65 Questions To Ask When Defining Your Target Audience
To market your business effectively, you need to have a thorough understanding of your target audience. Getting to know your audience with their wants and needs helps you craft the tone of your messaging for them specifically. Oftentimes, you’ll find exercises online for building your Target Persona that lead you to answer questions like,
Age
Income
Gender
Location
Etc.
These are wonderful questions to ask, and you need to know this information, but it’s only the start. Many brands make the mistake of defining the basic demographics of their audience and thinking that’s sufficient, which is a surefire way to waste a lot of time creating content for no one (or everyone). Your product or service is not going to appeal to everyone, which is exactly why you need to define your audience with extreme detail. Age and gender might tell you what platform tthey are (statistically) hanging out on online, but that’s really about it.
To better understand your audience, you need to know who they are and what they want from you. In this article, we are giving you 65 unique and detailed questions to ask while defining your audience, so your business can start marketing to them effectively.
*Note: Not all of these questions will apply to every company. Some are more suited for B2C, while others may be geared towards B2B - read them all and decide for yourself which questions will help you!
*Note #2: You may have multiple audiences in your company - that’s okay! Take the time to answer these questions for each of the audiences you have!
Alright, let’s get into it. 65 Questions to Ask When Defining Your Target Audience:
The Basic Questions: Personal Demographics
That’s right. Even though we push the importance of stepping outside of these basic questions, you still need to answer them. If you ask us, they are the least important questions to ask when considering content creation, but they may hold more weight when you’re ready to dive into paid advertising. Remember, someone living in a high-rise apartment within a densely-populated city, like New York, is going to have a wildly different mindset then someone who has a single family home in a rural Midwestern city.
Ask yourself:
1. How old are they? This can be a range, but it really shouldn’t be too large of a range. Saying your customer is 18-65 isn’t helpful to your messaging at all.
2. Do they primarily define themselves as male or female?
3. Married or single?
4. Where are they located? State, city, type of home - remember, the more details you have - the better.
5. Do they have children? How many?
6. What is their annual income?
VALUES
People’s attitudes and behavior are often the result of multiple influences. Every individual has influences that help them decide how they will make their buying decisions. Understanding what motivates a person will help your company understand what type of messaging they need to start considering your product or service.
Ask yourself:
7. What emotions motivate them to make a change in their life? (Anger, fear, etc)
8. What life goals do they have?
9. What’s important to them in life?
10. What types of things and people do they value in their everyday life?
11. What are they afraid of?
12. What is causing their need for change? For example, Do they need a higher-quality product because their current product isn’t efficient enough for them? What is forcing them to finally make a decision (as it relates to your product/service).
13. What feels challenging to this person?
14. If they’re looking for help or advice, who (or what) do they listen to? Remember, this doesn’t always have to be their mom, or a bff. Some people take the advice of an industry leader or a celebrity over their family. Understanding the answer to this question will help determine types of content and tone of copywriting for your campaigns.
15. What stops them or holds them back from achieving the goals they have?
16. How does your product or service make their life easier or better?
17. What are their pain points? In a business context, a pain point refers to a problem the customer has. This problem can be anything from lack of financial understanding to frequently losing their keys. Prospective customers may not even realize they have a pain point. If customers don’t see a problem, they won’t look for a solution, which is why you need to build your messaging around the pain points they have. Don’t overcomplicate this (we know, it’s easy to do)!
Example: Many customers will do online research before making a purchase, but most of us don’t want to waste a lot of time doing this research. This is a pain point that has a very simple solution: make sure your brand is very visible within the platform your audience is most active on.
Followed media
No matter what their personal demographics are, your customer reads, follows, and supports some type of media - it’s up to you to determine where and what this media is. But, why? Why is it helpful to understand what someone is watching on Netflix or what organizations this person supports? Well, if you know what brands they follow, this is an opportunity to create content that’s relevant to that brand or organization, or even start partnerships. If you understand what type of TV they’re watching, this may help your brand create relevant and trendy content that feels relatable to your target customer. The list goes on.
Ask yourself:
18. What type of magazines are they reading, if any?
19. Do they visit the public library? If so, what books are they grabbing?
20. What newspapers do they read?
21. What parts of that newspaper are they reading?
22. What social media platforms are they on? Go deeper with this. Are they using TikTok for purely entertainment reasons? Do they hang out on LinkedIn only to congratulate their college buddies on promotions? Answer the what, and the why.
23. Are they frequenting any blogs or website for information? What information?
24. Who do they follow on social media? Are there any celebrities, public figures, political organizations, or iconic figures they follow? Do you notice a pattern in these?
