How To Connect With Your Target Audience

Let me ask you a question. Do you know who your target audience is exactly? Do you know your market and who you want to serve? It’s an important part of email marketing and marketing in general. You have to know who you want to reach and work with before you can start to build a successful business.

Once you have a firm grasp of who that target audience is and start to build a list of those people, you have to connect with them. Without that connection, it will be almost impossible to build a large enough list that will support your business. Not only do you need the numbers (how many will vary from niche to niche, and business to business), you also need these people to be responsive and engaging.

When we build a list it’s easy to get stuck in the stats and numbers. We think of our list in terms of size instead of the people that make up those numbers. That creates a dangerous disconnect that can hurt us as online marketers in the long run. We forget that we’re dealing with people, with individuals. When that happens we start shouting marketing messages at them instead of serving them in a way that helps our readers solve their problems or reach their goals.

To create that connection with your target audience stop thinking of them as a crowd or a large number. Instead, shift your perception and think of them as individual people. One way of doing this is by creating an avatar. This is a made up person that represents your ideal customer. Or you can simply pick one or your current customers or clients that represents your overall audience well and use them to represent your readership.

The idea is that you want to connect and get personal with your readers. It’s hard to do that when you speak to a crowd all at once. Instead, you need your email messages to feel more like a one on one conversation. That’s much easier accomplished when you picture that one person as you write.

The other part of the puzzle of connecting with your target audience is listening. Pay attention when readers or potential prospects reach out to you through emails or social media messages. Listen to what they have to say. You can do the same when you go out in the virtual world to wherever your audience is hanging out. This could be forums, blogs, social media platforms and the likes.

Figure out where your target audience is coming together and communicating and just listen. You’ll learn a lot and figure out quickly what it will take to connect with them and make them part of your tribe.