7 Ways to Identify Your Market & Audience

1The Internet

This needs to be said but please note that we will go into detail and breakdown some of these key points for your convenience. 

All things internet related such as smartphones, smart TVs, tablets, etc. are some of the more consumer-friendly ways to approach growing your brand awareness. 

There are places like Craigslist but on the other hand, you can tap into ad opportunities from all sorts of different audiences. You'll need to think outside the box on who you want to buy from, and research what sort of company is interested in selling advertising space. 

Let's take for example, Social Media, which is highly recommended to use and take advantage of. Getting creative is a requirement here as well, because there is no sure-fire way to mastering the top social media algorithm's or specifically gain high engaging numbers, except of course if you make high quality content and engage your audience. 

Leveraging your professional stance and approach works best in such an abundant world-wide-web of social network spaces because if you have a solution and you carefully grow an interest from those who'll buy your solution, you have a great match-up and an awesome relationship-building platform between your company and the people it services.

Once you find a certain sweet spot in social media networks (let's say you are a guru at LinkedIn & Facebook, but maybe not TikTok), and you have your own direct-to-consumer feedback and communication platform. Now, because you'll be making business accounts on these pages unlike end-consumers who use these networks for casual browsing, you'll have access to analytics and other sorts of feedback like whereabout your majority of audience resides, or their ages, genders, as well as something like "common interests" in some analytics. These analytics help you project for future ads, incoming potential leads, and more, and through your Social Media, you were able to identify this audience, communicate to this audience, and market directly to them.

2Product Research

There is at least one product you can say is almost like yours but also isn't like yours, which is why yours exists. That's great! And while you don't need to pick up and unnecessary rivals or competition, you do need to study the product. Never mind the company, or as a matter of fact, maybe not. Because if and when you do come across a company that has a product "like yours" but also provides other products of different categories or even industries, it'd be wise to note why, and if this product is keeping their entire company afloat or not. For example, some companies are a part of a package, and by package this could mean that they have a parent company who take the incoming funds to reinvest in their not so well-performing products, or are owned by a pesron or partnership that receive revenue from the competing product and can therefore put money into the other products, when their other products don't sell much. That's usually what happens across industries with or without paperwork partnerships, such as disclosed agreements, silent partners, and so forth.

These pieces make up the data that tell the story of their progress and ups & downs that you can prepare for or even avoid altogether. Love your product so much that you know what makes it different, but of course don't love it so much you smother it, ignore the numbers, and lose it! 

When there is a proclaimed season or expected decline in numbers, sales, or even interests, it's best to be aware of this if you want to challenge the market and be accepted by new consumers. Your competition makes up the percentage and market share of the companies that produce and provide a product or products like yours, so you'll probably need to catch onto the trends that they ride into high successes, sooner rather than later. It would be a disservice to yourself and your worth, and your employees or future employees if you don't see to putting the best industry-proven practices to date.

3Market Research

Today's TV will flash commercials that may expire out of contract tonight and no longer air tomorrow. Someone's new contract will begin and their commercials will flash until expiration. Then there are unforgiving giants who are merciless with their commercial ad share, and will make an ad appearance on TV until they run out of money, and those said billion-dollar mega-media companies just don't project that any time soon. In the end, the most memorable commercials have the chance to stay impressionable within a viewers mind for so long that the viewer will identify the commercial with a time period and time in their life that it'll one day serve as a nostalgic throwback. 

This, aesthetically speaking, just may be a priceless experience, but these hardcore efforts are why competing companies burn out, dry up, and turn to dust in no time. Keep in mind some companies are made to try and quit if they don't do well so as to protect investments as best as possible, and some companies are built to survive any economy and grow through the pain. 

Just know who the big dogs are and know what it takes to become one.

When you step foot into the marketing ring, you're exposing your business to potential fans, critics, enemies, supporters, donors, investors, franchisee owners, and then some. You will need to tap into Step 4 to understand what you need to identify within your company to speak from an appropriate business angle. In studying the market, and after breaking down these 7 steps, your take away in this step is to be as creative but as historically accurate as possible in creating your company's identity to introduce to the public, while comprehending the ability and financial power other companies have to bypass your message or even borrow your tactics and make your competing business suffer. Your company's authenticity and reputation will be broadcast through every form of medium that your logo, company, and product is mentioned, so this is urgent to consider when brainstorming your approach to the market.

4Current Cultural Interests

This is intended to be read by those who plan to put their customer's needs in perspective and serve them fairly, so if your company is so far detached that you'd cause harm by investing in current cultural interests, you can go. To those who've stayed, thanks, and welcome. 

