How to nail your audience profile and deeply understand the market & competitors

Want to discover how to attract your target audience to your brand? First things first, you’ve got to know who you’re talking to. Understanding your target audience and what’s hot (or not) in the market is your key to crafting a message that resonates. Think of it like matchmaking, but for branding, you want your product or service to be love at first sight. Let’s get stuck into how to deeply understand your customers so you know how to attract them to your brand. 

Key takeaways

• It all starts with research. The deeper into research you go, the more you will discover about your customers. 

• Why creating an audience persona is important and how to create your audience profile. 

• 16 questions to ask when creating your audience profile 

• How to grow your brand with a marketing strategy 

Research your market, competitors and trends 

Before you start getting into any strategy, you must deeply understand the market and know who you’re targeting. Now let’s start by looking for some outside insights. Let's go in and find out what’s going on out in the market, with your competitors and what your audience wants to help direct your marketing campaigns. 

Assess the trends

What’s going on in the market? Any new trends within your industry and your customers? Things change fast, especially in marketing, so you must keep your finger on the pulse and stay up to date with where the trends are headed.

Important reminder: Before investing your resources into a new trend, make sure you do your research first. Not every marketing trend is right for your company, so assess whether the new marketing strategy aligns with your business objectives before diving headfirst.    

Your competitor insights - Find inspiration 

Do you know what your competitors are up to right now? Performing a competitor analysis is an essential part of any marketing audit, so you know what the competition is up to and identify gaps and opportunities in the market. 

When conducting your competitor analysis, research all their marketing activities on social media campaigns, their website and their overall marketing approach. Use this data to identify what they’re doing well at, and use this to assist with your marketing campaigns. 

Gather customer insights - What are your customers saying?

Gather insights into what your customers are saying about your brand. Great places to look are review sites like Google My Business, Trustpilot and Tripadvisor to gain an understanding of their thoughts. Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok are great places to head to review comments on what your audience is saying. 

Use this data to paint a picture of what your customers want so that you can better connect with them and build stronger relationships. Give your customers what they want, and your performance will ultimately level up.

Deeply understand your customer - Build an audience profile 

Now you’ve dived deep into what's going on in the market, trends and your competitors, it’s time to create your audience persona (aka audience avatar or audience profile). Think of this as a fun project of creating a character and creating your persona based on what you have learned during your research. Give your person a name, personality, purpose and values. Really go deep into this because the more in-depth you go into creating your person, the more you will learn and understand about how to market and sell to your customer. 

Here are the questions to address when creating your audience avatar:

• What does a day in the life of this person look like? 

• What tools or platforms do they regularly use?

• What are their main goals?

• What motivates them to take action?

• What problems are they actively trying to solve?

• What frustrates them?

• What obstacles prevent them from reaching their goals?

• Where do they go for information (Google, social media, referrals)?

• What influences their buying decisions (price, reviews, features)?

• How do they prefer to communicate (email, phone, DMs)?

• What kind of content do they consume (videos, blogs, podcasts)?

• What do they stand for or care deeply about?

• What brands, people, or causes do they trust or follow?

• What language or tone resonates with them?

• What makes them say “yes” to a product?

• What might make them say “no”?

Marketing Strategy by Mogfish Marketing 

Sometimes it takes a fresh pair of eyes to truly see who you’re trying to reach and how to win them over with content that actually lands. If you're looking for expert support to shape your marketing strategy and really get to know your audience inside-out, we’d love to help.

Come say hello at hello@mogfishmarketing.com and let’s grab a virtual cuppa to chat about your goals and how we can help your business grow.