When our team starts a digital strategy project, the first thing we discuss is target audience. To build the best solution and experience possible, we need to know exactly who we’re targeting, and why we’re targeting them.
So what is a target audience?
To us, it’s who you currently work with, who you want to work with, and who you don’t want to work with. Just as much as we need to know who we’re targeting, we need to know who we’re not targeting as well.
When we work on a digital strategy project for a real estate agent or team of agents, for example, we’re often told that everyone is that target audience, but after a bit of a deeper dive, we can easily find out that isn’t true. Do you want to work with people that are renting? Do you want to work with people that are buying their first home? Do you want to work with people that are downsizing? Just by asking a few questions upfront, and before doing any work, we can figure out exactly who the target audience is, even if the target audience is a bit broad.
How do you find out who your audience is?
We ask A LOT of questions to figure out exactly who we’re targeting as part of a project. Think about who you really like to work with, and who you really enjoyed working within your last few transactions, and ask yourself as many questions as you can about them:
- What do they do for a job?
- What level of education do they typically have?
- Do they live in a specific area or neighbourhood?
- What gender are they? Do you work with more women than you do men?
- What was their family dynamic? Are they families with children? Young couples? Single people?
- Are they part of a specific ethnic group?
- If you could pick your ideal client, who would it be?
- What was the best transaction you ever had? What made it so good?
Why does it matter?
Understanding who is in your target audience is really important for your business for obvious reasons, but from a website perspective, the reasoning might not be so obvious, but it’s just as important. The images, the tone of the copy, and the overall experience of the website should be closely planned around the target audience. For example, if you work with people in their 60s that are downsizing, or you work with people in their early 20’s that are buying their first home, the content strategy and overall user experience will be , and should be, completely different.
Finding out who your target audience is isn’t very difficult to do, but it’s extremely important. The fact is, you can’t have a successful digital strategy, or even business for that matter, without knowing exactly who you want to work with, and who you don’t want to work with.
Want to know more about what it’s like to work with the Artifakt Digital team? Download our ROI eBook and see how we’ve positively impacted both the businesses and bottom lines of some of North America’s top-producing real estate agents.
