Any speaker one way or another has to face the need to stir up the audience, prepare it for the performance, cheer up or set it in a certain way.
A competent speaker understands that just going out and starting a story is the lot of beginners, and an experienced speaker needs to get to know the audience, capture attention, stir up interest so that the speech is remembered and evokes positive emotions among the audience.
It is also often difficult to deal with external circumstances: the first report in the early morning, a speech before dinner, when everyone thinks only about the buffet, or, conversely, after dinner, when everyone is sleepy and relaxed.
The easiest way to stir up an audience is to ask them questions. But after all, there is nothing more discouraging than silence in response, so even simple questions must be asked competently.
In this post, there are three types of questions that I find the most effective in my speaking practice. I'd love to hear your examples in the comments!
For a guaranteed response, it is better to use closed questions, and when the audience is already warmed up, you can ask a couple of open ones.
Closed ones are those that require a yes or no answer. Open, respectively, are those that can be answered with a million different non-monosyllabic answers, they begin with interrogative pronouns like “how?”, “What?”, “How much?”, “Why?”, “Why?” and so on.
Questions for acquaintance
Questions that do not require the participants to answer by voice are best suited to start the presentation: they are easier to answer, they do not require serious personal effort from the participants. So, for example, questions in the style of “Raise your hands, those who ...” are much more comfortable for the audience than those that need to stand up and answer individually.
In addition to raising hands, you can use questions that can be answered with a familiar gesture:
- Beginning with the word "how much?" - Ask the participants to show the number with their fingers.
- Yes/No Questions - You can ask participants to agree or disagree with a statement by pointing their thumbs up/down.
What questions are good for getting to know the audience?
To get to know the audience, it is rational to use questions, the answers to which will help the speaker in the future.
What do you want to know about your listeners? How close are they to your topic? What is their professional profile or experience? What cities are they from?
- To speak at a professional conference, questions are often used to find out who works in which business (B2B, B2C) or in what role (specialist, manager, business owner, freelancer, etc.).
- For a student audience, an analogue of such a question is who studies where (from which universities, from which faculties, at what course).
- Questions about the use of certain products/tools are also popular. For example, at a conference on mobile applications The appropriate question would be “What smartphone do you use? Raise your hands, who has an iPhone? And who has Android?
Extension questions
They will show the participants that you care about how they feel. And, as a result, they will place them towards you, put you on the same level with them.
Think about the most common situations of comfort/discomfort that accompany the participants. Surely these are simple human things: someone did not get enough sleep, and someone is uncomfortable because he came alone and does not know anyone.
Start with closed hand raise questions and connect the audience response to your own experience and emotional state:
- Who is at the conference for the first time? And who is not the first time? I often speak, but this is also my first time at this conference, so I am torn apart by the same curiosity with a touch of skepticism as many of you.
- Who got up after 9 am today? And from 8 to 9 in the morning? And before 8? Before 7? I see many got up early to come to the conference, you probably want to sleep. I will try to tell my report in such a way that it would be interesting for you and no one would regret that they had to get up so early!
Questions on the topic of the speech
In my practice, the three-level question method for creating intrigue works flawlessly. These are essentially three closed questions in the style of "Raise your hands, those who...", and each of them relates to the topic in a different way. But the most important thing is that the speaker himself plans the response to these questions in advance.
- 1 question - seemingly unrelated to the topic, which can be answered positively by the maximum number of participants.
- Question 2 is more related to the topic and can be answered positively by a large proportion of participants.
- Question 3 - related to the topic, which is guaranteed to be answered positively by a very small number of participants, ideally almost none.
As an example, here are three questions I liked to ask at the AIESEC presentation for students. Worked great in different conditions and different countries.
So, for example, in Macedonia, the purpose of such a presentation was to talk about the possibilities of a youth organization for students with a special focus on internationality, internships abroad, communication with foreigners and teamwork.
The first question is: Raise your hands, whoever has a Facebook account?
Everyone usually raises their hands. Well, or 99% of the audience. With regard to Russia, you can safely ask about Vkontakte, but in European countries, all young people without exception use Facebook.
