Understanding Audience Demographics

Know Your Target Audience

One of the most challenging predicaments that online businesses face is differentiating between relevant and irrelevant traffic on their sites. With the countless marketing tools at your disposal, there is no denying the ease with which ecommerce websites can drive traffic to their sites. The hard part is turning that traffic into conversions.   

By implementing basic SEO skills and a mediocre content strategy, you can catch thousands of random hits right away. But 10,000 random hits are worth way less than 500 hits from users who are actually looking for your service/product. Don’t waste your advertising money bringing in users who have no interest in your company.

A good way of ensuring your target audience is interacting with your content is by first defining who your demographic is.

Picture Your Potential Customer

When it comes to online marketing, it helps if you have a broad idea of your ideal customer. To be able to quantify your users, you should be creating individual profiles for every user that visits your website. Once you have a broad idea of who your customer is, your marketing strategy should become easier and more streamlined.

Segment Your Customers

After creating customer profiles, the next step is to segment your customers. Use demographical information like name, address, user behavior, lifestyle, profession, needs that aren’t being met, etc., to create separate buyer personas that make up your target audience. Buyer personas help your business cater to users individually as well as develop a marketing strategy fit for each persona. Use resources like Google Analytics when segmenting your customer groups so you can record individual data and monitor their trends. For more information on Google Analytics, check out our blog.

What’s Your Buyer Persona?

Understanding your potential customers and their pain points makes it easier to create content and products directly aimed at them. Follow the steps below to create your own buyer persona.

• Name: develop different names associated with your different personas, so it’s easy to differentiate between them. It's best to use an easily identifiable title with some alliteration. (ex. Bachelor Brian, or Working Mom Wendy)
• Work:
• Field of work
• Company size
• Job description and details about their role
• Responsibilities and superiors
• Demographic Information
• Age: How old are your average users? 
• Gender: Does your business cater to a particular gender demographic?
• Salary: how much spending money does your typical customer have.
• Location: what geographical perks or setbacks do your consumers typically face?
• Education: Does your reading comprehension level match the average highest form of education displayed by your typical buyer?
• Family: Is your audience made up of single young adults, or do your consumers have dependents?
• Hobbies: How do they like to spend their free time?
• Interests: What do they like to do? Where do they get their news? 
• Goals and Challenges
• What are your consumer’s life goals?
• What roadblocks are standing in their way?
• How can you help?
• Values and Fears
• What are your users’ core values?
• How can you incorporate customer values in your content?

Feedback

The best way to please your customers is by asking them what they want. Hundreds of successful entrepreneurs claim that some of their best business strategies were taken right from the mouths of their customers. As a rule of thumb, most eCommerce businesses ask for customer feedback immediately after the checkout process. Some eCommerce platforms go a step further and offer quick welcome surveys the moment a new user lands on the page. Every business owner’s goal should be to know the most about their potential customers as possible. Try using survey makers like JotForm as your first step in getting to know your audience and understanding their customer experience.

Use the customer data received from surveys and feedback to determine what’s working well in your online store and what isn’t. On top of surveys and feedback, a crucial part of eCommerce marketing is encouraging your online shoppers to write reviews of your product or service on public forums or review sites.

Know Your Promoters

Once you’ve identified your target audience and segmented them into buyer personas, the next step is to find people to promote your brand. Customer promoters are advocates for your business that help spread the word about your brand through social media and word of mouth. As of 2022, 80% of consumers have purchased something via a promoter or influencer recommendation. Most companies offer their promoters sales incentives or payment.

What Are Your Competitors Doing?

Competitive research is possibly the most crucial part of a digital marketing campaign. Knowing your competitors is essential and regularly used by industry giants in order to get a leg up on the competition. Think of a toothpaste that claims to whiten teeth in as little as two weeks. As a result, their competition might release a toothpaste that promises to whiten teeth in as little as one week.

It’s potentially even more critical for small businesses to be well-versed and aware of the products and services their competition provides. Sometimes success is achieved by altering the marketing strategy rather than the product. For more tips on competitive research check out our Market Research blog.

Re-evaluate Your Marketing Efforts

Now that you have a more definitive and encompassing understanding of your target audience and their buyer personas, it’s time to rethink your current business plan. 

Are your products and services suited for your target audience? Are they solving a problem within your demographic’s life? What drives your potential customers, and how can you either remarket your current product/service or create new products/services better to suit the wants and needs of your target market? By considering all of these questions, you should feel better equipped to configure your business strategy and provide a product worthy of your online store’s client base.