Reading Time: 3 minutesThe time, effort, and money you put into optimizing your content is all for nothing if your target audience doesn’t read it. Writing for the right audience is as important as focusing on the content itself. Producing content for the best audience for your brand is the only way to boost sales and increase conversions – reaching the people you need to reach the most.
Target Your Audience
If you don’t know who you want reading your blog, you can’t possibly know what to write. The first step in writing for the right audience is defining who that audience is. Are you targeting Millennials? Stay-at-home moms? Business executives? Identifying the ideal audience for your content is the only way to reach the consumers you want to convert, by tailoring your tone and information for the right crowd.
Narrow the Field
One of the biggest mistakes you can make is trying to target too broad an audience. You want your content to reach the masses, but writing something generic and overarching isn’t the solution. Targeting your audience begins with asking your brand a few essential questions:
- Who is my product/service helping?
- What gap am I filling in my niche?
- Who is most likely to need my product/service?
- What does this person look like?
Hammering down the details of what your audience looks like includes researching your ideal consumers. Form a complete picture of your desired consumers as soon as possible, including their age, gender, job description, location, income, and hobbies.
Do Your Homework
Research your audience thoroughly before you begin writing for them. Once you know who you are writing for, really get to know them through market research databases. Find out what they care about, where they come from, what they are likely to spend their money on, and other important statistics. Learn which social media platforms, if any, your ideal audience spends the most time on. If you want to write as an expert in your field, you must come off as well researched and knowledgeable about your customers.
One of the most important steps is reviewing your site traffic in Google Analytics and even segmenting blog traffic, etc. to understand by age and gender who is reading your content. You can also review the interest groups of these visitors as defined by Google Analytics.
Empathize with Readers
Next, put yourself in your ideal consumer’s shoes to figure out what they’re looking for in your content. What do they want from a company? The answer to this will change according to your selected demographics. For example, a business executive’s motivations to engage with a company may be to seal a promotion or discover ways to spend more free time with a growing family. A stay-at-home parent’s motivations may be to learn tips and tricks for summer fun. Your audience’s goals can shift dramatically, and your content must shift with them to stay relevant.
Pay attention to how much your readers know about your topic. If they have in-depth knowledge about content marketing, for example, you won’t have to spell out basic terms or concepts as you write. If you’re writing for beginners, on the other hand, you may need to explain “SEO,” “ROI,” and other acronyms. Consider whether your audience is likely to agree or disagree with you. Then, you can write in a way that appeals to readers – either emphasizing their point of view or arguing in favor of a different viewpoint.
Communicate Clearly
When we speak with a customer face-to-face, we know exactly who we’re talking to. When we speak to the World Wide Web, we can reach any number of different people with our words. This distinction requires clear, concise communication to avoid misunderstandings. Make adjustments in your writing depending on your target audience to ensure you’re communicating clearly. How you express your message will change for various audiences, depending on cultural or generational differences.
Meet Expectations
The most successful content sets and meets expectations for its audience. For example, say you use your blog to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, covering trending topics and always staying in the know about the newest developments. Once you’ve set this benchmark for your blog, you have to continue to rise to the occasion. Otherwise, you risk losing the attention of your target audience or accidently writing for a different audience than you intended.
Track Visitors
The only way you can know for sure if you’re writing for your intended audience is to find out who is reading the content you publish. You might follow every rule in the book, just to discover an entirely different audience than the one you targeted is responding to content the most. Use tracking tools to see who visits your blog, and make changes to your content strategy accordingly. Keeping tabs on how well your content marketing strategies are working can help your team fix issues and respond to audience needs in real time.
Writing for the right audience maximizes the returns of your investment in content marketing. When you know who you’re writing for and how best to reach them, you dedicate 100% of your resources toward reaching the best consumers for your product or service.