The second question is: "And who has friends on Facebook from different countries?"
Usually, a fairly large part of the audience, 60-70 percent, also raises their hands.
The third question is with a twist. Since I am going to talk about international opportunities based on my experience, and my goal is to interest listeners, I slightly shift the focus in my third question:
“And who communicated live, not on Facebook, with friends from five different continents?”
Usually someone still starts to raise his hand, but I clarify in time: “not on Facebook, live”, “not countries, continents”. The audience understands that they were caught, everyone is having fun, someone (let there be five out of a hundred of them, it’s not scary) still shouts that “I, I talked!”.
We managed to stir up and intrigue the audience, we can safely move on to the story of international friendship, opportunities, trips and conferences abroad.
So, three types of questions that help the speaker stir up and position the audience at the beginning of the speech:
What ways do you use to connect with your listeners?
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Asking the right questions is an art and can be mastered. Let's talk about open questions: what they should be, how to compose them correctly, and how to move from closed questions to open questions in the process of communication. The article is useful for project managers, sales professionals, as well as those who want to receive informative answers to their questions.
Imagine that you are fishing. What determines the success of this event? The quantity and quality of the fish you caught. The ability to ask questions is similar to fishing skills: small fish that you caught on a bait are short and uninformative answers, large fish are detailed and understandable answers to your questions. The more big fish you caught (detailed answers received), the more efficient your further work with the customer/client/colleague will be.
What are open questions?
Open-ended questions are questions that do not require a short “yes” or “no” answer, but require a detailed answer. Open-ended questions are also called value questions because they provide useful information either to the questioner (to you), or to both participants. Imagine the situation again, you ask a question to the person with whom you work: “Do you see the prospects for our further cooperation”, this is a closed question (it can be answered “yes” or “no”). If the answer is yes, then most likely your interlocutor will not voluntarily develop the topic, and you will not understand: what exactly are the prospects. But if you frame the question in a different way: “We are already implementing not the first project together, what other prospects for work do you see?”. In this case, you will give the interlocutor food for thought. Stanford University professor and author of books on creative thinking, Tina Seelig, observed that "Any question is a framework on which answers are built ... And when you change the question, the range of answers you can get noticeably changes."
Open questions perform the following practical tasks:
start a conversation with the customer / client;
understand what is behind the statements and beliefs of the customer / client;
direct communication in the right direction;
get a pause to think about actions;
create a comfortable environment for communication;
strengthen partnerships.
How to ask open questions?
An open question is asked with the help of interrogative words, which are usually placed at the beginning of a sentence, and then the essence of the question goes. The purpose of an open question is to get the most detailed and complete answer on a given topic. Before meeting with a potential client or a well-known customer, it is worth making a list of questions that you plan to ask.
Examples of open-ended questions to help understand customer/client needs:
What are you interested in...?
What is important to you when choosing/buying/creating etc...?
What are your requirements for this...?
How would you like...?
How would you choose one for yourself...?
When was the last time you experienced this...?
Examples of questions that will help you understand the main qualities, characteristics and requirements for a product/service:
By what criteria do you select ... ?
What characteristics do you think it should have...?
What wishes...?
And before that, what did you use ...?
What did you like, what didn't you like...?
Why did you decide to change...?
What benefits did you notice...?
Examples of questions to help understand customer/client expectations:
What results do you expect...?
What do you want to end up with...?
What is the most difficult thing in achieving these results…?
Examples of questions that will help determine the degree of "warmth" of the customer / client:
When will you be able to see our offer?
When will you be ready to make a decision?
What is your budget?
Examples of questions to help work through objections:
What concerns or doubts do you have…?
What opportunities do you see ahead of you?
What problems do you expect to face?
If we started working on this together, what would be the main results you would like to see?
Why do you think your choice is correct?
Any question can be turned into an open one. If you catch yourself on the fact that no detailed information do not receive, and the interlocutor answers in monosyllables. Then always add a sequel. For example, if you received a monosyllabic “Yes” to the question “Does our solution suit you?”, then you can always continue: “What exactly?”, “What was especially successful?” and the like.
