Understanding your audience is the number one key to driving better engagement across every platform from Instagram to TikTok to even email newsletters. This “magical” thing isn’t new, in fact it’s been a tried and true method for marketers for decades. It’s simple… If you are wondering how to better understand your target audience and you feel paralyzed, just ask them!
A survey can be magical for so many reasons, but it’s most valuable when you can capture your audience’s thoughts in their own words. As experts in our industry, it’s so easy to use vocabulary that is unfamiliar to our audience. You are the expert for a reason, you likely know more than 90% of your audience. It can be so easy to forget that when we are in the same things day in and day out.
As an expert, you likely know more than 90% of your audience.
Let’s go ahead and break down exactly how you can do this. Here’s how you can understand your target audience through a simple, yet free and effective, survey.
Free Audience Survey Tools:
- Google Forms: Our preferred platform for quiz surveys and easy to read results. If you follow us on the ‘Gram you’ve likely encountered one of these!
- Survey Monkey: Know that on the free plan you have some limitations to the number of surveys and questions.
- SoGo Survey: What’s great about this platform is the variety of advanced question types.
- Typeform: Has some amazing personalization features such as being able to dynamically update their name & content as it’s completed.
- There are so many more too. Peek at this article from Hubspot to find your favorite!
Question Ideas For Your Audience:
- What are the reasons you connected with my business? (use multiple choice for your various areas of service and offerings)
- Where are you located? This is especially important for local businesses.
- What makes my business different / unique from all others in this industry?
- Name one thing you’ve been struggling with recently in business / life.
- Complete this sentence “I feel best when…”
- What resources can I provide you to feel your best more often?
- What is one thing you wish you had more time for?
- How do you feel about X offering?
- Tell us your fur babies name, favorite thing to drink, a hobby, etc. — don’t forget to throw in something fun. Especially if it’s related to your giveaway prize!
Audience Survey Tips
- Use mostly open-ended questions to get your audience’s answers in their own words and vocabulary.
- Since it is open ended, and therefore more time consuming, try and keep it to less than 10 questions
- Do this once or twice a year as your audience grows across various platforms.
- Finally, make it irresistible with a giveaway. This can really help focus your participants too if you include an offer that might attract only those willing to work or buy from you. For example, a particular product from your shop or a service strategy session, etc.
How To Use These Responses To Drive Real Engagement
- Content creation: These answers will inspire originality to overused trends which is something Adam Mosseri touched on a few weeks back.
- Create new offerings & products
- Generate new hooks and call to actions to your post captions.
- Storytelling by sharing relatable stories from your audience (with permission of course!)
- Vision: As long as you have a strong brand strategy in place, these answers can help guide your future company vision through new ideas and inspiration.
- Revive your passion and drive when things are feeling slow or you feel unmotivated.
Understanding your audience is the number one key to driving better engagement
The best part is, this isn’t just for your Instagram audience either. You can use these answers as a guide for any content you create from emails, freebies, lead generation, TikTok, Pinterest, etc. If you are struggling to create engaging content, understanding your target audience will do wonders for your business. Give it a try and let us know how it goes!
If you liked today’s episode on The Duo On Air Marketing Podcast, don’t forget to leave us a review & subscribe!
More From The Duo
Sign Up for Tuesday Tips and Sips Newsletter
Abbey Oslin and Courtney Petersen are Minnesota-based marketing experts, educators, and co-founders of boutique marketing agency Duo Collective, which specializes in SEO, social media strategy, and branding for small business owners and creative entrepreneurs. To learn more about Duo Collective, or to inquire about working with our team, head over to www.duocollective.com.
To inquire about being a guest on Duo On Air, please fill out this application form.
And to submit a topic or a question for next week’s episode, send us a DM on Instagram! See you on Monday!
+ show Comments
- Hide Comments
add a comment