Four Ways to Better Understand Your Audience

This article was originally published on Forbes and written by Lotus Digital CEO, Ashlee Piga.

So you’re in the thinking process of developing top-notch content for your product or service and you’re wondering how to get it in front of the eyes of the people who it will make an impact. When your brand is discovered by the right audience, conversions and customer retention are the results that are high on the priority list. Getting to know your audience will give you the insight needed to provide a solution to their problem. This list of steps you can take will allow you to fully resonate with them by better understanding their actions and needs.

Create Marketing Personas

Using insights and research to create a buyer persona will represent who your ideal customer is. It’s also a key element in the development of these personas. This can be done by uncovering how current customers find your content, pulling information from your sales team on what the common characteristics are of customers they interact with and understanding who benefits from what you’re offering the most. Having this information lets you fully understand who exactly is in the market for your product or service and what they have in common. They also give you the ability to tweak your content to best fit the desires of your audience. After you figure out who your ideal audience is, you’ll have a leg up to target accordingly for campaigning.

Marketing persona development is not only another way to better understand your buyer, but it’s important when creating and executing a content marketing strategy. Another critical key element to this is asking yourself where they are making their purchases. Something that may resonate on Facebook to audience group X may not mean the same thing or evoke the same engagement as audience group Y who may be keener to Instagram or Twitter. 

Conduct Surveys

Surveys can reveal the parts of your content marketing that are most effective and what your current audience believes could use some work. They can provide a glimpse into what motivates a customer to make a purchase. Optimizing accordingly will work to streamline the process of attracting new customers who will resonate with your brand without a doubt. 

Questions that bring individuals into the brand experience help build trust and ultimately brand loyalty. If you’re an eCommerce site, questions like, “how did you find us,” or “what was your favorite part about the shopping experience” will help you better understand the content that drove the conversion or the connection that created a social media story that then got someone else to engage and connect. Always make sure you connect with your customer and social community at least once per quarter.

Utilize Analytics 

Analytics will help you empathize with your audience as you learn where they are coming from and how much time they’re spending engaging with your content. With this, you can also identify what they’re most interested in and what doesn’t necessarily light their fire. Insight into this information lets you determine what it is they actually want to gain from your brand. Creating more of what they desire and doing away with what they can live without will cause resonation and personalization that will result in true fulfillment on their end.

Another way analytics can help you better understand your marketing audience is through geographical location, search queries, device preference and conversions. Understanding the path to which users navigate to your brand experience will help you better develop and refine your audience personas, and it will also help you create content that serves their needs. 

Differentiate Your Marketing Content 

As we all know, content is critical to moving users along any marketing journey. Consider A/B testing different types of content to see what creates the most engagement, leads, and ultimately sales. This feedback will create a deeper understanding of who your audience is and what they want to receive from the content you create. If your infographic received higher than normal engagement, this reveals the positive impact that it made on your audience. Breaking out the information provided there into more specific, digestible pieces can provide exactly what it is that your audience wants. It will also help you to continue to connect your audience with your content as your work to create new content that drives action. 

Let’s face it, customers who relate to brands that meet them where they are satisfying their needs have the ability to create long-term relationships and provide you with your ideal ROI. Taking these steps allows you better to understand the intentions and actions of your audience, and it helps build brand loyalty. Creating customer retention isn’t a one and done process, but takes thorough research, refining and repeating to deliver your brand as a solution to their needs and connect with them in a way that makes the reach of your content marketing program exponential.

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