Audience Research Tips For Businesses To Generate Leads

The sales process of any business requires the generation of high-quality leads through search engine optimization (for organic leads) and other digital marketing strategies.

Attracting prospects that you can nurture until they are ready to buy from you can only happen when you study and understand your target audience.

48% of consumers admit that they will likely consider buying from businesses that cater to them personally or provide solutions to their specific problems.

Additionally, 60% to 70% of B2B (business-to-business) owners struggle to understand their audience – and this can be solved using audience research.

Hence, researching your audience plays a vital role in your marketing success. It can make your brand the go-to option for potential customers, helping you stand out in a competitive market.

Lead generation becomes easier once you uncover your ideal customers and the experience they crave.

But the big question is this:

How can you generate leads for your business with audience research?

Not to worry, we have got you covered.

In this article, we will be sharing proven target audience research tips that can help you create different lead generation strategies that produce the desired result – more leads that you can nurture into paying customers.

Let’s get started.

The Importance of Audience Research in Lead Generation for Businesses

Before we share these valuable tips with you that can boost your business, let’s show you the importance of audience research in lead generation and digital marketing.

Many factors can influence the lead generation for your business, and the most important of these factors is Audience research.

Audience research is at the heart of any lead generation strategy because the information you get from it can help you:

• Find the perfect brand tone;
• Choose the ideal content style and search engine optimization strategy;
• Choose the ideal social media platform for effective target audience reach and traffic generation;
• Choose improved targeting campaigns and lead magnets that attract the ideal site visitors;
• Create valuable content that appeals to the interest of your audience;
• Maximize your available resources;
• Offer a more personalized user experience;
• Nurture leads that become paying customers, increasing your conversion rate.

Your chances of getting new leads that eventually buy your offering are slim without proper audience research.

In a nutshell, if you want to make sales and stand out in any competitive market, you should not underestimate the potency of knowing and understanding your audience.

So, let’s cut to the chase and show you of the best tips for effective audience research.

6 Audience Research Tips To Boost Your Lead Generation Process

It’s worth emphasizing that the success of any lead generation strategy in digital marketing boils down to your understanding of your target audience.

Once you understand your audience, you will be able to create digital marketing channels and resources that will help you drive leads, and ultimately, make more sales.

Without further ado, below are 6 tried and trusted audience research tips to help you generate leads for your business.

Ensure you understand your ideal customer

Every competitor in your industry – both big and small businesses – creates similar products and has an idea of the audience in need of these products.

However, what can make your business stand out in the market is your understanding of your target customer.

It’s one thing to know an audience and another to understand them.

Knowing your audience makes you aware of who wants or needs your offering.

While understanding your audience makes you aware of why they want or need your offering.

If you want to generate leads for your business you must understand your audience:

• Pain points;
• Interests;
• Values;
• Hobbies;
• Lifestyles.

In other words, you should put yourself in their shoes. When you understand your audience, you can speak to them in their language and use the right words to capture them as leads through SEO and other digital marketing strategies.

Pay attention to demographics

Look out for your target audience’s demographics like age, location, income, occupation, hobbies, and education level

One of the best ways to effectively analyze your potential customer’s demographics is by using social media.

This is because some of your audience spends time on social media engagement with your brand and your competitors, and you can get a lot of information through them.

Let’s show you how you can get the demographics of your target customers using social media.

X Analytics

X comes with an inbuilt analytics program that gives demographics like your target customer’s language, top interests, consumer behaviour, and income.

Here’s how you can use X to get demographics:

1. Log in to X;
2. Go to X Analytics;
3. Choose “audiences” on the top navigation bar;
4. Click to view Demographics, Overview, Mobile footprint, and more.

Although X’s information may not be sufficient to help you find leads that you can nurture into paying customers, this is a great starting point.

At this stage, you can narrow down your audience and get specific with your messaging and intent.

Let’s move on to Instagram.

Instagram Analytics

Instagram provides demographic data like your audience’s location, gender, and age range.

If you have the Instagram Business Tool, you might find it easier to access demographics.

Alternatively, you can use the inbuilt Instagram Analytics.

Here’s how you can use Instagram to get demographics:

1. First, you need to open an Instagram Business Account;
2. Then, go to your Instagram profile;
3. Click on the three bars in the right corner;
4. Choose “Insights”;
5. Select “Audience”.

Once again, this may not be detailed or concrete information about the specific intentions of your target audience.

Nonetheless, it will come in handy in your lead-generation strategies.

For instance, the age range and location demographics can help you create personalized offers and localized marketing activity campaigns.

Now, let’s see what Facebook has to offer.

Facebook: Meta Business Suite

This is pretty straightforward.

In this case, all you have to do is:

1. Log in to your Facebook page;
2. Click on “Insights” in the top navigation bar;
3. Choose “people” from the left sidebar;
4. You can decide to view the demographics of your fans, followers, people reached, and people engaged.

Once you put together the information you have gotten from these 3 social media platforms – X, Instagram, and Facebook — you can pinpoint your specific audience.

Now can use this information to generate leads quickly by creating the perfect lead magnet – a blog content or guest blog post that appeals to your target audience.

