Whatever your line of business is, one of the most important steps in your marketing strategy should be audience research. Since most of our lives happen on social media, figuring out the profile of people you want to “serve” your business to is vital. Unless you’d rather be stumbling blindly in the dark, hoping you’ll get it right, conducting well-planned audience research is indispensable.

When your passion and business are on the line, being meticulous with your marketing and media planning is the only way to do things right. If you’re new to the process, here are some key points you should know.

What is audience research?

If you’re just starting a business and developing your marketing strategy, you want them to be built on a strong foundation.

Audience research is a way to do just that – it lets you delve into the type of customers you need to attract, their likes, dislikes, interests, and problems, and how you can solve them with your product or service.

Rather than operating on speculation, you get to clearly see ways in which you can make your business stand out.

That being said, even established enterprises tend to skimp on their audience research, which results in media planning that doesn’t have a real structure or purpose.

When you get to know your customers, your media campaigns can be tailored to them and their needs, and that’s one of the key aspects of a successful business.

Things You Can Learn Through Audience Research

Just about any feedback you need for your business, you can get through audience research, as long as you optimize the process.

If you’re launching a new product, you want to know whether there’s a demand for it. Alternatively, if you already promote your services, but you’re noticing that the sales are going down, you can conduct audience research to help you better understand what you need to improve.

Of course, you already have an inkling of what might be happening, but letting your customers share their opinions and experiences is invaluable. They say two heads are better than one, but what about a hundred, or a thousand?

It’s similar to doing a puzzle – once you compile the data you get from your audience and start putting the pieces together, a bigger picture emerges. From there, you’ll know which customer pain points to prioritize, as well as the direction of your social media strategy.

Whether you’re looking to promote your business through Instagram or use the help of media buying agencies to reach customers on various platforms, focused audience research is the place to start.

How to Conduct Audience Research?

The first and most important question in every type of audience search is – What do you need to know? What are the key takeaways you want to get? Do you know who your target audience is?

If you’re not sure about the last question, that’s where you need to start. This means you’ll need to create buyers’ personas that showcase the age, interests, lifestyle, and pain points of your target audience. Once you understand who your ideal customer is, you can use various types of audience research to expand on that knowledge.

CC: similarweb.com ### Primary Audience Research

In primary research, it’s your job to come up with every step of the process, including the ways you’ll get the necessary information, gather all the raw data, and extrapolate conclusions from it.

It’s a 100% hands-on type of research, which requires more time and effort than secondary research, but the rewards are much greater.

You get completely fresh information for your target audience that you can use not only to boost your business but to also set yourself up as a leader in your field. Here are some types of primary research for you to consider.

Quantitative Audience Research focuses on the data side of things. Through quantitative research, you can gather statistics that can show anything from demographic details to your customers’ yearly incomes. For this purpose, you can use:

• Surveys
• Social media analytics aka data analysis
• Questionnaires

Qualitative Audience Research is more personal, you get to tap into the likes and dislikes of your customers, then use the acquired data to better tailor your services to their needs. To get the most out of your qualitative audience research, you can conduct:

• Interviews and/or surveys (which can be both quantitative and qualitative)
• Ethnographic research
• Focus groups

The main advantage of primary research is that it can grant you access to huge amounts of new data, unburdened by the personal bias or assumptions that you might already have. This is the epitome of – Let the data speak for itself. All you have to do is listen and take notes.

Secondary Audience Research

As its name suggests, in this type of research, you use data collected by a secondary source, usually the internet. While secondary research has its merits, and it’s a good place to learn some basics, you’ll get the most useful information through primary research.

The best path is usually to mix and match types of research – that’s how you get varied information that could unlock the undiscovered potential to grow and improve.

Audience Research for Media Planning – An Absolute Must

Coming up with an effective social media strategy requires a lot of effort, and even more knowledge to back it up.

Cc: bionic-ads.com That’s why doing audience research should be high on your priority list. Audience research is a fundamental and crucial step in media planning. It helps media planners gain insights into the target audience’s preferences, behaviors, and demographics, which allows them to develop effective strategies to reach and engage their intended viewers or users.

You want to get to know your customers, understand what makes them tick, and turn that into data that you can use to make your product, and everyone’s lives, a little better.

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