Open questions to identify needs
One of the indicators of the professional level of a project manager or salesperson is the ability to identify needs in as much detail as possible. Do not forget that the basis of successful cooperation is not the product itself and its characteristics, but the benefits that the customer receives.
What can you find out from the customer/client using open questions?
The problem the customer/client wants to solve. Your task is to understand what interests him.
Criteria that he imposes in a product or service. Your task is to find out what is important for the customer and build a presentation of a product or service based on these criteria.
The fundamentality of the criteria presented. This will allow you to find out the degree of your freedom in the proposed options.
The results that are expected of you. Your task is to determine as accurately as possible what the customer expects from using the product or service.
Experience in using a product or service. This knowledge will help to understand the needs of the customer even more deeply, as well as to find out the level of his awareness of the product / service.
Budget. As a rule, this question is the most feared, but knowing the budget helps to save time and offer a more specific solution. Here it is worth making a remark that customers tend to underestimate the budget by about 30%.
Fears and fears. As a rule, fears begin to come out at the stage of working with objections, but professionals can pull them out at the stage of clarifying needs.
Funnel of questions
We've written so much about open-ended questions, so it makes sense to briefly talk about the other two main types of questions. In a company with open questions, there are also closed and alternative ones.
Closed questions are questions that can only be answered with two answers: “yes” or “no”. Target closed question- obtain consent, confirmation of agreements, clarify the information received.
Alternative questions - questions that can be answered in the form of a choice by the customer / client of one of the options that we designate in the question itself. The purpose of the alternative question is to understand the scope of interests of the customer/client, to direct the customer/client's thinking to the choice of alternatives.
We've talked about other types of questions to bring you to another concept - the funnel of questions. This is a technique for analyzing the needs of the customer / client, which is a sequence of questions that you ask in the structure “from general to specific”: open questions - alternative - closed. First, you find out the needs, then you offer options, and finally, you summarize the conversation.
Example:
What opportunities do you see ahead of you? - open question.
Are you planning to enter the foreign market or stay in the domestic one? - an alternative question.
Then we make a version also on English language? - closed question.
What threatens the inability to ask questions?
If you do not ask open questions in the process of work: “Why?”, “What exactly?”, Then you run the risk of playing “Guessing” with the customer. You may not understand: what exactly he wants, you will do the work at your discretion, he will not accept it - you will redo it, and again it will turn out to be wrong. And it is not clear what exactly he does not like. Firstly, it is almost impossible to guess the needs, secondly, everyone is wasting time, and thirdly, the result is usually bad. In order not to play such a "Guessing Game", ask questions.
Fix it?
Before you questions - choose from them those that you consider open.
What are your main priorities?
Is speed important to you?
What do you think about the current situation?
How would you evaluate the success of our cooperation?
Will we meet on Monday or Thursday?
Maybe you need more information?
Do you prefer delivery in the morning or in the evening?
What are you risking if the situation does not turn in your favor?
When will you be ready to present previous work?
Who is your potential client?
Public speech is a battle between the speaker and the audience in the question-and-answer game. The speaker always wants to win. Answer all the questions and brilliantly get around the difficult situations that the listeners have prepared.
We talk about techniques that will teach you how to answer uncomfortable questions from listeners.
Vaccination against tricky questions
The force of action is equal to the force of reaction. Tell the child "no need to come" instead of "quickly come to me", the positive effect will be immediate. The situation is similar with the audience.
Begin the questioning phase by saying, “Now is the time for your questions. Ask the most tricky ones. Love them". You have turned everyone who wants to ask a difficult question into your ally. Such words discourage the desire to confront you.
What to do with a question you don't want to answer
There is a prejudice that the speaker is obliged to answer every question put to him. It is not true. The speaker may not give an answer for two reasons: he does not know the answer or does not want to answer.
Directly stating that you do not want to answer is not the right decision.
