Finding Your Online Target Market

You’re looking to attract online sales. Which means you’ll need to find your online target market. Luckily it’s not too complex — if you know how to get started.

So, how do you start the finding process?

Those social media channels

Social media can’t be overlooked. To find and attract your online target market it requires speaking their language. And while we have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat and other platforms available — chances are your target market won’t be on all of them.

Generalize first

You can break it down in broad terms. ‘Business professionals’ tend to flock to LinkedIn and Twitter over Pinterest and Snapchat. While ‘women and mothers’ are on Facebook and Pinterest. And ’creative entrepreneurs’ can be found on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Basically, generalize your market initially to choose a social media channel. Then check it out to see if they’re on there.

Hashtag it

Hashtags are still a big thing, specifically on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Hashtags are an easy click to find hoards of target markets. For example, marketers on Twitter use several key hashtags such as #SMM (social media marketing) and #growthhacking.

By typing a hashtag into the search bar on a social media channel, you’ll find target markets. Just make sure they’re yours.

Collect data from everywhere

If you have past customers you can ask, get in contact with them either by phone, email or in person.

You can ask what their favorite social media channel is. You can ask what they like to do online. You can ask what they tend to search online (this may be a bit personal, however).

The questions are meant to be a friendly discussion where they talk freely and you get inside their digitized heads. Even if only a couple people answer, it still gives you the incentive to research more, right?

When you first get started…

If you’re in the initial phase of creating your business, you might want to build a buyer persona. Buyer personas detail income, hobbies, marital status, and the problems target markets face.

And you should also include where they hang out online.

For this, you must understand what your product does and how it helps. Then you can decide who it helps. Write down everything you can think of relating to your ideal customer. Nothing is too simple or weird. This is only a brainstorming session, after all.

Then go through where they wouldn’t be online. If you’re helping fathers and businessmen, you probably won’t find them in Mom Facebook groups. Juggling both personal and professional responsibilities, they probably won’t be typing away on Twitter.

But by crossing off places, you’ll start to see where they could be hanging out. And then you go check and see.

Online target markets…

…aren’t difficult to manage once you find where they hang out. But you got to get to that step first.

By asking for feedback from existing customers, creating realistic buyer personas, and researching hashtags — you can find your online target market and start building authentic relationships.

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