What is audience analysis, and what are the best ways to do it?
Audience analysis is formulated through researching your target audiences’ demographics, language, location, preferences, interests, and other relevant metrics. This data is then analyzed to offer usable and actionable customer insights for a business by creating buyer personas.
A buyer persona consists of a detailed description of a character who is designed to represent your ideal target audience(s). The persona is fictional, yet it is created through extensive research and a deep understanding of your current or ideal audience.
There are many benefits from conducting proper audience analysis as it generates insightful data about your audience, including:
- Gain a deeper understanding of your audience which can boost customer engagement and increase sales.
- Understanding your audience better through analysis should also support improved customer service and a more enhanced customer experience.
- Your brand can create more relevant content by gaining knowledge about your target audience and understanding what matters most to your users.
Below are some tips to help your brand conduct effective audience analysis.
Gathering data on your target audience
The first step in audience analysis is bringing your audience data together to identify audience groups. If you would like to gather new data, you could conduct market research by doing surveys, interviews, focus groups, etc., to help create a description of your ideal buyer.
You can also leverage your current customer database, as this will consist of a proven audience of people who have already bought your products or services. You can access the data to analyze what your customers have in common in terms of interests, trends, and other behaviors to see if there are any new angles you could take with your marketing.
Several audience intelligence tools on the market can help speed up the process of analyzing your audience database. Many of these tools offer smart insights into your audiences’ demographics, personality traits, interests, online behavior, and favorite influencers and other brands they like.
Understanding the audience data
After you have collected your data from various points, it is necessary to consolidate it to create a clear vision of the big picture.
There are third-party party platforms that can support this process; the most important part of this step is to bring all your data together in one, comprehensive place, so the data is aligned, and then you can begin to interpret the information. Once you have an aligned view, you can start refining your marketing planning through a better understanding of your audience by leveraging the insights and improving your brand and marketing strategies.
You can also use competitor analysis to refine your target audience by researching your competitors and observing whom they are targeting. This analysis can be done via search, social media, etc.
Once you’ve pulled the data together, you can create buyer personas, and it is possible to make a quick start by using a buyer persona template and various online tools that support persona generation.
One aspect of this is reviewing the personality traits of your target audience; you can then begin to identify common characteristics of your audience. You can use these insights to set up marketing campaigns that match your customer base and drives conversions and sales. You can use the data to refine your messaging by tailoring the copy to your audience’s characteristics or online behaviors to get more impact from your content.
Once you have a clear vision of your audience, it is good to segment it into smaller audience groups. You can segment the groups by pinpointing common characteristics or attributes. It is important to set up audience segments that relate to your brand, can be measured, and are reachable to get the best results for your marketing campaigns.
Creating buyer personas
The next step is to use the audience analysis to set up your buyer personas. A persona can include a range of assets from needs, interests, likes, aspirations, and demographic data such as age, gender, marital status, and location. Here it is also possible to include estimated income.
Making comprehensive buyer personas will support your sales and marketing campaigns; for example, you can ensure you are targeting relevant audience segments when advertising; this will contribute to lower costs and better results.
Conclusion
Audience analysis is an essential step when setting up a marketing campaign. By having a deeper understanding of your audience, you will be able to create content that engages the target audience. Moreover, it will improve your return on investment (ROI) by having the data to understand where to find your audience so that you do not waste ad spend or other marketing resources.
If you have any questions related to audience analysis or marketing strategy, please feel free to contact our expert team at info@relevantaudience.com for more information