Instead of "Back off with your stupid questions," say something simple: "I'm not ready to answer right now, there is not enough information" or "Answering unverified facts is not in my rules." Then promise the author of the question to prepare and take his contacts to answer later. This act will indicate that the audience and your business are important to you.
What to do with a listener who disagrees with your opinion
If the listener doubts the authenticity of your words, listen to him in any case. Radislav Gandapas suggests using a student reception with such students. Start your answer with the phrase: “In order to understand your question, you need to tell about this…”. Then keep saying whatever you want.
Often such listeners act as "intellectual terrorists". Instead of your answer, they want attention and a piece of the speaker's glory. It is enough to draw the attention of the audience to their horizons and erudition so that they no longer ask uncomfortable questions.
When Arnold Schwarzenegger ran for governor of California, a journalist asked at a press conference: “Is it true that you starred in porn films when you were young?” In such a situation, any answer would be losing. Arnold found the perfect solution: “This is old news. Next question."
Arnie should learn the art of casual ignorance.
What to do when the audience asks nothing
The speaker says: “Now is the time for questions. Ask", and in response silence. After half a minute of silence, the lecturer pessimistically adds: “Well, if there are no people who want to…”. Doesn't sound like a great performance finale, does it?
There are several ways to help your audience.
Look around the audience. We noticed a slight movement of one of them - catch his eye and offer to start with a friendly smile. Most often, listeners are afraid to ask the first question.
Nudge the audience by saying, “So. First question…". Smile and be friendly.
Start yourself: "I am often asked ...". After that, the listeners will gather courage and start asking questions.
What to do if the question unbalances
The listener asked such a sharp question that you were completely unprepared for it.
There is no point in hiding your feelings. It will be comical. The audience will immediately feel that you are disingenuous. Instead, honestly admit that you are embarrassed. But not with the words: "I'm confused." Shift the emphasis to the questioner: “You made me embarrassed,” “And you know how to drive lecturers into a corner.” Do not be afraid of such a wording, you are simply stating a fact and getting closer to the audience.
In order to win the question and answer game, the speaker does not need to attack and defend. Better enjoy your peace of mind. Remember that shutter speed is better not to imitate, but to save.
Hello! In this article we will talk about the analysis of the target audience.
For a business to be successful, it is important not only to create a good product. It is much more important to make sure that those who want to buy it know about it. And this is where the problems begin. The first step to getting to know about you is to research your target audience. I will tell you what the target audience is, how to determine it, what mistakes you can make when analyzing the target audience, and what programs you can use to collect the target audience.
What is the target audience
A group of people who may be interested in a product or service.
Your target audience will be only those who can buy your product. Not those who visit the site, but those who are interested in the product.
The right target audience allows you to:
- Improve the product based on customer needs.
- Run the correct one.
- Create relevant content.
Determining the target audience is the first task when creating a “competent” product. First - "For whom?" and only then - "What?" Another sequence will lead to the fact that you will release a great product, but no one will need it.
Gathering the target audience can be compared to building the foundation of a house. Imagine you want to build good house, which will stand for more than a dozen years. And instead of digging the ground for the foundation, they immediately began to build. Even if you do everything right, according to the best standards, the house will still fall apart. Also with the target audience. If you refused to choose the target audience or defined it incorrectly, your product will not be bought. The money will not come in, in a year it will run out and you will be left on the sidelines.
Be with you at least three times desired product, without the correct selection of the audience, it will not be sold. Either no one will know about him, or not those who need him will find out.
How to determine the target audience: step by step instructions.
Now let's talk specifically about how to define your target audience. Before launching a product, you need to do preliminary work. It consists of 7 steps.
Step 1: Brainstorm.
At this stage, we put forward various hypotheses - who can be our client. in general - work with the nomination and confirmation or refutation of one's own assumptions. If you represent your product well, then you have some ideas about who you can sell it to.
Gather the entire team that is working on the product and let everyone come up with their own idea. All options are written down, discussed, and, if everyone agrees, they will be included in the list of hypotheses.
Step 2. Analysis of competitors.
