Know Your Target Audience: Social Media Audience Research Tools

Chris Matts

Digital Strategist for Advent Digital Marketing. ​Advent Digital Marketing provides digital marketing services to business owners and organizations that want to take a professional approach to online marketing.

Let's begin with an overview of marketing fundamentals. 

​Promoting your product, service, ministry or organization starts with identifying the target audience you are trying to reach, understanding their behavior, and then determining the message you want to communicate to them.
 
Once this is accomplished, you’ll need to figure out the best promotional channel(s) to reach your audience and communicate your message. When it comes to choosing which channel/platform to use for your promotional campaign, the most important factor for consideration is the size of YOUR audience that is investing their ATTENTION on a channel. If you have a large audience on a channel (such as email or Twitter) but they are not spending much time on it or ignore promotional content, then it will not be an effective channel for communicating your message.
 
The size of the desired target audience and quality of time spent on a platform or channel varies greatly depending on the demographic.
 
The most important question to ask yourself when trying to figure this out is: “Where does my target audience give their attention?”

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Here are a few more pointers to help you work through this:

• Competitor research
  When you are marketing for a specific industry or specific audience, you can simply look at your competitors’ successful marketing initiatives and model them instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. When it comes to online marketing, some of the tools I recommend for competitor research are:
  • similarweb.com
    This is an amazing tool because it gives you a lot of insight into your competitors’ traffic sources. (The free version provides a lot of valuable insights, so no need to upgrade if your budget is tight.)
  • Spyfu.com
    This tool is helpful because it gives you a projected advertising budget for your competitors’ Google Search Ads campaign. It also provides a list of the keywords that your competitors are bidding on. (The free version provides great value.)
  • Facebook /Instagram active ads tab
    (This can be found under your competitors’ Facebook page info section.)
    This tab will allow you to see all of the active ads your competitors are running. You will be able to see the exact creatives that your competitors are using, such as graphics, videos, copy, and landing pages.
  • adespresso.com/ads-examples/
    This tool will help you find examples of ads that are running based on your industry.
    
    
• Conduct behavioral research on your audience based on their age.
  Understanding generational behaviors can help us when considering which channel/platform to use for our promotions. Older generations are still giving their attention to more traditional channels of promotion while younger generations tend to give most of their attention to digital channels. However, consider this a general statement as 77% of ALL Americans are on social media, and almost all are connected online. Recent research shows that older generations are responding positively to promotion campaigns on digital channels.
  
  
• Research using Facebook “audience insights” tool.
  This free tool allows you to research the potential size of an audience on Facebook based on age, interests, behaviors, employment, relationship status, and much more. Although Facebook is just one channel of promotion, it is considered “the mother of social media” and is definitely a great place to start for understanding where your audience spends time. Click here to download a presentation on targeting for ads. 
  
  
• Conducting keyword research on Google Keyword Planner.
  The Google keyword planner tool helps you identify the search volume for specific keywords that your audience is typing into the Google search engine. Click here to learn more about keyword research and planning.

  
Whether you decide to take the time to learn how to use these valuable tools on your own or hire a professional, know that every strong digital campaign starts with a strong foundation of research on your target audience.
 
Watch my video below to learn how to use these research tools: