In my last post, I went into detail on how you can get to know your business. Today, we’ll discuss how you can get to know your audience.

Knowing who you’ll be selling your products and/or services to is the key to conducting a successful business. But just getting a general idea of who they are is not going to give you a competitive edge in the battle for industry supremacy.

You need to have a clear picture of who this prospect is. You need to know your audience intimately and personally. As if they were as close as your best friend or family member.

Why does this give you a competitive edge? Because it will allow you to know what to say, and how to say it to your potential buyer.

Who’s Your Prospect?

Most entrepreneurs believe that the person who buys from them is the user; thus, making them the target market. Often, that’s not the case. Regardless of who you’re selling to.

If you’re selling to businesses, a purchasing department or supervisor could be the decision-maker, but one of its many other departments could be the user. When dealing with consumers, a parent or spouse could be the purchaser, but not the user.

Keep this in mind because when you build a sales and marketing campaign, buyers AND users are your target market. You need to make sure you’re presenting strong points to each party. To ensure everyone’s on the same page and will be willing to buy.

What Do They Have in Common?

As I mentioned earlier, you need to know the people involved in the process of buying your product and/or service as well as know those close to you. And for that, you need to create a strong, credible market interpretation. Allow me to explain.

Your target audience should share several observable characteristics, which can be backed by data and research. These characteristics should:

• Relate directly to the decision-making process when buying your products or services, or those of your competitors
• Show that the size of your audience is large enough to support your business
• Indicate that it’s affordable for you to conduct an effective marketing campaign that appeals to them.

Once you have found these traits, you’d have a clear view of who you’re selling to, and how to approach them.

How to Know Your Audience

Get to know who you’ll be selling to by collecting this data:

• The markets you’ll be selling to
• Age
• Income range
• Gender
• Occupations
• Marital status
• Family size
• Education level
• Hobbies
• Political stands
• Religious beliefs

These traits can help you have a promising idea of who you’re dealing with. If you can, once you discover these common characteristics, take a moment to think about someone you know that fills the mold.

Think of the conversations you have had with this person. How do you approach them when you talk to them? How do they approach you? How do they react in certain situations?

These tips can help you big-time once you take the next step and discover your prospect’s motivation to buy your product.