Turning your idea into a viable venture is just the beginning. The next impediment you have to get across is finding the appropriate persons willing to spend on the products or services your startup is offering.

Your startup finding its right customers and attracting them at an early stage guarantees traction and other benefits. Finding your startup’s target audience gives an insight into how to approach your marketing strategy. 

For instance, if you don’t understand your target audience, you might end up spending a lot of money on a marketing operation aimed at the wrong demographic, who will less likely convert into leads. 

Also, you are much likely to garner appropriate, specific, and constant feedback from your honest customer group. This way, you understand their real needs and build a better product. 

Finding your startup’s target audience, whether online or offline, makes it elementary for you to focus your advertising and outreach towards potential customers. This will boost your startup’s return on investment (ROI) and scale it up, making it more profitable.

Top Tips to Finding Your Startups Target Audience

1. Asking The ‘Wh’ Questions

Asking yourself the ‘Who, What, When, Where, and Why’ questions is a precise way of understanding your target audience. The “Who” question will give you an in-depth knowledge of the person you expect to value your product.

Your target audience exhibits a lot of qualities. It would be best if you had a good idea of your potential customers. Gender, age, and location should be the utmost priority of defining your target audience. Knowing who this person is will help you narrow how your startup’s product or lifestyle will fit into their lifestyle.

What needs will your startup’s product solve?. What frustrations do existing users face? What are the potential factors that make buying your product possible? “What” questions play a big part in defining your target audience after understanding their demographic information. 

Where does your intended target audience spend most of its time? This is insightful, especially to know their geographical location or online presence. Asking the ‘when’ question comes in handy when your startup’s product/services thrive upon seasonal sales. 

Finally, the most critical questions are the ‘Why’ queries. They give a clear perception of the reasons behind a purchase. Also, you will have a competitive edge against existing brands if you recognize the answers to your ‘why.’ 

Surveys, social media platforms, and analytics offer viable answers to ‘Wh’ questions. 

2. Proper Segmentation

Targeted audiences don’t exist without the proper segmentation. This is particularly helpful in email marketing. Market segmentation and targeting is a perfect method for startups to discover and acquire critical customers.

The segmentation, targeting, and positioning (STP) process involve identifying your startup’s prospective clients, choosing customers to pursue, and creating value for the intended clients. 

Demographics, the ‘Wh’ questions, and psychographics are the common ways to segment consumers. You can group customers with parallel needs together and find out their habits. Grouping customers into segments allows you to focus your attention on a specific feature.

Targeting involves gauging how alluring the set customer segments are and how to attract them. How desirable a segment depends on what product/service your startup is bringing to the table. This should give you a clear insight into the efficient marketing strategy to apply. 

Segmentation and targeting are the pathways to positioning. Positioning means your startup highlights to potential customers why they should buy your product/service and what distinguishes it from existing brands. You can channel this info to consumers through adverts and the selling of your product. 

3. Engage Your Existing Customer Base

Engaging with your current customers helps you understand your target market extensively. It clarifies and corrects your existing assumptions. Also, you will get to know who your consumer audience is and why they value your product. Ask about their age, location, and other interests.

Engaging with your current customers comes in handy when determining an efficient marketing strategy. For instance, if you discover that most of your users are 30-year-olds, you can formulate ways to draw more users. You will have clear information on where, how, and who to target your marketing campaign towards.

Being active with your users on social networks and conducting surveys should give you an idea of your existing customers. 

4. Check Out On Your Competitors

It’s no brainer that you share the same customers with your competitors. This is a simple and informative way to know your competitors. Research on who their existing users are, how they draw customers, and who they are targeting. 

Additionally, you can go further into talking with their current users. Gather incentives and find out what they like or dislike about your competitors. Remember, don’t copy or steal your competitors’ ideas. Use the information to your own startup’s competitive advantage.

5. Create Customers Personas

Creating buyer personas, also called customer avatars, helps you understand who the individuals are in each target audience. A buyer persona refers to a description of a fictional character who is a representation of your best prospective customers.

Tools such as HubSpot’s Buyer Persona Template, Xtensio’s User Persona Creator can help your startup create buyer personas. A well-designed persona should perceive how customers purchase and how to reach this type of customer with relevant and timely information. The following are some benefits of developing a buyer persona:

• It helps you identify your startup’s needs and wants. Understanding these needs and wants is a gateway to uncover how you will sell your product/services. 
• Understanding their purchasing decisions. 
• It gives you a behavioral insight, for example, where these personas spend time on the web and the globe. You will have a better understanding of how to communicate, reach new clients, the type of content to compose, and how to promote it. 
• It helps you create targeted content.
• Comes in handy during email marketing through the use of segmentations.

Creating customer personas for your startup is critical in understanding and finding your startup’s target audience.

Final Thought

It is impossible to reach everyone all at once. Your growing startup will have the upper hand against existing brands or competitors by marketing to defined audience groups. These top tips to finding your startup target audience are crucial hallmarks in determining your growing venture as a success story.