Know Your Audience—Or You Won’t Have One

Do you feel like you’re screaming into the void when it comes to your written content? You can put a lot of effort (and money) into writing web pages, marketing emails, blogs, white papers, and social media posts and be met with deafening silence—no interaction, no clicks, no shares, no sales leads. 

Before you come to the conclusion that people just don’t read anymore, or that content marketing simply doesn’t work for your particular business or industry, consider going back to the basics. Who exactly are you writing for? 

At Words Have Impact, one of the most important parts of our job is to discover who you want to read and respond to your content. Believe it or not, some businesses never consider—or they forget—who’s in their target audience. Once you define your audience, we can help you determine what they’ll find interesting and relevant to craft content that gets you noticed. 

How do you know if you’ve lost sight of your audience? Here are some hints.

Your Audience Doesn’t Care How You Do What You Do

Years ago, I was hired by a niche marketing agency to write case studies for a few of their best clients in the food industry. To prepare, I checked out each company’s website. 

On one site I was stunned to find a detailed description of the unique molecular structure of the fruit used to make that client’s products. It turned out the owner of the business, who held a PhD in chemistry before launching his food company, had written the copy himself. The piece read like a scientific journal and definitely showed off his expertise to his academic peers. He was really proud of it, but he completely missed the mark when it came to reaching his target audience—the ordinary customers who might buy his gourmet food products. 

If you’re writing for an audience who will appreciate the technical details, feel free to dig right in. Some chefs, for example, might be fascinated to know why you choose certain ingredients and the recipe you follow to make your product. But if you’re targeting the general public, they don’t care “how the sausage is made”, so to speak, only that you sell the sausage, and why it’s the best.

Are You Making Your Target Audience Work Too Hard?

There are online tools we writers sometimes like to use. They can check grammar, identify sentences that are difficult to read, and analyze overall readability. When I put the website content from the above-mentioned client into one of them, it registered at a post-doctorate reading level! 

The rule of thumb is to write at about a 7th-grade comprehension level for the best readability. This is a starting point, and the grade level can be adjusted up or down depending on the specific audience. Complicated topics sometimes need a more advanced vocabulary. A technical piece for engineers, for example, can be more complex and include more industry jargon than an article about the hottest hair colors this season. This is not about underestimating your audience’s intelligence. It’s about not making anyone do mental gymnastics to understand what you’re trying to say. 

It’s also important to choose the right voice and tone for your written content. Your writing voice is what makes your content uniquely yours, while tone conveys your mood or feelings. You might keep a professional voice, but use a friendly or witty tone, for example. But using jokes or puns when writing about something serious can damage your credibility with the audience. At Words Have Impact we take pains to ensure we write in a voice and tone that sounds like you and resonates with the right audience. 

The best professional writers always opt for language that is clear and concise. It’s best to stick to short sentences and everyday words. You might think that packing in a bunch of long, sophisticated words will make you look like an expert, but it can turn readers off. Keep it simple and easy to understand. Your readers will thank you—even if they’re PhDs!

Looking for Readers in All the Wrong Places

Social media plays an important part in content marketing, either by itself or by directing people to your website, to sign up for your newsletter, etc. But when it comes to reaching your target audience, all platforms are not created equal.

This might seem obvious, but it can trip some people up. A few years ago, (before Twitter became X) a business coach I knew was convinced by someone in her networking group that she absolutely must start tweeting about her business. The problem: Her target audience was made up of bankers and financial services professionals. After a lot of wasted time and effort, she discovered that some of those folks weren’t even on Twitter, let alone looking there for business contacts. She ended up crafting content and writing articles on LinkedIn instead, with much more success.

Social media platforms come and go and their demographics shift over time. Focus your energy on sites where your target audience spends their time—wherever that may be right now. And more importantly, be ready to switch along with them.

Is Your Content Marketing Ignoring Part of Your Audience?

Some old-school marketing advice that will never go out of style is that you need to identify your potential customer’s challenges or “pain points” and present your solution. Good content writing allows you to demonstrate your expertise and build trust that you have the answers to their problems.

Some marketing plans get stuck, however, never going beyond acquiring new customers. Unless you’re in a one-and-done type of business, you need to keep your audience engaged. 

Before becoming a writer, I worked for an accounting firm. The marketing department spent most of its time targeting new tax clients. Once on board, they’d rarely hear from us until it was time to do their next tax return. It turned out that many existing clients had no idea that the firm also did corporate payroll or that we had a financial investment branch and offered mortgage services. Only during discussions with our CPAs would they find out that we could handle much more for them than their annual return.

The firm began a campaign to introduce the audience to all of the services available. They also started a newsletter to help educate existing clients about various tax-related issues and to present interesting articles about the successful businesses the firm helped. 

People looking for your expertise will have certain pain points. Those who already know and trust you still need those solutions, but they’ll have other challenges too. You need to find ways to maximize your reach and make sure they think of you first. This sometimes means targeting multiple audiences with your content marketing.

Finding Your Audience

You can begin to define your target audience by looking at your best customers. Ask them how they found you, why they trust you, and what else you can do for them. You can do this through casual conversations or by conducting a survey. 

Studying Google Analytics and your social media following can give you some valuable data. You’ll get a clearer picture of the demographics of who is looking at your content and what topics are resonating with them. 

Once you know who you’re writing for, you can customize your content to provide what they want and need. Not sure how to get started? Words Have Impact can help. Contact us today.