shows practise they watch? What other businesses practice they interact with?
  • Challenges: What pain points is your social media audition dealing with?
  • Phase of life: Does your social media target audition include college students? New parents? Parents of teens? Retirees?

B2B companies should likewise consider:

  • Size of business: What kinds of businesses purchase from and engage with yous? Are they offset-ups or enterprise-level brands?
  • Who tends to brand the buying decisions: Are you targeting the CEO? The CTO? The social marketing manager?

Social media analytics provide much of this information. Facebook Audition Insights can be peculiarly helpful.

Your own client database can as well provide a wealth of information. You lot can't assume that your overall client demographics volition friction match your target audience for social media sites. Only understanding who's already buying from you can help you lot empathise who's near likely to be interested in your social channels.

If you're not already, now would be a great fourth dimension to incorporate UTM codes into social posts, either manually or using a social media management platform like Hootsuite. This will permit you to assemble data nigh who clicks on your content using Google Analytics.

Once you have UTM codes in place, open Google Analytics. Audience Insights provides valuable demographic information about your nearly engaged social media audience.

2. Use social listening to discover conversations about your brand

Social listening is a key fashion to uncover conversations near your business, your industry, and your products. Monitoring relevant keywords and hashtags reveals what people are proverb near you lot and your competitors online, even when you're not tagged.

Reaching out in response to these social posts is a swell way to notice your target audience on social media, even if they're not yet following y'all.

Y'all can also use social listening for deeper social media audience research. Equally you monitor keywords and hashtags, you may uncover other relevant hashtags your audience uses. You can so test adding these hashtags to your social posts to extend your attain to more relevant users.

iii. Research which social channels your audience uses

Now you have a sense of who your audition might be and what they're talking about online. Then information technology's time to find out where they already spend their time on social media. In that location are a couple of tools y'all can use to find this information.

Hootsuite Insights Powered past Brandwatch

Enter a combination of relevant terms for your business in the search bar. Using Boolean logic, y'all tin get quite detailed hither. Then ringlet down to see which are the superlative sites, hashtags, and authors for your search.

Keyhole.co

Start a gratuitous trial or log into your account at Keyhole.co to access this powerful research tool.

  1. Enter a relevant hashtag yous uncovered in the previous step. A hashtag that worked well for a competitor'southward campaign would be a great choice.
  2. Scroll down to Top Sites to come across which social networks are amid the nearly popular referring domains.

Google Analytics

Check Google Analytics to encounter which social networks appear in your referral traffic report.

If yous're using UTM parameters, you lot tin can besides come across which social posts are driving the most traffic to your site. If y'all find your Twitter posts bulldoze way more traffic than your Facebook posts, this is likely a clue that your audience is more active on Twitter.

4. Bank check out the competition

Odds are, your social media audience overlaps with that of your competitors. So it's worth checking out what they're doing and then y'all tin benefit from the lessons they've already learned. Are they reaching segments yous hadn't thought to consider? How are they positioning themselves?

Here are a couple of helpful tools:

Buzzsumo

In the Buzzsumo.com search bar, enter a relevant keyword for your industry. (Notation: Y'all can enter a couple of searches for free, only beyond that you'll need to offset a complimentary trial or sign up for a paid Buzzsumo account.)

You'll meet a list of the top shared content across social networks, including date data. Look for patterns. What formats and channels take worked well for your competitors?

If you've started a free trial or have a Buzzsumo account, go to the Content Assay tab. You'll detect a breakup of the most popular social media networks in your niche.

Search streams

Nosotros talked about search streams for monitoring keywords and hashtags above, merely they're also a great way to go on an eye on what your competition is upwards to.

In your social media management dashboard, prepare up streams to monitor your competition'due south social posts and look for patterns in hashtags, post type, and content strategy.

To dig deeper, check out our step-by-footstep guide on how to do competitor research on social media. It walks you through the best ways to use social tools to assemble competitor insights.

5. Understand what your target audience wants from your social channels

Beginning, you demand to make sure you have a stone-solid agreement of how your product or service makes your audience'southward life:

  • better
  • easier
  • or just more interesting.

Does it solve their challenges? Address specific pain points? Help them come across their goals?

If y'all don't already have a clear list of the benefits of your product, information technology's fourth dimension to kickoff brainstorming at present. Creating benefit statements automatically involves stating some basic information nigh your target demographic.

For case, in this IKEA postal service, features of the advertised furniture might be that it is small, inexpensive, and functional. But the benefit is that information technology tin can help you make a comfy workspace in even a modest habitation:

Next, start to think about how you can create value for your audition through your social channels. Some primal questions to consider:

  • What are your audience's main purchasing barriers, and how tin can yous assistance overcome them?
  • Where are your followers at in their ownership journey? Are they researching or ready to buy? Looking for reviews?
  • What kind of content does your audience tend to engage with?

If you're having trouble figuring out exactly what your social audience wants to see on your social channels, you lot could always ask them.

SurveyMonkey has a complimentary template for a social media audition enquiry survey. Use this template to notice out which social networks your audition prefers and their content preferences. Y'all can link to your survey straight from a social post, like Amsterdam Marketing did here:

Hello to our amazing followers. We're currently working to make our Facebook page even better and we would similar your…

Posted by I amsterdam on Wednesday, June 17, 2020

4 target audience examples from real brands

i. The Limited

The general principles for defining your target audience go back to the earliest days of marketing. Here'due south how fashion retailer The Limited divers their target audition way back in their 1979 annual report (as cited in the textbook Retail Marketing Management):

"The Limited's target market is the 16- to 35-year old female. She is educated, affluent, gregarious, style-oriented, and more often than not, she is a working adult female who lives in or most a major metropolitan area."

