Researching Your Target Audience - Online Tactics
While it's nice to take a look at statistics once in a while, they should
not be your major concern and neither should be your sole basis for making a decision! When I personally am researching a target audience, I look for the psychological mindset rather than numbers and that always works better for me.
Now, how can you identify this
Psychological Mindset your target audience may have? Actually, it's not that difficult as it may seem: see what kind of content and tactics your Niche Portals and Niche Publications are using.
Gaining Information from Niche Forums
Nothing offers more business intelligence than forums. Go visit them and try to feel what question are people asking and what answer are they getting. One of the best places for this kind of research is the general forums.
This is because at the general forums
people speak their real mind rather than hiding behind the masks of professionalism. But a word of caution: try to take a detached view of things. See how they respond to those answers. You may disagree on a lots of points and perhaps be enraged about some. Your purpose to visit those forum is to pick out interesting points, but not to get too much involved.
Also, use your common sense and see which comments are individual and which are generalized. Your purpose there is to focus on the general mindset! For example, I get a lot of ideas about how web developers think at SitePoint Forums (even though I am quite involved in there).
Your Competitors
This is perhaps the best way to research your niche market. Nope, I do not recommend that you copy them exactly but taking inspiration from them. This way you are picking a fully ripe - low hanging fruit!
So How exactly should you be Legally Spying on your competitors without actually hiring a private investigator? We have always heard it this way: know your competition. But what should you know about them? You should be knowing at least the things outlined below.
Don't forget that you are out there to learn their tactics. Will you ever see your competitors actually come to public boards and honestly blab about all of their tactics that they use to grab the customers that could actually have been yours? There are ways that you can actually spy on them and learn the strategies they use.
- See their pitches: Pitches are made in public and they always will have to be, otherwise what is the meaning of pitching the client when the same information which was meant to make the prospect a client is actually being kept secret from her? And listening to others and reading their material is not a crime but copying it is. See what psychological triggers do they use. How they present it. What you like in it or what you hate in it. And most importantly, always, after you have heard or read the pitch put yourself in that person's shoes and think: How would you have presented the same pitch?
- Follow their movement: Keep an eye on which sites they visit and what content do they post on those sites. You don’t have to install key-loggers on their computers to know about it. Go to famous communities, blogs, chat rooms and wherever you think that they would be posting messages. It’s perfectly legal to read these posts and keep an eye on their activities in public places. Pick hints of what they are up to and how they are doing their business. I have seen that most of the times people are very careless about what they post . Well , its their fault that they posted it and not our that we read it.
- How do they keep their customers happy? Learn that what they offer to their customers and how they handle their customer support. Most of the time you will find that they offer all they details about their offering on their sites. Pick up ideas on what sort of add-ons they provide and what exact language or presentation method do they use to offer it. Try contacting their customer support and see how do they handle it. An example of one thing I learnt from my old web hosting company about customer service: whenever I used their live support, i.e. chat, with their customer service executives, just moments after I finish I receive an email from them stating what my problem was and what steps did they take to solve it. There are three benefits for this:
- Most of people have a tendency to forget things just minutes after it is told to them. So by sending me this email they are giving me a detailed answer which I can refer to in case something slips from my mind.
- This shows that they are professional and really care about my problem.
- This gives them an opportunity to do a bit of brand building by adding the closing line: "We were glad to help you and in case you have any further problems , we are here to help you. Thank you for using XYZ co. Your business is very important to us."
- Talk to your clients about them: You have won the client. Chances are that your competition might have also pitched for the same project. Talk to your client about it. Most of the times they will tell you the exact details of the presentation that was made and what they liked of disliked it. I personally find this as the most valuable form of information. Not only because this tells me what strategies my competitors use but also what that client likes or dislikes. Next time I pitch that client for a project I remember not to do the things my client dislikes .
Ads Focused on Your Target Audience
Most of the ads are based on the
AIDA concept (
Attention,
Interest,
Desire, and
Action). Take a look at the ads that are repeated again and again (this is an indication that they work) and see what pain points are they touching and how you can solve those problems yourself. And, sometimes numbers may help. If you can afford it: consider buying reports from Jupiter, Forrester and others!
Copyright 2005, Lord Brar.
No replication or republication in any printed or electronic format is permitted without permission from the author. 
Researching Your Target Audience - Online Tactics 
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