How do you go about researching where your target audience is?

I tend to think about finding segments and markets of customers in two "vectors":

1. Hearts & Minds: Identity, intent, context, and community.
2. Power & Influence: micro & macro, group vs individuals, leaders & followers

I find these are useful as a lens to help evaluate and brainstorm where people might "hang out".

I'll explain what I mean in a second. I want to say first that Twitter is a sparse and noisy "outdoor" network. It's like everyone is stood in one big dark room, sporadically congregating in flickers of light and conversation. In other words, it's hard to find who makes up "science twitter", "black twitter" or "book twitter" compared to going to facebook and joining The Facebook Science Club. Groups have clear boundaries and front doors compared to noisy social networks.

The other key point before I start typing too much (apologies in advance) is that there's a big difference for me between Buyers, Customers, Users, and Partners. The last one is the most obvious to state, but I've seen companies and people mishandle each of these relationships. I've seen people chase users when they should be chasing the buyers and customers instead. Each element in #1 could be split by those roles I think (i.e. Identity of buyer, customer, user etc etc)

Ok, I'll explain each element in #1 and how I apply #2 to each one:

• Identity: If there is a clear demographic or professional profile of your segment, use FB or LinkedIn or other platforms where you can at least manually search and filter for the right people. This method means you are the one actively searching for segments based on their identity.

Power & Influence (P&I): There will be influencers on social and professional networking sites that have more reach and therefore more power. Engage them, maybe ask to interview them for a blog which can be good content marketing blogs for you (this links to the intent bit in a moment).

The P&I lens can simply highlight an opportunity by size e.g. size of a company, or of a LinkedIn Group about Carbon Neutrality. To me it could also mean the influence of science - finding research studies and researchers to interview, or who might write and talk about your product themselves.

• Intent: Google searches capture the peoples' intent. They are the reason Google makes so much money from ads - "best food processor" searches are a magnet for advertisers and amazon-affiliate-revenue bloggers. Obvious, but it's also potentially relevant to you as a path to find people. This method means you're searching for people based on their searches.

Google trends and ad keyword tools will show you "similar searches" based on terms, phrases and topics you look for on those platforms. You could use these as advertisers do - to put your product infront of people who are either:

• trying to find ways to offset their company's carbon footprint
• trying to understand what a carbon footprint is (your content marketing could tell them)

Moving on…

• Context: There will be situations, events, and agendas that other people have. From businesses to politicians, that you could benefit from if you time it right. Anti-money laundering is a good example of this.. the UK government created an AML Act in 2010 if i recall. That spiked an early conversation in the news, consultants start appearing and banks and other financial companies start hiring ex-layers and analysts by the truck load. This first bubble expands throughout some key events - when banks actually got fined billions for not doing enought to prevent AML and terrorist financing. Multiple banks have had exectives on "deferred prosecution agreements". That context has evolved over ten years and for years it pointed to a key thing: banks would need to spend more money every year fixing this problem using people and products with machine learning.

P&I: Who is leading conversations about Carbon neutrality? Is it businesses or politicians? Have any countries implemented any laws or influencial policies (tax breaks for businesses) to be carbon neutral? Which companies are leading the way - could they use your product or recommend it to others? Look for companies who either have been in trouble or will be due to carbon neutrality - even on a reputational level.

• Community: I mentioned this earlier, but there are multiple types of communities and some are easier to work with authentically than others. I love Indie Hackers. I get a lot out of writing replies like this to people, because selfishly I find it engages me and rewards equally to help you by formulating a useful answer.

For you there's going to be a Venn diagram of communties - technology, carbon neutraility, and the bit in the middle where those two overlap.

On the technology community side, yes there's IH, Product Hunt, Reddit, and HackerNews. They will help to raise your profile, but I would also think about the communities around platforms - such as Shopify and BigCommerce.

On the Power & Influence axis, you could:

• partner with Shopify to enable them to provide their Shopify Plus customers - that's hundreds of major retailers - with an easy win. It would be great publicity for them and one sale for you that could net hundreds of customers.
• Create a Shopify plugin for the 500,000 shopify stores that exist out there. I have a feeling that some aspects of the checkout in Shopify can't be altered, but I'm sure many small business owners would see this as a selling point for them.

I'll stop there :)

Have you tried looking at Reddit communities yet? I think you'll be able to find some for e-commerce and Shopify, and find folks talking about sustainability within them.

I made GummySearch.com to make this easy to do. If you'd like to give it a try, send me a DM and I'll send you a link!

You should take a look at SparkToro too; you can do up to 10 searches for free each month, and it gives you insight into websites, podcasts, hashtags, and other social accounts that are being followed by your audience (based on keywords and other parameters). I'm not affiliated, just a happy user :)