The principles for creating a target audience definition accept non changed much since that statement was created 40 years ago. (Although the brand would probably phrase it slightly differently today.) Parent company Belk still conspicuously targets the audience The Express divers back in the '70s.

What has inverse is that you at present take so many tools to help you comport social media audience research.

Bonus: Get the gratuitous template to hands craft a detailed profile of your ideal customer and/or target audience.

Become the free template at present!

2. Zipcar

Allow's jump ahead a few decades. Hither'southward Zipcar'south brand positioning statement, as cited in the classic marketing text Kellogg on Marketing. The first part of the argument defines the target audience:

"To urban-dwelling, educated, techno-savvy consumers who worry about the surroundings that time to come generations will inherit, Zipcar is the car-sharing service that lets you lot save coin and reduce your carbon footprint, making y'all feel you've made a smart, responsible choice that demonstrates your delivery to protecting the environment."

Observe that Zipcar is not targeting all residents of a particular city. They're not fifty-fifty targeting all the people in a given city who don't own a car. They're specifically targeting people who:

  • live in an urban expanse
  • accept a sure caste of education
  • are comfortable volition technology
  • are concerned about the surroundings

These are all interests and behaviors that Zipcar can specifically target using social ads. They too help to guide the company'south overall arroyo to its social media marketing strategy. That's clear in this thread about sustainable habits for World Environment Twenty-four hour period.

3. Tourism Commonwealth of australia

You lot might not demand to include all the demographic characteristics (like age and gender) in your target audience definition. In some cases, especially for social ad targeting, it can be more of import to focus on the behaviors and motivations of your target audition.

Tourism Australia defined its target audience as:

"Loftier value travelers who are motivated by what [Australia has] to offer and are most likely to choose Commonwealth of australia for their next holiday or business organisation event."

This target audience statement may seem a little broad, but Tourism Australia dug deep into the data to further define their audience. For case they know that their target audience:

  • regularly travels long-haul
  • is driven by food and wine, aquatic and coastal, and nature and wild fauna experiences
  • plans longer trips exploring more of the country

Now that's one impressive ceiling of stars 🤩Ari Rex captured this stunning heaven show at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve…

Posted by Australia.com on Saturday, June twenty, 2020

They also explored the reasons their target audience travels. These include:

  • seeking local experiences
  • learning near the world
  • visiting "fashionable and cool" destinations

So they took information technology one pace further. They analyzed the data to craft definitions of the target audience in each of their top geographic markets. They even learned how far in accelerate of a trip visitors are likely to volume.

4. GANT

The lifestyle and sportswear brand GANT divers a specific target audition of "25-45 year old male and females with university degrees, cosmopolitan lifestyles, and a hunger to explore and abound."

With this audience in heed, they created a digital marketing strategy based around a YouTube serial. Chosen "Couple Thinkers," information technology features celebrities and inspirational figures.

They promoted the show on their social channels and partnered with Esquire Britain to extend the content to an even wider audience.

How to accomplish your target audition on social media

Once y'all've plant and defined your social media target audience, use these tips to connect with more of them.

1. Lookalike audiences and advertizing targeting

GANT expanded the audience for its YouTube series using lookalike audiences. They based those audiences on both customers and subscribers.

Lookalike audience targeting is ane of the most straightforward ways to reach more of your target audience on social media. Lookalike audiences share characteristics and behaviours with people who already interact with your brand.

Don't have a client or subscriber list however? You can still use precise targeting options to target social ads. Y'all'll then reach exactly the audience you divers during your research.

If you're targeting more than 1 audience, yous can target your ads so that each audience sees the content most relevant to them. For case, the NHL uses geographically targeted ads for squad memorabilia.

Screenshot of NHL targeted social media ads
Source: NHL via Facebook Ads Library

Make sure you structure the content of the ads to appeal to exactly the audience you lot're targeting every bit well. Ask yourself: Does the language speak exactly to the market you have defined in an appropriate voice? Practice the visuals brand sense in the context of your target market?

2. A/B examination paid and organic content to maximize reach

Equally you focus on reaching your target audience for social media sites, y'all may demand to adjust your organic and paid social content strategy .

Use the information gained during your social media target audience research to begin to tweak your:

  • content
  • captions
  • images
  • post types
  • advert scheduling

Using A/B testing, you can refine your content over fourth dimension as you learn exactly what works best.

3. Revisit your audience enquiry as needed

The results of your A/B testing may provide additional insight you didn't take when you first created your target market statement. Be sure to incorporate any lessons you learn.

Revisit your target audition definition regularly. Make sure it even so accurately describes the people you lot most desire to reach on social media. While The Limited's target audience definition has remained constructive for 40 years, that won't be true for all companies.

Your target market could change over time. For case, back in the 1980s, Atari marketed its gaming console to kids.

Today, Atari targets the same people who played its games back in the 1980s. Simply those people are now adults who view the Atari brand not as a cut-edge gaming system, merely as a nostalgic part of their childhood.

A heavy dose of nostalgia Did your prepare up look similar dorsum in the day?

Posted past Atari on Wednesday, June 24, 2020

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