Making Readers Feel Like You’ve Read Their Minds: A Treasure Hunter’s Guide
Your target audience is your treasure map. It'll lead you to increased sales, more loyal customers, and a thriving business.
To find that treasure, you must first understand the map's legends—audience behavior, their motivations and even their psychology. And that's where many marketing teams struggle. They throw ideas into a Slack channel, chase marketing fads, and hope for the best. But this guessing game wastes time and marketing budgets.
You need to start thinking from the bottom up. Instead of pushing out so many ads to convert a few viewers, think about why anyone would buy your product, read your blog, or whatever the focus of your marketing is, and how they would even go about it. This way, you can reverse engineer that data to build your marketing strategy.
Imagine launching premium outdoor gear. Rather than just flooding ads online, first understand who is coming to buy and why. Are they thrill-seekers or family campers? How do they buy? Online research or in-store testing? Now, create an ad that speaks to their motivations and put it where they are.
For content marketers, that means understanding what motivates your readers to find content. Are they curious learners or people looking for solutions? How do they like to learn? Do they spend a lot of time searching online or do they prefer hands-on workshops? Create content around their interests and get it in front of them. Help them go from being curious to taking action in a simple, step-by-step way.
This way, you save time and money. And that’s how you make your audience feel like you’ve read their minds.
Short and snappy, no? Yeah. Here’s a more detailed look into understanding your target audience.
Finding Your Target Audience
Picture this: You've spent hours, if not days, crafting what you believe to be the perfect blog post or email campaign. Finally, you hit send or publish, and...crickets. No engagement, no shares, no clicks. What went wrong?
Chances are, you missed the mark with your target audience.
Defining your target audience is the first step in unlocking the secrets of your marketing treasure map. It offers insights into your potential customers' behaviors, motivations, and needs.
To do that, first identify your ideal customer's demographics, psychographics, and buying behaviours.
- Who are they?
- What do they care about?
- What motivates them to buy?
Essentially, you're asking: why do these people give me money?
One way to know is by conducting customer interviews, surveys, or focus groups. This helps you gather valuable insights into your audience's pain points, challenges, and desires.
But don't stop there. Conduct market research to learn more about your potential customers.
- What are their pain points and challenges?
- What motivates them to make a purchase?
- What do they value most in a product or service?
The answers to these questions help you piece together the puzzle, which is your target audience. And that's how you create marketing campaigns that attract and engage the right audience – those most likely to become loyal customers.
Without this key, your marketing campaigns will miss the mark. Then you're back to crickets.
Following the Trail: Buyer Personas
You have your big picture. You've identified the general area where the treasure may be hidden. Now, you start looking for clues, following the paths closer to the treasure trove.
This means narrowing down your target audience until you can create a detailed persona representing your ideal customer. The one person you’re selling to. These are detailed profiles of your ideal customers, based on the data you've gathered and your assumptions about their needs and preferences.
By giving your ideal customers names, faces, and stories, you can create content that speaks directly to their unique needs and challenges. Even understand your audience on a more personal level.
Think of each persona as a character on your treasure map. You need to give each character a name, a backstory, and a set of goals and motivations.
Let's say you're a B2B SaaS company that sells project management software. Your target audience would include project managers, team leaders, and executives at mid-sized businesses. Here's an example of a buyer persona you might create:
With a buyer persona like this, you can use guide your content creation efforts. In Emily’s case, for instance, you can create content focusing on time-saving tips and tools.
Buyer personas contributed to a 175% uptick in Thomson Reuter’s revenue, lifted Skytap’s sales leads by 124%, and increased Pegasystem’s pipeline value to $3 million monthly.
The point? Knowing who your buyer = more chances of selling what you offer.
Of course, buyer personas are not set in stone. Just like a treasure map needs to be updated as new information comes to light, you need to tweak your buyer personas as your audience evolves. Stay open to feedback, and refine your buyer personas as you go.
Pro tip?
Crafting a marketing persona is a great start, but meeting with your followers in person is even better. Take the time to talk to your audience regularly and get to know them on a personal level.
This direct engagement lets you glean deeper insights into their needs, preferences, and pain points. That’s where you catch the real problems.
And talk to as many of them as possible, the real people behind the data. If you’re a content writer, you can simply ask the business you're writing for to put you in touch with some of their customers. Then, use LinkedIn and Twitter to identify potential interviewees.
The goal of these conversations is twofold:
- To learn what your readers care about so you can create content that speaks to their needs and interests (and get ideas from Google)
- To broaden your own understanding of the industry
Using the Compass: Market Research
The foundation of every market research is to answer the question:
Would my target audience care?
One way to know the answer to that question is through surveys. Surveys help you gather data on your audience's pain points, preferences, and behavior. To create one, simply sign up to a survey creation tool like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms and share it with your target audience.