An excellent source for audience analysis. See social media groups, sites, and advertising examples. It’s good if you understand who their audience is, what leverage you can use and how to take these people for yourself, making them your clients.
There are three things to be said beforehand:
- You don't know why these people came to competitors.
- You do not know how these people came to competitors.
- You don't know if these people are buying.
When mindlessly copying from competitors, it is easy to make a mistake. You don't know the whole inner kitchen. Let's say you entered the Vkontakte community of your direct competitor. You see that people read, like, repost some posts. And we decided that we should do the same.
People can read and be active, but not buy. Such an example was in 2018 with the marketing agency MadCats. The cats chose the wrong audience and created the wrong content. As a result, they almost went bankrupt. If people looked at their target audience and copied, they would also miss.
That is why rely on previous findings when analyzing competitors - how true are your hypotheses (where you turned out to be right, and where you are far from reality).
Step 3
See what queries your product is being searched for. For this, there is Wordstat Yandex and Google Analytic. Just type in your main keyword:
Then look to search with him:
How many people are looking for, in which regions:
Step 4. Conducting an interview.
Interviews and polls are the easiest way to talk to your target audience. You must understand:
- What is your product associated with?
- What triggers does it hit.
- Can it solve the customer's problem.
- How much the customer is willing to pay for it.
Step 5. With audience segmentation.
Now we need to divide the audience into smaller groups in order to form offers for them. The smaller the group, the more specific the offer will be. This will increase by several times. And the more accurately you select an offer for the portrait of the target audience, the higher the result will be.
To begin with, divide by basic criteria - gender, age, income level. Then you can start compiling a more complete portrait: interests, hobbies, content viewed on the Internet. All this is done in order to find those “pains” of the client that can be solved.
Segment with one goal in mind: get maximum amount information about the client. It doesn't matter if it's important to you or not.
Step 6. Creating a unique offer for each of the audience segments.
This is the penultimate step in working with the target audience. You found your target audience, understood it and divided it into groups. Now your task is to select for each of the segments. This is how your product differs from competitors and how it will solve the problem of each specific group.
Step 7. Creating a promotion strategy.
Once you understand who your target audience is, what leverage you have, what you can do to tell them about your product, you need to develop a promotion strategy. This is a set of activities that you will do in order to buy from you.
Something like: we have a target audience of gamers aged 16-24, a product for a narrow niche. They play one game, spend about 6-8 hours a day on it, improve their skills, cherish their dreams.
This is how they work with the audience before the launch of the product. And most of your actions will go along the chain: have an idea -> check -> did it work? -> next. After you launch the product, you will have more data to analyze. Your chain of actions will look like this:
Step 1. Collecting data from those who bought.
You already had clients, and you need to understand who these people are. Where they work, what they are passionate about, what worries them, and what problems they cover with your product. Everything, as in the previous case. The more you answer these questions, the more complete the picture becomes. More leverage appears.
Step 2 Weeding out segments that turned out to be erroneous.
Once you have collected the data, you need to weed out all the categories that do not suit you. In any case, there will be erroneous hypotheses about the audience.
You yourself must choose the criteria for the target audience, which will be the main ones. In the beginning, it is recommended to focus on shopping.
Step 3 Adjustment of the strategy taking into account new data.
You have collected data and weeded out those who will not buy from you. Now you need to adjust your strategy taking into account the remaining and added groups. Analyze the content that received the most response and target actions. See what exactly attracted people, you can even ask them directly. Then you add categories that would be of interest to the new target audience and remove those that were of interest to those who you put in by mistake.
Adjusting your content strategy is an almost endless process. You can always improve something, put forward another hypothesis and test it. All marketing is a never ending process of improving your own product and ways to communicate about it.
How to segment your target audience
Breaking down the audience into groups according to certain characteristics is a difficult task. And it's not even a matter of competently separating one from the other. It is necessary to pre-select a breakdown by features that will be relevant for a particular product. Most often segmented by:
- Gender and age. The most popular way, gives a small understanding of which audience buys the product better.
- Geolocation. From what city or even district a person. Relevant for real business, less decisive for promoting products on the Internet.