Nobody needs a cool, suited-up CEO in fresh Jordans with no skin in the game, no real prior experience, but a ton of money, to go and look into the culture of today, make an attempt at hip-coolness at the expess of those they cosplay it from, and capitalize on somebody else's culture, regurgitate it, then pitch it to them in hopes of luring a loyal customer. I mean, you can think that's a stereotypical millionaire-investor from the 1990's but there are tons of bold personalities that do so today, and have jeopardized their relationship with various marginalized communities because of it. 

The right thing to do would be to comprehend or create your company's purpose and intention, the founder's intentions and to highlight the relationship between the creator of the company and the purpose of the company. 

Don't be disadvantaged or feel disempowered if your business or freelance career started as a way to solely pay bills. There isn't anything wrong with that. The conclusion should be focused on the passion and the relationship to the conception of the business and how it made the solution for your situation while also helping people that needed your service. 

When people see what is the true identity in your company, you give them a fair shot at comprehending their own relationship to your company. This is very integral in understanding your potential market. With or without an initial audience, the people who will begin to take interest are able to align themselves with the people within the company or who founded it, who make it work to resolve the client's issues, are better positioned for a stable client relationship.

In this relationship between your client and company, your clients are able to identify with your company and your company is able to identify with it's clients.

What is your audience saying? Using your Social Media platforms as a direct-to-consumer and even a customer service instant message-hotline, you can get direct opinions, Q&A, feedback, critique, and process errors on products, etc. Some of the highest selling brands do so today! Using Social Media, graphic design, video production, or any other form of creative multimedia communication can help create the experience your audience needs to get invested with you and you can use your platforms as a way to extend efforts toward media. With this, you can offer creative content geared toward the style your audience has. Engaging your growing audience with Social Media helps keep an ear to the ground and hear all what's said within your industry. It is one of the most used (and often abused) forms of studying and capturing potential customers for business of various sizes.

One way that network professionals use to meet and create space for conversation is a mixer event. You can use various different event styles to draw the appropriate crowd out and get to know more people in your interest ranges.

5Community Poll

Gaining an insight on what your community actually wants is pretty much priceless. Shameless self-plug, you can use Post Affect! to create a poll and have it up in seconds. Useing the information you want to find results on, you can ask a question and offer choices. At the end of the poll, you'll see results in which option is leading the poll.

You may already have a sound understanding of things that interest the people you and your company's culture share interests in. With that said, it shouldn't be too difficult in drawing up options for your poll and allowing the rest to take it's course. 

You'll need to decide how long you're accepting answers and once you close your poll, you can take the winning options and create a new poll with the data found in the last poll. This new poll helps you gather more precise information since the last poll.

6Volunteer Q&A Survey

Getting volunteers isn't the hardest thing to do, however in this case they may not be able to remain anonymous, which is why polls may be a better option for example. But if you're able to find willing participants who can help give you insight for research purposes, you'll be able to gain some very important data that companies pay thousands for in order to create accuracy in their market. This is all just so they can get the product to the right customer and build a lifetime relationship with them if they can, depending on the product. 

Think of Ford as an example. Lots of people love this vehicle manufacturer and so their children may grow to love them and buy them too. Gathering information on their own personal likes, dislikes, potentials for upgrades and updates. etc., would be priceless. It's important to survey people who are interested in your product or the industry it's in so you can get accurate data from the acutal community and not hearsay.

You can calculate decisions by looking at the overall picture of the data, after you're able to compartmentalize and categorize what all you are looking at. This is where you get more creative than ever, because you'll need to be able to see the silent languages being communicated through the numbers. Your sales depend on how well you're able to effectively solve problems, so with the data you've surveyed, you'll need to focus on solving issues on perhaps why certain numbers are too low or too high and what your company will do about that for your customers.

In the end, make sure obvious things are screaming at you, and make sure that you're sensitive enough to hear and see what isn't obvious and loud. Putting your data into a visual is the best practice with a bunch of data and information. You can always revise your visual and make an updated one.

7Free Test Products

Who doesn't love free? Some companies give away demos of their product, sometimes they giveaway pens with their logo on it, and all sorts of promotional items that help grow brand awareness. If you want to get creative in understanding your market, you'll need to create a sort of call-to-action within your free product. Some people require an email in exchange for a free PDF, filled with priceless information. Others may require a review of the product in exchange for a discount. Sometimes discounts act as freebies, especially for customers already willing to pay. 

Building a relationship with the community of your industry means being able to communicate with them directly, and like all healthy relationships, you have to be able to listen and speak for yourself effectively. Giving your customer the power to help you fix what you might have wrong with your product will always allow for you to identify more customers when you solve this problem, consider it free game! But in exchange for something of value, of course.

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