5 Ways To Identify Your Ideal Audience
1. Your Ideal Audience Is A Previous Version Of You
The things you create are informed by the experiences you’ve had.
Once you identify the version of yourself that inspired your creations, you can find people that are in the place you used to be.
2. Play Demographic-Psychographic Matchmaker
Your audience demographic is only half the ideal audience equation — you also need to identify your audience psychographic.
What they want is as important as who they are.
3. What Pisses You Off?
Make a list of what angers you and consider how your creations may be a reaction (or solution) to those frustrations.
Then consider who else may share similar frustration — those people are likely your ideal audience (or at least a part of it).
4. Play Target Audience "Survivor"
Rather than choose a single target audience, choose up to 12 of them.
At the end of each month, vote one of your ideal audiences “off the island” and abandon it as you move forward.
5. Your Ideal Audience Isn’t Your ONLY Audience
Your ideal audience aren’t the ONLY people who will consume or purchase what you make, they’re the ones MOST LIKELY to do so.
I expand on all of these concepts here:
This is a great synopsis @joshspector. I very much like the first one "Your Ideal Audience Is A Previous Version Of You".
It's always helpful to keep in mind what your own issues and problems were 6/12/18 months ago when building a product or service that is solving your own problem.
Thanks for these reminders.
Great article! You hit the nail on the head in your article when you said your instinct "will lead you to choose an ideal audience that’s too broad." This happens all the time, especially with paid advertising. People don't drill down enough when publishing ad campaigns out of fear they'll miss someone who might be interested in their product. Not a good way to spend your money (or your time for those doing manual outreach).