As a digital business, focused on exponential growth, the importance of understanding and accurately focusing on your target audience should never be overlooked. The stronger the insight into your chosen demographic, the better you can cater your website to their needs, develop a digital marketing strategy that enhances your relevance and successfully push your business higher up the SERPs (search engine results pages).
Without a strong understanding of who you’re targeting, you’ll find it challenging to develop a strong, results-driven digital marketing strategy, which means you’ll not only struggle to drive traffic to your site but getting those site visitors to convert will be a constant uphill battle. Asking yourself how you define your target audience is the first step towards a thorough and effective strategy that gets your content in front of the right people, converts them successfully and drives your business success forward.
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How to Determine Your Target Audience
How do you define your target audience? The right approach means a stronger insight into the search terms and keywords you need to optimise, the ability to create engaging content that matches the interests of your target audience – effectively enhancing their experience. And increasing the likelihood of sales, and driving more traffic to your site, creating more conversions in both organic and paid search strategies.
Tactics To Help You Define Your Target Audience
Shaping your SEO strategy begins with defining your target audience. This can be done in multiple ways, including:
- Analysing Your Current Customer Base/Demographics
- Utilising Your Social Media Data
- Analysing SERPs
- Getting to Know Your Competitors
- Researching What Questions Your Customers Are Asking and Searching For
Remember, understanding your target audience will allow you to use this data to your advantage, and develop a strong and intensive SEO strategy that drives conversions and growth.
Using Keyword Research to Optimise Your Website
If you’re wondering – how optimised is my website? Then starting with strong keyword research, uncovering the phrases, queries and search terms being used by your target audience and applying them to your strategy is the best place to begin enhancing your pages. When you know what your audience is looking for and the questions that they’re asking, you’ll have a stronger foundation for your SEO strategy and be able to cater to your prospective leads more accurately, developing the right kind of content to optimise your website effectively.
Finding what your target audience is searching for online, means using keyword data to develop highly successful campaigns with a website optimisation focus. When someone enters a search term relevant to your business, you want to be able to solve that query and encourage users to click through to your site which is fully optimised with rich and relevant content that is targeted at them. But how do you know what they’re searching for?
When choosing your keywords to cater for your audience, the following factors should be considered:
- Relevancy
- Authority
- Volume
By creating a list of general keywords that are relevant to your business, services and products, you can then use a keyword research tool to delve a little deeper into the metrics of these keywords, highlighting their search volume, authority and relevancy, it’s this information that will guide you to make better choices over which ones you want to rank for. It’s here you’ll also discover variations of these keywords, other search terms that are popular with your target audience and ones you may not have ever thought of.
While the competition for your most common keywords may be fierce and achieving success may seem overwhelming, when businesses choose to target highly specific, lower search volume keywords instead, they can draw visitors to their site who have the right intent and answer their query directly, which in turn means a higher level of conversion. This is as opposed to ambiguous search terms used by searchers whose intent your content won’t be able to satisfy.
Lacing your site content with low-search volume, long-tail keywords gives you a competitive edge. These terms often convert better because of their specificity and the intent that is driving the search. Someone who is searching for a “black dress” is probably only browsing for ideas, however, someone searching for a “low price size 12 black prom dress” is ready to make a purchase and these are the users you want.
While the search volumes of these terms can seem disheartening, don’t be afraid to target search terms that have a lower search volume. By tactically prioritising keywords that have both high and low search volumes, you can strategically optimise the pages throughout your site, giving you a calculated edge over your competitors.
Don’t Forget to Examine Your Competitors
Another way to answer – how optimised is my website? Is to take a look at your competitors. Assessing the keywords used by your closest competitors can put you at an advantage. Not only will this practice highlight which high ranking keywords your competitors have missed by presenting you with a strategic opportunity to boost your SEO, but you’ll also know which keywords to compete for and tackle them head-on.
Pinpointing which keywords your competitors have overlooked, gives you the opportunity to cater to your audience and target them effectively, leaving your closest competition struggling to keep up as your pages move higher up the SERPs.
Making the User Journey Seamless Through Web Design
Understanding what your audience is searching for and the intent behind their search can help you tailor your site to target them specifically and enhance your site rankings simultaneously. User engagement on your site is also a strong indication of the success of your SEO strategy, however even if you drive high volumes of traffic to your website, this will mean very little if their site experience is poor.
