In the world of marketing, one truth remains constant: the success of any campaign hinges on your ability to reach the right audience. Who am I talking to? So many business leaders jump right into tactics. “We should be on Tik Tok.” “We should do TV ads.” “Fill-in-the-blank media is dead, we should pull our advertising.” But what if your audience isn’t on Tik Tok, or they actually love listening to talk radio? If you don’t start with really understanding who you’re talking to, you can easily spin your wheels and throw money down the drain.

So how do you identify your audience? Start by asking yourself: Who benefits most from my product or service? Consider factors like age, gender, income level, education and geographic location. But don’t stop there - dig deeper into their lifestyle, values and pain points.

• Demographics: Collect basic demographic data. Is your audience primarily Millennials, Gen Z, Baby Boomers, etc.? Are they urban dwellers or suburbanites? What is their education level? What is their income level?

• Psychographics: Explore what motivates your audience. What are their hobbies, interests and values? Are they health-conscious, tech-savvy or price-sensitive?

• Behavioral Data: Look past behaviors. Do they prefer shopping online or in-store? How do they engage with brands on social media?

Once you’ve gathered information about your audience, it’s time to create personas - semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer. Personas help you humanize your audience and tailor your marketing efforts to meet their specific needs.

• Create Detailed Personas: For each persona, give them a name, job title and background story. Include details about their challenges, goals and what drives their purchasing decisions.

• Validate Your Personas: Use data to validate your personas. Conduct surveys, interviews and focus groups to ensure your personas accurately reflect the audience you’re targeting. You might find that assumptions were spot-on, while others need tweaking. While this validation process is best done with formal efforts such as survey and focus groups, sometimes it is as easy as talking to your current customers during the natural course of doing business. The key is to listen to what your customer is saying, not what you think you want to hear.

To take it a step further, it may be that your primary audience is not who you would expect. Let’s use the example of a walk-in bathtub. While the user of the product will likely be a senior, your audience my actually be their adult children who are trying to help their parents stay in their home longer so that they don’t have to go into assisted living or another facility. Some businesses will find it easy to answer the question of “Who.” Others may find it more difficult. But without an answer to who your audience is, nothing else can come after.

Before doing anything else with your marketing strategy, you should have a clear understanding of who your audience is, what drives them and how they prefer to interact with brands. With this knowledge, you can craft targeted marketing campaigns that speak directly to their needs and desires, increasing the likelihood of conversion and brand loyalty.

Remember, identifying and understanding your audience IS NOT a one-time task. As markets evolve and consumer behaviors shift, so too should your audience research. Regularly revisiting and refining your personas will keep your marketing efforts relevant and effective. When evaluating or launching a tactic, always bring things back to the two questions we’ve looked at so far: Who is our audience and why should they care about my product/service?