One of the first things that I see a lot of confusion around in the social media world is target market and what kind of content you should be sharing to hit your target market’s pain points. This is going to help you gain massive following a lot quicker than just posting aimlessly. You can create content that they actually want to see, please them , solve something for them, and keep them coming back for more. There are a lot of buzz words in there, so let’s break it down.
What Does “Target Market” Mean?
These are your followers, the people you want to follow you and the people you’re “selling to” or creating for. If you think influencing is just about sharing what you love, you’re partially right. But you’re also partially wrong. Because influencing is about selling! Stick with me here because a lot of you totally just said “um yuck no thanks”. Ok so I don’t mean you’re actively selling, but you are “selling” your content to them and if you don’t know who “they” are, then you don’t even know what kind of content to create in the first place. You want them to NEED to “buy” what you’re “selling”. Did I lose you there? Let’s keep going.
Most of your time should be spent learning how to find your target market if you’re just starting out or if you’ve been at it for a while and you’re not seeing good results. It is SO important to identify exactly who you’re talking to. And you need to be SO specific! I’ll be honest. It’s really hard, but the harder you work now to get to know the person you’re targeting, the easier it will be to create content directly for them.
You want your customer to be ONE single person. Believe me, we all fall into the trap of wanting to be super broad so we can include everyone and therefore make more money right? No. That’s not how it works. If you are too broad, you actually cast so wide of a net that it never really catches anyone. Let’s get super specific.
Target Follower:
This is pretty self explanatory. This is the person that we’re going to create all of our content toward. With each piece of content you write, ask yourself if it is valuable to your ideal follower or if it’s not something they would click on. Is is something they would stop everything they’re doing or save to come back to read? To find your target follower, you need to know how to find your target market.
Pain Points:
Some questions to ask while working on this section are listed below. As you’re going through each of these questions, try to be as detailed as possible and to identify pain points for your person under each question.
For example, for the first question, each life stage comes with challenges. How can you relate your niche and your content to that particular life stage? Remember, we’re trying to be extremely specific so don’t say, “my person doesn’t really have any particular age”. If that’s the case, then you need to give it one! Give your ideal follower an age. See what I’m getting at here?
Your target audience’s pain points are the things in their life that they need filled. A pain point can be anything from a need to organize their medicine cabinet to a need to have quick access to affordable outfits to a need to be encouraged on a daily basis. Knowing your ideal followers pain points is what will bring them to you and keep them around!
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How to Find Your Target Market
- What is the age of the person I’m targeting? Life stage (single, married, young kids, etc)?
- What is the gender of the person I’m targeting?
- What is their job?
- Where are they located? Typically city? Rural? Suburbs?
- Do they have children?
- What do they define success as?
- What emotions motivate them? Fear, anger, positivity?
- What are their fears?
- What holds them back from being the person they want to be & living the life they want to have?
- Where do they hang out in real life?
- What kind of events do they go to?
- Household income? Are they working class? Upper class? Etc.
- How do they get their information? News? Good Morning America? Talk shows? Social Media?
- What is your target market’s personality type? (HINT: It’s likely similar to yours ;))
- What needs, challenges and frustrations do they have? They can be huge or they can be trivial. They may not even know they have some challenges until you point them out and go ahead and solve that challenge for them, so try to make a big list here! This is where your content creation starts.
Feel Like You Need More Help?
Want to get the full list of questions and learn how to become a full time content creator? Follow my Influencer Coaching specific Instagram for so much free content! Or grab our signature course bundle: InstaPaid + InstaGrowth
Inside our signature course bundle, we will do a deep dive to pinpoint one person – your target follower. While your target audience will vary a little from follower to follower, knowing exactly the single person you’re targeting will help you write in a conversational way in which you’re speaking to that person and solving their problems directly.
If all of that sounded like way too much and like how can you possibly target one person, I promise it’s not. But believe me you are not alone in feeling that way. When I first determined my target follower, it was a lot of work, but my audience has been steadily growing since then and the quality of followers I am getting is so much higher than it was before!
We’ve got this!
Now that you’ve learned how to find your target market, let’s monetize. Learn how to monetize your following with LiketoKnowit and other affiliate websites!
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