Site engagement is vital in terms of conversions and growth as well as keeping your bounce rate low – something which can also impact the ranking of your site. Therefore focusing on the user journey through good, high-quality web design should play a fundamental role in your conversion strategy and help you answer the question – how optimised is my website.
Here are some of the best ways you can effectively communicate and connect with your site visitors.
Choose the Right Tone of Voice
Choosing the right voice for your brand will determine how your users interact with your content. This is often defined by your target audience and the type of products or services you’re offering. Developing the right tone of voice can also differentiate you from your competitors, building trust and also enhancing brand recognition. When users land on your site, the right tone of voice can enhance their experience.
Simplify Site Navigation
Simple site navigation could mean the difference between high user engagement and a sky-high bounce rate. A logical navigational structure with simple categorisations will help your target audience find what they need quickly, without heading to your competitor’s site instead.
Add a Search Feature
Users want to find what they need quickly. Therefore incorporating a search box on your site can help them navigate your site easily, and reduce your bounce rate. The quicker and more convenient your site is, the more likely your target audience is to convert.
Keep Your Site Consistent
From the colours to your tone of voice, fonts and buttons, keeping your site design consistent across all devices will enhance the user experience and reduce confusion and questions over your authenticity.
Utilise Your Website as a Communication Tool
Still, wondering – how optimised is my website? When your site is structurally tailored to the needs of your target audience and your SEO strategy, it’s time to consider the importance of communicating with your audience to effectively drive conversions. Once you’ve established your target audience, you’ll know what you want to communicate to them and what steps you want them to take next. Communicating effectively via your site comes in many forms, including:
Developing a Strong Brand and Tone of Voice
Developing a strong brand identity will help you communicate your business message and ethics. Applying these to every component of your site, from your colour scheme to your fonts, tone of voice and content types can help establish your credibility as a genuine brand and increase trust and conversions.
A Company Blog
Your company blog is the perfect opportunity to utilise keywords and search terms used by your target audience. Helping you attract new visitors to your site and to build a following. Here you can answer the questions your audience is asking, tailoring your message effectively. You can also share important information about your business and even build a community around your brand.
Multiple Resources
In addition to your blog, sharing multiple resources on your sites such as fact sheets, downloadable content, guides and studies can help assert your authority and set you apart as a knowledgeable resource within your industry. Driving more targeted visitors to your website and increasing conversion rates.
FAQ pages
Creating an FAQ page is the perfect way to answer the rising number of queries you’ll receive as your business grows. This page alone can help increase conversions as site visitors won’t need to reach out to you directly if they can find what they need on your site instantly. In addition, FAQ pages are the perfect place to answer those search queries determined in your keyword research, driving relevant traffic to your pages and catering your website to your target audience.
Consider a Site Restructure
If you’re concerned about the performance of your website, and you want to cater your website to your target audience more effectively and increase your search engine visibility, then you may want to consider a site restructure approach.
What does restructuring a website mean? Website restructuring is a process where websites undergo structural changes as opposed to web design feature updates like those listed above. These changes can impact the platform, structure, location or fundamental design of your website. There are multiple reasons why you may want to consider this change for your website. Some of the most common reasons include:
- Website Design: Reworking website design to improve audience engagement and experience. This could help increase conversions and site engagement, respectively.
- Platform Update: Updating your platform can open up multiple platform opportunities that can enhance the experience of your target audience and increase conversions on your site.
Updating your site platform could mean access to better forms of navigation, personalisation, better usability and even customer service features such as online chat features on your website, catering to your target audience’s needs, effortlessly. - Mobile Optimisation: Integrating mobile optimisation into your site design is another reason to consider site migration. By analysing the needs and requirements of your target audience, you can provide them with a fully mobile experience that enhances their site experience and your rankings.
- Switching to a Better Server: If you believe your current server isn’t meeting the needs of your site visitors, then migrating to a new host may benefit you. Faster performance, enhanced security, and responsiveness can help you convert more site visitors.
However, in order to complete this successfully, and without negatively impacting your rankings, careful planning and testing of these changes are paramount. It’s also a good idea to inform your users that you’re making changes and update your site in stages.
Now It’s Your Turn
Creating a seamless user experience and adapting your website to target your audience, starts with understanding your target audience accurately. Applying these strategies to your digital marketing campaigns can increase relevant traffic to your site, increase conversions and enhance loyalty to your brand.
Once you understand your target audience, you can work on strategies to reach your target audience.