Do You Know Who Your Audience Is?

Before you start your business, you must know who your market is. If you already have a product or service, you may already know who your potential customers are. These are your “audience”, or a term you might want to familiarize yourself with, your personas. The problem you may now have is how to reach them.

What Is A Persona?

Your persona does not refer to everyone in your target market. For example, if you are selling men’s shoes, your audience probably won’t be all men. You have to drill down the market to find the right prospects. If you sell Italian leather shoes, you probably don’t want to connect with men looking for Jordan basketball sneakers, get it?

To drill down on your persona, find out everything you can about your best clients and create a fictional person out of the information.

Questions To Ask Your Customer:

• What is your job role?  Your title?
• How is your job measured?
• What is a typical day?
• What skills are required?
• What knowledge and tools do you use?
• Who do you report to?  Who reports to you?
• What industry does your company serve?
• What is the size in employees and revenue of your company?
• What are you responsible for?
• What does it mean to be successful in your role?
• What is your biggest challenge?
• How do you learn about new information?
• What blogs do you read?

Let’s Look At An Example

For our example of a store owner selling Italian leather shoes, the answer may be:

My ideal customer persona is a man, probably between 18 to 50 years. The person loves class, has a white-collar job, is a high-income earner and lives in the United States.  The is married, has 2 kids, drives a sporty car and wears his pants cut a little short so that his shoes show.

With this answer, we’ve defined our persona by answering questions about his gender, age, interest, employment, income level, and personal details. These factors will give you a firm start on defining your audience. From there, you can even further drill down the customers depending on what you are offering.

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