What is audience analysis and why is it important?

In any form of communication, whether public speaking or marketing, it’s necessary to understand the audience you’re interacting with. This is because it allows you to appeal to their needs, struggles, desires, and dreams.

Without audience analysis, you’re left creating copy around speculation, which is rarely profitable.

Below, we’ll talk about what audience analysis is and why it’s essential. We’ll also look at audience analysis examples and how you can implement them into your marketing strategy.

What is audience analysis?

Audience analysis in advertising means studying the people who buy from you. By understanding them, you can tweak marketing copy according to their preferences.

Here’s an audience analysis example: Imagine your boss asks you to prepare a speech on entrepreneurship. You start writing about developing a product, hiring people, and seeking investment from venture capitalists.

But before you deliver your speech, you notice your audience is a bunch of third-graders.

You’ll probably adjust your speech to cover more basic topics like selling apples and candy. If you were to give your original speech, your audience would fall asleep after a few minutes.

This is the importance of audience analysis.

In marketing, you must understand your audience to develop the most compelling and relevant marketing messages.

What are the pros of audience analysis?

Here are some standout benefits of analyzing your audience:

• Targeted marketing campaigns
• Stronger customer relationships
• Time and money saved

Targeted marketing campaigns

The most apparent benefit to understanding your audience is more personalized marketing campaigns.

Many small businesses start advertising without any clue who they’re advertising to.

And this is a significant reason why they aren’t profitable. They’ll run campaigns based on what they think they know about their audience. However, these assumptions are rarely correct, and the audience simply ignores their messages.

But when you analyze your audience, your marketing efforts are backed by data.

Stronger customer relationships

When your marketing efforts are based around customer behaviors, you show your audience that you care, boosting loyalty and brand awareness.

This helps you stand out because you aren’t just trying to sell something—you’re solving customer problems and helping them reach their goals.

Time and money saved

More efficient campaigns and stronger customer relationships ultimately save time and money. This is handy as a small business because your marketing budget is reduced without negatively impacting its effectiveness.

What are the different types of audience analysis?

But before analyzing your audience, consider the three main types of audience analysis:

• Demographic analysis
• Psychographic analysis
• Situational analysis

Demographic analysis

The most common form of audience analysis is demographic analysis. For example, in the demographic section of Google Analytics, you’ll find:

• Age
• Location
• Gender
• Martial status
• Income

Let’s say you’re selling clothing to men under 25 years old. You’ll want to analyze your marketing messages across platforms and appeal to them. For example, instead of relying on Google Ads and SEO, you could use a platform that targets the younger generation, like TikTok or Instagram.

Psychographic analysis

But it’s important not to focus only on demographic analysis because it doesn’t uncover audience behaviors and preferences.

This is where psychographic analysis can help. You’ll learn about audience:

• Problems
• Beliefs
• Attitudes
• Values
• Hobbies

By understanding these pointers, you can write copy that presents your product as the solution to their problems or desires.

You could also segment your audience and target each group with hyper-specific messaging.

Situational analysis

The final form of audience analysis is situational analysis.

This involves factors like the size of your audience, how often you’re targeting them, what types of channels you’re using, and their level of interest.

How can I implement audience analysis into my business?

Here are three steps to introducing audience analysis into your marketing strategy:

1. Implement a customer data platform
2. Engage with your audience
3. Make business decisions using this data

Step 1: Implement a customer data platform

Although audience analysis is possible without designated software, it’s much more complex since you’ll have to conduct data sampling and build focus groups manually.

But by using a tool like the Lytics CDP, you get a 360-degree view of your customers without the manual work. It also allows you to send specific audience segments from your data warehouse to particular tools like:

• Google Ads
• Facebook Ads
• LinkedIn Ads
• Email marketing platforms

Step 2: Engage with your audience

Once you have an automated system that captures, organizes, and unifies data for you, it’s time to show your audience you care.

You do this with audience analysis applications like:

• Surveys
• Anonymous customer reviews and feedback
• Quarterly business reviews

When using these feedback strategies, it’s essential to ask the right questions that provide you with answers to customer pain points, desires, dreams, and problems.

Step 3: Make business decisions using this data

The last step is the fun part: Make business decisions using this data to improve marketing campaigns and product development.

Audience analysis made easy with Lytics

Audience analysis is necessary before creating a marketing strategy because you can understand your audience’s pain points and present your product as the solution. This leads to stronger customer relationships, more efficient marketing campaigns, and, ultimately, time and money saved — propelling your business toward new wins and successes.