How to Learn More About Your Target Audience

It doesn’t matter if you’re an affiliate, publisher, or advertiser that wants to promote consumer goods, you need to know your target audience. But, the reality is that most professionals don’t really know their target audiences or why they focus on these. The truth is that affiliates and other stakeholders that know their audiences have a much better chance of connecting with these users and generating valuable interactions.

At ActiveRevenue, we are at the center of the affiliate ecosystem, so we understand how important it is for marketing professionals and advertisers to know their audiences. But, learning about the potential customers you want to target is not easy, especially if you don’t have any prior experience.

Below, we will go over the definition of a target audience and provide step-by-step instructions to research different consumer segments.

Defining Your Target Audiences

First, let’s go over the definition of a target audience. 

The target audience can be defined as the different consumer groups that you target in your marketing campaigns. Consumers are usually grouped in the same audience when they share demographic similarities, like location, age, gender, device, and so on.

Every affiliate program is unique in terms of the audience it targets, so affiliates need to familiarize themselves with all the consumer segments that they can potentially work with. Advertisers, on the other hand, need to understand their audiences in order to create affiliate programs that focus on the right type of user. 

How to Learn More About Your Target Audience

Now that we’ve covered the basics of what target audiences are and how they are important, let’s take a look at the steps you need to follow to learn about the users you want to target. 

We will provide general steps below, but keep in mind that each type of stakeholder should adjust each target audience research depending on the goal. For example, advertisers should conduct target audience research before creating their program, while affiliates can start analyzing different consumer groups after finding a suitable affiliate agreement. 

1. Conduct Research Early On

If you’ve already launched your program or campaign, the target audience research won’t be as impactful. Therefore, you should start learning about the different user groups you want to attract as soon as possible. It can take a while to get a real sense of who your ideal customer is in terms of longevity and average spending, so the earlier you start the faster you’ll get results. 

2. Use Paid and Free Resources

Rather than debating whether to use free or paid resources, successful stakeholders tend to use a combination of both. Examples of great free resources include Google Trends and consumer reports publishers by platforms like the FTC. At the same time, you can use paid keyword research tools like SEMrush and purchase more detailed whitepapers that give valuable insights into your potential customers. 

3. Take a Look at Competitor Strategies

One of the biggest advantages of digital marketing is that you can analyze competitor campaigns using advertising intelligence tools. Instead of starting from scratch, you should research leading brands in your field and evaluate the types of creatives and traffic they are using. This should give you a clear idea of what elements your audience is interested in as well as other details about this demographic group.  

4. Build Personas Based on Your Most Important Customers

Buyer personas are fictional characters that are meant to represent your ideal target audiences. Affiliates and advertisers can create as many personas as necessary, but this will vary heavily based on the types of users that they want to attract. Each persona should contain information like age range, profession, location, and interests, among other details. 

5. Learn from Your Current Clients

A lot of stakeholders begin their search by speculating which consumers are the most profitable, when they already have the answer to that question in their current client base. Instead of starting from scratch, take a look at your current customers, figure out if you have any ultra-profitable clients, and create a persona around each one that fits this description. 

6. Pay Attention to Social Media and Similar Channels

Social media is by far the best channel to not only connect with your audience, but also listen to what these users have to say. You can use interactions like comments, posts, shares, and likes to figure out what elements attract your customers. Then, you should include these elements in your materials, whether it’s for affiliates or directly for users being targeted.

Looking for Ways to Improve Your Campaign Performance? Get the Best Traffic at ActiveRevenue

Conducting keyword research is a huge step, but there are many other elements you need to monitor to attract and engage users. If you’re looking for the best partners to help you grow your affiliate efforts, ActiveRevenue will be glad to help.