Do You Know Your Target Audience When Creating A Live Webinar Launch?

When businesses develop promotional or informational webinars, they often overlook the important task of target audience analysis. They become wrapped up in how to best frame their product that they do not take enough time to define the consumer.

Skilled businesspersons and marketers know that success is attained not by what you are selling, but to whom. With a clearly defined audience, you can sell them product after product because they see worth in it as it targets their specific needs and solves their unique problems. Furthermore, you build a relationship with consumers the more you sell to them, which keep them coming back again. This is the foundation of a successful business.

How To Define Your Target Audience

Although defining the audience can be difficult in many industries, you can take a series of steps to help with the process. These steps should be specific enough to lead to a clearly defined target audience.

1. Have a conversation with the person(s) who designed the product you are selling. Ask them who they had in mind when they created it.
2. In specific terms, answer why you want to sell this product.
3. Evaluate how you currently cater to consumers and whether this is successful.
4. Determine the factors that drive consumers to buy certain products.
5. Determine how your product solves your audienceís problems or helps them in some way.
6. Identify the characteristics that your consumers have in common.
7. Research other vendors and products that your audience buys from to determine how similar they are to yours.
8. Define the demographics of your audience, including gender, age, marital status, occupation, income, education and zip code/geographic location.
9. Determine your marketing psychographics, including lifestyles, attitudes, personality, interests, values and behaviors.
10. Decide on how many people you need to market to, and develop a plan in case the audience you define is not large enough. Consider altering your product, adding other products or developing a marketing strategy that will appeal to a larger audience.
11. Research what is missing in your industry and attempt to fulfill the gap.
12. Pinpoint problems consumers in your industry have and attempt to solve them.
13. Brainstorm ideas about how you can best connect with your target audience.
14. Research what websites, social media sites, and apps that your target audience is using most.
15. Research social media sites, like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ for buzz about the product or industry in question.
16. Research relevant online forums or discussion groups to see what members are talking about, their needs, and desires. For example, in the online marketing niche several popular forums are always buzzing about that what is lacking in quality tools, and what is needed by the average marketer to see success.

How To Market To Your Target Audience

Your live webinar launch is a form of marketing in and of itself, but you still need to draw in a large enough audience for your webinar. Once you define your target audience, find out what websites they visit, especially social media sites.

Many social media sites, such as Facebook, allow you to post an ad that only appears to people who ‘like’ or express interest in the type of product you sell. This procedure is based on certain keywords that people use on the site and even the phrases that they use on Google search and other search engines. These ads can also be designed to only appear to people of certain demographics (e.g., single females who are 18+ years of age).

Another important method to use to draw in a webinar audience is through mass email. Collect all the email addresses you can from your company’s email lists. Also, create a blog or website to promote your event with a link to sign up for a newsletter or company updates; this also provides you with more email addresses. Send a mass email a couple of weeks before your webinar to initially inform people about it, then again a few days before the event, and then one the day before and one a few hours before the webinar as a final reminder. Peoples’ schedules change day-to-day, so reminders are very important.

Continue to use any other marketing methods currently adopted by your company, as a comprehensive strategy is a successful strategy.

Bottom Line

It is crucial to understand your target audience in any marketing venture, which includes webinars. Without a thorough understanding of the particular consumer that you want to engage you can miss important information that will help to convert leads into lifelong customers and improve your bottom line.