If they are older individuals, you might want to avoid using memes when creating content.

Additionally, you can use tools like Grammarly to customize valuable content that aligns with the intent and emotions of your audience.

Enhance audience awareness using Google Analytics

On average, users spend over 8 hours daily interacting with digital content.

Hence, you can also study and understand your audience by tracking their digital behaviours.

You can achieve this by using Google Analytics.

All you have to do is go to the “Audience Section” on Google Analytics.

This is where you will find key details about your audience like their browsers, demographics, and the like.

Furthermore, you can analyze traffic and track custom URLs across your marketing channels to discover which content strategy resonates with your audience.

The amount of data and options at your fingertips may be excessive.

However, if you can narrow your focus, you’ll be able to channel your energy in the right direction – towards your ideal audience.

Do a Competitive Analysis

Investigate to discover competitors in your industry.

This will also provide more details about your audience’s needs and wants, including the type of content you can use to attract them for a perfect business SEO.

Here is how you can do a competitive analysis:

1. Research the top 5 competitors your target audience follows using key terms your business targets on Google search. Alternatively, you can use tools like SEMRush;
2. Assess how they promote their offerings with social media, email marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO);
3. Evaluate their content marketing strategies such as the frequency of their blog post, target phrases, brand tone, subject line, length and word count of their content, brand tone, call to action, and content style.

You can use the information to identify the best practices and recurring trends across your competitors, making it possible to create an effective digital marketing strategy and SEO marketing strategy.

Additionally, this analysis will help you discover what you need to deliver valuable and specific content to your ideal audience.

Look out for what your audience hate

Most business owners focus on enticing their customers with mouthwatering offers.

In some cases, it works wonders, especially when it’s what your audience wants or needs. And, in other cases, it doesn’t work because there are things your audience hates about your product.

You should pay attention to what your audience hates about your product and fix it before creating your next sales funnel if you want to generate high-quality leads that eventually purchase what you have to offer.

Look out for information that answers these questions:

• What does your audience dislike the most about your industry?;
• What is the popular misconception about your product or service?;
• What is their most frustrating experience with your product or service?;
• What level of technical knowledge do your customers have?.

Here’s a fact:

Disappointed customers are three times more likely to give a bad review on your product than satisfied customers.

Bad reviews, as the name implies, are bad for your business.

Statistics show that 68% of consumers are influenced by other customers’ opinions or information online.

While 85% of consumers trust online product reviews just as much as an in-person recommendation.

Now, imagine how many individuals will avoid your brand because of some bad reviews.

Quite a number.

So, you need to find out what your audience hates and fix it.

Your chances of generating new leads will increase if you can sort out what your audience hates about your product and satisfy your customers.

But where can you find these bad reviews about your product?

Start by checking your internal complaint data (if you have it).

Then, look at messages in your email box(es), ask your customer relationship manager and salespeople for bad customer reviews, and check social media.

You should also check your competitor’s reviews.

They might be failing in some areas – and you leverage on them.

Fortunately, forums like Quora can provide you with insightful reviews on your competitors.

The feedback you get can help you streamline your sales process, save time, and improve your close rate by 28%.

Sounds good, right?

So, gather the data and create content or website experience that offers value and specifically addresses the struggles of your target audience.

Also, pay attention to your home page or landing page.

You might discover that your audience finds it difficult to reach out to you. If that’s the case, ensure you include a call to action button that makes it easier for them to contact you.

Ask your audience

Don’t assume you know what your audience wants or needs.

Your assumptions may be misleading, preventing you from generating leads for your business.

Stop the assumptions and find out what your audience cares about.

So, what should you do?

Ask your audience questions.

If you have the contact details of your existing customers, especially their email addresses, you can send a mail to them, asking them questions like:

• What is their biggest challenge in your industry?;
• What do you wish we could change in our industry?;
• What topics do you struggle to get information about?;
• And other insightful questions that let you into the world of your ideal audience.

But truth be told, you won’t get this information out to your audience for free.

So, you have to make it worth their while by sweetening the deal.

You could consider offering them access to some of your premium content, amazon gift cards, or any other irresistible offer.

Take note of the language your audience use when providing answers to your questions.

Or you could consider the more effective option — conversing with your audience.

It works like magic.

With live chat tools or chatbots, you can build a connection with your audience and learn everything you need to know about them.

Listen to your audience.

They can show you what you need to increase your business leads.

Final Words

Once you have an informed perspective of who your ideal audience is, what they need or want, and why they want or need your offering, you stand a greater chance of converting them to customers.

Your audience considers your brand as a problem solver that understands them and can provide much-needed solutions.

Moreover, 44% of consumers will possibly become long-term paying customers after a personalized purchase experience.

Hence, audience research can do a world of good for your business as it helps in all your digital marketing and search engine optimization efforts.

As a matter of fact, audience research can be the difference between your business creating or not creating an effective lead magnet.

And, so far, we have shared proven audience research tips you can use to boost your lead generation.

These research methods will help you understand your audience and speak to them in their language.

Now it’s up to you to apply these tips and get the desired results.

According to Convince and convert, successful marketers are 242% more likely to conduct audience research at least 4 times a year.

So, don’t be left behind.