- financial position. This is not only a level but also the work itself. The salary breakdown gives an idea of how much buyers need to earn in order to afford a particular product, while the company and position gives a statistical sample of the niches in which you can sell.
- Interests and hobbies. What do people do in their free time. Well suited for customization, because hobbies directly speak about the interests of a person - whether he can be interested in a product or not.
- Features of behavior. This segmentation gives an understanding of what content a person consumes - in which groups they sit, what sites they visit, what they read about.
Segmentation of the target audience - drawing up a portrait of your potential buyer. The more features you cover, the more detailed the research will be. You will have more leverage on the target audience, because you perfectly understand who your customers are, where they come from, how much they earn and how much they are willing to pay, what they are interested in and what content they consume.
The Netology University of Internet Professions conducted a small study on its blog on Habré: “On average, segmentation increases the open rate by 14.69%, and the click rate by 60%.” 52% of marketers talk about the need to segment the database in , because individual offers return 18 times more than general offers.
The main segmentation method is surveys and mini-interviews. You must first come up with a few hypotheses about who your target audience might be. Select the focus groups to be interviewed. Prepare a list of questions and ask them to the client.
Try not to ask open-ended questions. Instead of “How much are you willing to pay for this product?”, it is better to ask “Are you willing to pay 1,000 rubles for this product?”. Such a sample allows you to understand whether your product, in the eyes of the client, is worth the money that you ask for it.
Here is an example of audience segmentation of debit card users and cash management services:
To determine how the target audience interacts with the content and on which of the segments it is most profitable to spin ads, you can calculate the match index.
Compliance index- rating of the target audience in relation to the rating of the base audience. That is, how often the target audience is interested in the product in comparison with other people. The formula is: target audience / audience * 100%. If the rating is less than 100%, then the target audience is not interested in the content. If more than 100%, then the target audience is actively reading the content.
Let's take an example. We want to run ads on Youtube. Our target audience is men aged 30+, married, fond of sports, with an income of 30 to 60 thousand rubles. What kind of advertising and what kind of product is still unimportant. We run ads on one channel. Of the 100,000 who looked, 1,000 clicked on the link. The total number of the audience that clicked is 1%. But if we launch the same video only for our target audience, then 2% of the target audience will click on it. So 2/1*100% = 200%.
And if we put forward a hypothesis that our target audience is women, and promote a male video for them, then the situation would be reversed. About 0.5% of a click is on an ad, and then our rating would be 50%, which means that the female target audience of the product is not interested in such content.
The main mistakes when choosing a target audience
Let's talk about the main mistakes when drawing up a portrait of the target audience. I chose typical moments that I did not consecrate above.
Mistake #1. The portrait of the target audience does not take into account the entire chain before the purchase.
Let's take the simplest example: children's toys. We know very well that their parents buy them. But for some reason, not everyone includes parents in the portrait of a potential target audience.
Or another example: a person chooses a laptop. If he is inexperienced, he will either start to google and look for information, which is unlikely (there are too many manuals to choose from), or he will ask for advice from a more experienced person. The second option is more likely. But for some reason, advertising and content are either aimed only at beginners who do not understand laptops, or at professionals who care about hardware characteristics and price / quality ratio. There is no combined content even on the pages of top stores. There are characteristics, but there is no conditional "Pulls any game at maximum speed." And it wouldn't hurt.
Mistake #2. Re-evaluate your target audience.
This is a common mistake for those who do business for a VIP audience - marketing agencies, business products, luxury housing, and so on. The bottom line is this:
Instead of taking a sober look at their target audience, marketers idealize it.
A banal example: we want to open a restaurant in St. Petersburg. We will try to stand out and make something for the middle class out of an ordinary cafe. Not the most low prices, good service, excellent food from the chef, interior from Europe, designer with a price tag of hundreds of thousands of rubles. And so on. Who will be our target audience?