Let's say you're a B2B company that sells cloud storage solutions. You’d create a survey to gather data on your target audience's pain points around data storage and backup.
Here are some sample questions you might ask:
- What are your biggest challenges regarding data storage and backup?
- How often do you back up your data?
- What features do you look for in a cloud storage solution?
- How much are you willing to pay for a cloud storage solution?
- What factors influence your decision to purchase a cloud storage solution?
Next, identify trends and patterns in the responses and tailor your marketing messages, product offerings, and content to those responses. This way, you’re more likely to speak directly to your prospect’s needs.
Alternatively, you can analyze industry reports and use tools like Google Trends and SEMRush to understand search trends and competitor behavior.
Finding New Paths to Your Treasure: Competitor Analysis
One method I use a lot is to analyze competitors:
- I look at what they're doing well and where they fall short.
- Explore their content, social media activity, and product offerings.
- Identify gaps in the market they're not addressing, and think about how I can position my content to fill those gaps.
You can easily do the same in SEMrush.
As you gather information, look for patterns and insights that can help you better understand your competitors.
- What are their unique selling propositions?
- What keywords are they targeting in their content and advertising?
- How are they positioning themselves in the market?
This gives you a deeper understanding of the competitive landscape and helps you find opportunities for differentiation. It’s a good way to improve your own marketing strategies and tactics as well.
There are several techniques and tools you can use to conduct competitor analysis. Here are a few to consider:
1. Content analysis
Look at your competitor’s website, blog, social media profiles, and other marketing channels. What kind of content are they producing, and how often do they publish?
Pay attention to the topics they're covering, the tone and style of their writing, and the engagement their content generates. This can give you a sense of your target audience's interest and how they prefer to consume content.
2. Keyword research
This is where you learn the topics and keywords your competitors target in their content. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs to identify the keywords your competitors are ranking for, and incorporate those keywords into your own content strategy. This way, you reach your target audience more effectively and improve your SEO performance.
3. Social media analysis
Social media is a great source of information on your competitors' marketing tactics and content. Follow your competitors on social media and monitor their activity to see what content they share, how often they post, and how their audience responds.
This is all easy if you use social media listening tools. My favorites include Mention or Awario—they help you track mentions of your competitors and see what people say about them.
4. Customer reviews and feedback
Don't forget to look at your competitors' customer reviews and feedback. This is where the real audience puts their ten-piece. And they usually don’t hold back, so you know exactly how they feel.
Leverage these valuable insights into what your target audience likes and dislikes about your competitors' products or services, and how you can differentiate yourself in the market.
Look at review sites like Yelp or Trustpilot, as well as customer feedback on social media and other channels.
If you want to peek behind your competitor’s curtain, this template from SEMrush is a great place to start:
But certainly, look beyond your immediate competitors.
You need a broader understanding of your industry and target audience, and it won't come from your immediate competitors. This means looking at other players in your industry and adjacent industries targeting a similar audience.
This way, you can identify gaps in the market you are uniquely positioned to fill, and gain insight into the needs and preferences of your target audience that aren't immediately apparent from studying your direct competitors.
You can also leverage social listening tools. Here, I'd skew towards these two social listening tools: Hootsuite or Sprout Social.
They're excellent tools for monitoring social media conversations related to your industry and products. They allow you to track mentions of your brand, industry trends, and customer feedback, giving you valuable insights into what your target audience says and how they feel about your products or services.
Here are a few examples of companies that have successfully analyzed their competitors and found opportunities for more gold:
1. Dollar Shave Club
Dollar Shave Club disrupted the shaving industry by targeting millennial men with a subscription-based model and a humorous marketing campaign.
To understand their target audience, they conducted extensive competitor analysis and identified a gap in the market for a more affordable and convenient shaving solution. Then, they positioned themselves as a disruptor in the market to build a loyal following.
2. Warby Parker
Warby Parker disrupted the eyewear industry by offering affordable, stylish glasses online. To understand their target audience, they conducted extensive market research and competitor analysis, and identified a gap in the market for affordable, fashionable glasses.
As Co-founder Dave Gilboa put it,
“Understanding that the same company owned LensCrafters and Pearle Vision, Ray-Ban and Oakley, and the licenses for Chanel and Prada prescription frames and sunglasses -- all of a sudden, it made sense to me why glasses were so expensive. When you buy a Ralph Lauren or Chanel pair of glasses, it’s actually a company called Luxottica that’s designing them and paying a licensing fee between 10 and 15% to that brand to slap that logo on there. If we did our own brand, we could give that 10-15% back to customers.”
So they did, and what a success it was.
3. Airbnb
Airbnb disrupted the travel industry by offering a more affordable and personalized alternative to traditional hotels.
