It’s no secret that in today’s ever-changing market, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are more important than ever. KPIs are essential to every business and help keep a company focused and progressing in the right direction. However, your organization needs to ensure you are focusing on measuring the right indicators in order to guarantee you are effectively reaching your audience. These five target market KPIs will help any business focus their attention on the right areas in order to grow an audience.
Know Your Target Audience
It seems obvious but knowing your target audience is essential to growing any business. So what exactly is a target audience? Quite simply, it’s the demographic of people who are most likely to be interested in the product or service you’re offering.
Sure, you want your business to reach as many people as possible, but it’s more important that you’re reaching the right people—because they’re the ones who are going to invest in your business and keep returning. You can stuff your marketing automation software with as much content as possible and blast the entire internet with ads and social posts, but without pinpointing who you want to see this content, you’re just screaming into the void.
How do you find your target audience? Well, it’s not as easy as it sounds—it takes time and plenty of work—but with patience (and a little homework), you can build your brand and its followers. According to Forbes, when you clearly identify your target audience, you are putting their needs and goals first.
The most important thing a business can do to really know their audience is to ask broad questions about the people they believe can benefit from their product or service. To sort out the questions you need to ask, use the data you’re given to ask questions based on that data.
- Who are the initial buyers of the product?
- How does the product fit their needs?
- If it works for this audience, how it can work for others?
To answer these questions, you must first be able to realize what gap your product or service is filling. Additionally, what are the demographics of the people who probably need this service? What is their yearly salary? Are they single? Married? Do they live in rural areas or are they closer to a major city? After answering some of these broader questions, it will be easier to hone in on the people who will benefit the most from what your business is offering.
These questions are easier to answer when your business is part of a competitive market where your product or service is already offered; however, that doesn’t mean you have less work to do—it means you have to work even harder to make sure what you’re offering is the best that is available to the consumer.
Know How Your Target Audience Spends Their Time
After using the funnel approach to determine the demographics of your audience, consider how they spend their time. An older audience may turn to Facebook, which means concentrating on creating a Facebook group that focuses on your company’s goals may be one of the ways to grow your audience.
For example, if you’re a company that sells textbooks to colleges and universities, you may want to create a Facebook group that encourages professors and instructors to share tips on the best ways their students learn. As they are leaving their comments, your social media team can comment to prove why your textbook best suits their needs.
If, however, your audience seems to be much younger, perhaps your social media presence should focus more on Instagram and Snapchat, where audiences tend to be younger and more focused on the visual aspects of a product.
Important KPIs to Watch on Social Media
Go beyond just the number of followers or connections on your account, and use these metrics to understand who is actually interacting with your social content.
- Comments on existing threads
- Number of new threads started
- Shares of your content
- Percentage of engaged users: divide the number of users who comment/share/interact with your comment by your total number of users
It’s also important to make sure your content fits the platform on which you are promoting your services. If you are a business that’s selling products to your audience, perhaps Instagram is the platform on which to focus since it’s photo-heavy. However, if your service does better through testimonials, highlighting your current consumers’ stories may lend itself better to Facebook. While it’s important to be on a variety of social media platforms, it’s just as important to consider what works best for each platform.
What is Your Target Audience Searching For?
Google Analytics is a quick and easy way to know what your audience is searching for before landing on your website. If you know what your audience is searching or asking questions about, you can ensure you are tailoring your website and products to those questions. Use the Google Analytics site search function to see what keywords users look for when they search on your site.
It’s also important to discover how your audience is landing on your page—is it organic or is it through paid content? What are the search terms they are typing in before they land on your page—in other words, what are the keywords they are using? Is your website fulfilling their questions? Use these tools to drive the keywords you are using in the emails and newsletters you’re pushing out to the public.
Important KPIs to watch for site search
- Number of completed searches
- Page depth
- Paid content conversion rate
- Google Search Console click through rate (CTR) for specific high-value keywords
What Areas of Your Site is Your Audience Engaging With?
If your website is experiencing high bounce rates, it’s probably time to reconsider how you’re presenting information to your audience. Knowing how your audience is engaging with your content is one of the most valuable tools in terms of knowing the demographic you’re serving.
If the video section of your website is gaining more traffic than, say, the comments section, it’s probably a good indication that more focus should be put on the multimedia components of your site. Actively engaging your readers and involving them in the evolution of your business can bring about surprising rewards.
Important KPIs to watch for on-site engagement
- Page depth
- Time on page for articles and landing page content
- Video view times
- On-site conversions
Keep Researching and Planning
The more a business knows its target audience, the easier it will be to tailor their content to their audience. Taking your time to do your homework when it comes to researching your audience’s demographics can be the difference your company needs, and analyzing how your audience is reaching your site—and how they’re interacting once they’ve found you—can help you not only maintain your audience but help it grow for years to come. Make sure to keep meticulous records of your target audience in both your marketing automation software and within your project management tools to ensure that you can iterate as your audience changes. And if you need some good collaboration tools for project management, check out TechnologyAdvice.com for unbiased recommendations and reviews
Author Bio
Jamie Jenson is a writer for TechnologyAdvice.com. She is a freelance journalist who lives and works in Syracuse, New York. Jamie taught middle and high school English for over ten years before attending the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and earning her Master of Arts degree in magazine, newspaper and online journalism. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in English literature from Rosemont College and her Master of Science in education from Binghamton University. When she’s not writing or teaching, Jamie enjoys reading, hiking, and traveling. Find her on Twitter @jamieljenson or at her website http://www.jamieljenson.com.