Who’s Your Audience? Advice for Startups
Lack of market need is one of the top reasons startups fail.
Who’s Your Audience? Advice for Startups
Nesh Pillay discusses how to avoid this pitfall and find the audience that will grow your business.
Nesh Pillay, Albion Newcomer Entrepreneur in Residence
Identifying your market or audience should be the first step of planning your marketing strategy. Skip this, and you risk wasting time, effort, and money, leaving you with dismal sales and skyrocketing marketing costs.
Finding your audience
While targeting a broad audience might feel like the strategy that will attract the most customers, the truth is, not everyone will want to buy what you’re selling. And that’s okay.
If you’re a bootstrapping startup, spending your valuable marketing budget without a clearly defined audience will make you bleed money. But on the other hand, focusing on a very narrow audience could exclude potential customers and lead to lackluster sales. The key to success here is focus. Selecting the right parameters to define your audience is a delicate act that starts with broad assumptions, which are narrowed down using simple filters that make sense for your business. Gender, age, location, education, and income level are common filters used to refine a target segment, though other criteria such as psychography (psychological factors like values, attitudes, beliefs, and aspirations), lifestyle, hobbies, and interests are also important, especially for niche products and services.
For example, Press Pillay, the communications agency founded by Nesh, was tasked to promote the Toronto Vegetarian Association’s annual baking competition. Having identified the target audience as millennials living in Toronto with an interest in vegetarianism and alternative lifestyles, the agency then tapped websites such as Narcity.com and Dailyhive.com, which cater to that audience, to publish articles about the event.
Tweaking your audience
Once you’ve identified your key segment, implemented your marketing plan, and measured the results, you can either expand your target audience to gain new customers, or refine it to curb unnecessary spending. Remember, it’s better to invest in selling to people who are already somewhat interested, than to waste money on the larger chunk of people who just aren’t into your product.
Many businesses expand their audiences by targeting consumers in a specific geographical location they have chosen to prioritize, and then broaden their targeting to other areas once they are able to scale their business. Others observe what kinds of customers they attracted who did not fit the profile of their original target audience; such customers could indicate new audiences who are potentially interested in their business.
If you were disappointed by the results of your marketing efforts, you may have to further refine your audience parameters to target only the “low-hanging fruit” — the people you are confident will purchase, with minimal investment on your part. Tweaking your audience doesn’t always require much brainwork; it could, for instance, be as simple as focusing your efforts on higher-income consumers because they are more able and therefore more likely to spend on your expensive product.
Great products and services deserve the attention of people, and people deserve great products and services — it’s just a matter of matching one with the other. Keep these tips in mind when considering your target audience, and the rest of your marketing strategy will fall into place.
Useful databases for audience research
Scott’s Business Directory Online: Detailed information on Canadian manufacturers, wholesalers and business services. Search product, type, location, etc. Available anywhere with a valid Toronto Public Library card. See the video tutorial.
Mergent Intellect: Provides basic company facts on over 70 million U.S. private businesses, over 3.5 million Canadian private companies and over 6,500 U.S. public companies. Key features include industry news, executive details, financial information (5 years), company family trees and competitors lists. Available anywhere with a valid Toronto Public Library card.
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