Airbnb analyzed the market for short-term rentals and identified a need for a more personalized and authentic travel experience. Then, they built a global community of travelers who value unique and local experiences by leveraging user-generated content and word-of-mouth marketing.
Be careful not to become too fixated on your competitors. Remember, your treasure map is unique to your business and target audience. While analyzing your competitors can provide valuable insights, staying focused on your goals and objectives steers your ship in the right direction.
Think outside the box and try new marketing and content creation approaches. Daring to be different carves a distinct identity that sets you apart from the competition and leaves a lasting impression.
Crafting Your Content Strategy
Crafting a content strategy is like charting a course on your treasure map. You need to create a plan that guides your content creation and distribution efforts by understanding your target audience, competitors, and market trends.
To craft an effective content strategy, define your goals and objectives.
- What do you want to achieve with your content?
- Are you looking to generate leads, build brand awareness, or establish thought leadership in your industry?
Once you've defined your goals, focus on your target audience.
- What pain points do they have?
- What questions do they need answered?
- What type of content do they prefer?
Another critical element of your content strategy is to choose the right channels.
- Where does your target audience spend their time online?
- Are they active on social media, do they prefer email newsletters, or do they spend time on industry forums?
With these insights in mind, you can start to develop a plan for your content creation and distribution efforts. This means you’ll create a content calendar, identify key topics and themes, and outline the formats and channels you'll use to distribute your content.
Use the insights you've gathered from analyzing their strategies to inform your own content strategy—provide value and differentiation in a crowded marketplace. Look for gaps in the market or areas where you can differentiate yourself and create content that stands out from the competition.
One real-life example of this is the content strategy of HubSpot. HubSpot's content strategy focuses on providing valuable educational content to its target audience, with blog posts, e-books, webinars, and more that cover a wide range of marketing and sales topics.
HubSpot's competitors were mainly focused on selling their software products, without putting much effort into providing useful educational content for their customers. However, HubSpot took a different approach.
They recognized a lack of valuable educational content in the market and saw an opportunity to stand out. So, they developed a plan to create content to fill this gap and offer something unique and valuable to their audience. This strategy helped HubSpot differentiate itself from its competitors and become a top player in the marketing and sales software industry.
Convinced yet? You should be.
Many companies are already missing opportunities to capture customer attention and increase delight. They only analyse 12% of the data they collect. Meaning, they’re ignoring 88% of the opportunities and threats on the journey to their treasure. You can capitalize on that.
But first, you have to be willing to adjust your strategy as you gather new information and insights. Like your treasure map, your content strategy should be a living document that evolves over time.
Your GPS: Using Data and Analytics to Refine Your Content Strategy
Rely on more than gut instincts when creating content. While a deep understanding of your target audience is crucial, a marriage of creativity and empirical evidence helps you better serve your readers. Use data to validate your assumptions, and once you know what food to serve your readers, garnish it up the way you want.
Say you run a fitness blog for young adults looking to build muscle and lose weight. You might assume that your target audience would be most interested in articles about exercise routines and diet plans, but your analytics data could reveal that your audience is more engaged with content about mental health and motivation.
Digging deeper into that data will show you that your audience is struggling with anxiety and self-doubt. What they’re really looking for is content that addresses those issues in addition to practical fitness advice.
With that insight, you can now adjust your content strategy to include more articles and videos that speak directly to those pain points, making your brand more relatable and valuable to your target audience. What form exactly your content takes is up to you. You can be as creative as you want with it.
One tool that can be particularly helpful for tracking content performance is Google Analytics.
Google Analytics helps you track reader behavior so you know what’s working. For instance, if a particular article is driving a lot of traffic to your site, it could mean it answers a dire question for your readers. So, you create more content around that.
Of course, data and analytics alone can't tell you everything you need to know about your target audience. But used with other tools like user research and content audits, they help you create a content strategy that truly resonates with your audience and drives the results you're looking for.
The Golden Results
You must take your audience on a journey to truly connect with them. A journey that starts with understanding who they are, what motivates them, and what their pain points are.
Just like a treasure map, the journey to understanding your audience may be long and winding. It requires digging deep, uncovering insights you never knew existed. But with every step you take, you'll gain a deeper understanding of your audience. You'll start to see patterns, to understand what makes them tick, and empathize with their needs and desires.
And as you’d expect, the destination is worth the journey. You can create content that speaks directly to your audience, craft messaging that resonates on a deeper level, and inspires action. You make them feel like you read their minds.
Whether you're looking to drive sales, build brand awareness, or establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, understanding your audience is the key to success.
So don't be afraid to embark on the journey. Embrace the challenge, and trust that the destination will be worth the effort. With every step you take, you'll be one step closer to unlocking the true potential of your marketing strategy.