25. Do they read forums like Reddit or Quora? If so, what for?
26. What brands and companies do they follow on social media? This is different than question 24. That is asking to determine particular individuals. For this question, focus on brands like Nike or National Geographic.
27. What are they watching on Netflix or Hulu right now?
28. Do they still watch Cable TV? What channels?
29. What stores/sites do they shop at online, if any?
30. What radio stations do they listen to?
Where do they hang out
Remember, marketing isn’t always social media (as much as it kills us to say 😉). If you understand where your customer is hanging out in real-life, it will help you determine an opportunity for local advertising, event sponsorships, and more. Of course, understanding where they hang out can also help you create relatable content online as well!
Ask yourself:
31. Do they visit anything on a daily basis? Coffee shops, gyms, grocery stores, etc.
32. Where do they hang out on the weekends?
33. What do they do and where do they go in their spare time? Spare time = when they aren’t working. Do they enjoy martinis and a local club, or hiking at the state park?
34. Do they attend conferences? Business and/or personal.
35. What local and national events to they attends? Concerts, sporting events, festivals, etc.
content specific
This could possibly be our favorite category, because understanding these questions is vital to building your overall content strategy. If you don’t have the answers to the following questions, you’re going to waste a lot of time creating the wrong type of content, or creating content you THINK they want to see. You need to create content you KNOW they’re going to search for, share, and feel is relatable to them.
Ask yourself:
36. When they’re online, how do they spend their time? Do they watch YouTube videos, or read blogs more often? How about scrolling through TikTok? Or, maybe they don’t even have a TikTok?
37. If they’re looking for something specific, where to they go first? Google? Amazon?
38. What keywords do they search when looking for something?
39. What types of content make them laugh?
40. What types of content make them annoyed or upset?
41. What type of content do they share to their own social profiles or with their friends and family?
42. What competitors (of yours) are they looking at online?
43. How are they interacting with brands and your competitors online? Are they commenting on their content or sharing content in their stories?
industry specific
44. Do they already purchase the product or service you’re offering?
45. Where/who are they purchasing from?
46. How often are they purchasing?
47. What industry-adjacent products or services are they buying? For example, if you’re an esthetician offering facials, is your target audience regularly purchasing massages? Understanding this may help you determine how to craft messaging that makes your product or service superior.
48. How if your product/service solving their problem? Remember not to overthink this one either. The problem you’re solving doesn’t have to be revolutionary. They could just be hungry, or need something cute for their office! Of course, when analyzing this question, you want to focus on the benefits of your product and service (not the features).
49. If they were ready to purchase what you’re offering, what would make them second-guess that decision? Stay humble here, folks.
odds and ends
We have several more questions we want you to consider, but they’re a hodge-podge of categories, but just as important as the rest! These questions will help you understand their personality on an even deeper level, which if you haven’t realized yet, is extremely important!
Ask yourself:
50. What kind of hobbies do they have?
51. What types of things do they dislike?
52. What makes them annoyed?
53. What do they lose sleep over?
54. How much $$$ are they willing to spend on a product or service like yours?
55. How much $$$ can they actually afford? These two questions are almost always very different.
56. Are they introverted or extroverted?
57. Do they act differently at work or communicate differently at work?
58. What defines “success” or “ROI” for them, as it relates to your industry?
59. What type of information makes them immediately text their bff and tell them?
60. Do they prefer value or price?
61. How do they typically communicate? Text, email, FB messenger, phone calls, etc.
62. How tech-savvy are they?
63. How informed are your customers about your industry?
64. When it comes to your industry, what information doesn’t your customer know?
65. How long does it take your customers to commit to buying something within your industry?
WE DID IT! 65 questions to ask when defining your target audience. How do you feel? Overwhelmed? Honestly, if you weren’t feeling overwhelmed we’d be a little concerned. This is a lot - we get it. If you want something bad enough, you’ll do what it takes. This is one step to doing what it takes, trust us.
Defining your audience isn’t meant to be done once and never looked at again. Your audience is going to grow and adapt, new trends will come around, new platforms will pop up, new competitors come out of the woodwork, the list goes on here. You need to be updating these questions when you start to feel those shifts happening, and keep things fresh.
We hope you found this helpful! Remember, defining this audience is just one of the four foundational steps you need to creating your Content Strategy. If you’re ready to define the other three steps, we encourage you to check out Content Strategy Blueprint - where we help you stand out online by teaching you how to build a holistic, intentional, and efficient online presence that connects, builds loyalty, and sells!