If you thought that these are wealthy people with a salary of more than 100 thousand rubles, with expensive cars, who are fond of some kind of equestrian sport, read classical literature, are members of English clubs, and so on, then you are mistaken. In fact, the target audience is different: people from 30 years old, with an average income of 50+ thousand rubles in St. Petersburg, who have their own transport, personal or expensive rented housing, who are fond of sports and healthy food (non-vegetarians).
Mistake #3. Do not break the audience into segments.
If you are doing something popular, then you may have a wide target audience. And that's okay. The more accessible the product, the more buyers it will have. But if they are not segmented, your advertising will be ineffective.
You have an audience: tea lovers. There can be different groups in CA:
- students aged 18-25, children of wealthy parents who want to stand out and do not want to eat noodles;
- women 25+ who are passionate about healthy food;
- businessmen 30+ who switched to good products;
- office workers 25+ who want to give a gift to their boss.
And if you break the audience by color and grades of tea? And each segment of the audience will have its own advertising!
No need to think that audience segmentation is possible only with a product for the masses. Even highly specialized products like promotion courses social networks can be different: and businessmen who want to promote their product on their own; and who are mastering a new niche; and other people who would like to build a personal brand or collect as many likes as possible.
These mistakes are common among business start-ups who have picked up the basics of marketing from famous gurus and now think they know everything. Don't do the above and you'll be much more likely to sell your product.
Features of determining the target audience for a particular product
I will tell you about one project in which I took part in the launch. What we had: a product for gamers - the ability to draw maps and practice tactics for multiplayer games. Additional products: training videos, analysis of games of professional teams, distance learning in cyber schools.
The initial hypothesis was as follows: our target audience - and those who are addicted computer games. Mostly guys. Age - from 14 to 26 years.
To test this hypothesis, we analyzed gaming communities. Direct competitors (a Western service for creating tactics) and its clients were analyzed. Was launched advertising to the audience of the competitor's group and analytical services for games.
As it turned out in reality: schoolchildren aged 14 to 16 could not pay a monthly subscription. They just didn't see the point. There were less than 5% of clients in this age group. Most of the subscriptions were from guys aged 17-22 who either went to college or graduated from it. Another category of people appeared: men 28+ who wanted to learn how to play with their old friends. It was a surprise for everyone, but about 20% of the guys were of this age.
The audience was divided into 3 segments. The first: guys, 17-21 years old, who wanted to become . The poorest audience that bought only a subscription to the service. But there was a lot of it, about 30% of all users who visited our service. They actively participated in the actions. Advertising for them: “become a professional athlete” (videos on Youtube, on channels that teach the right game).
In a good way, this category could be excluded, because it brought in much less money than the other two. But the mission of the project was precisely to help such guys.
Second segment: an audience of 17-24 who wanted to learn how to play better. Everything here was much more interesting. These guys periodically bought paid consultations and analysis of tactics from professionals. They brought about 50% of the profit to the service.
For this group, a new payment system was additionally introduced - it was possible to pay for a subscription with things from the games. This increased profits by 20%.
Third segment(guys 28+) brought in much more money per person. Advertising channels were the same as in the previous case: Yotube entertainment format and public. In contact with - The best way communicating with such an audience.
To work with this group, it was hypothesized that gaming magazines might also be suitable. They really gave an effect, but they worked worse than the usual Youtube channels.
A good effect for attracting all three segments of the target audience was given by its own channel on Youtube, on which free content was periodically posted. These were small reviews, tips on games and a whole block of materials on how to become better without regard to what you play.
Conclusions: the initial hypothesis for this project did not justify itself. But thanks to the timely analysis and change of focus groups and the approach to the analysis of the target audience, the project reached a stable income. Now it is gradually developing, attracting new partners to work together on the promotion of eSports.
How to find target audience in social networks
Social networks provide an excellent opportunity to work with the target audience. Their creators have done almost all the work for us. There is a category of interests to see what a person thinks about himself. There are groups that more fully reflect what a person is interested in and what kind of content he wants. And there is also a wall to see what a person wants to keep for himself and his friends who follow him. And many other, at first glance, inconspicuous things, from which you can then see the portrait of the buyer and his interests.
In order to find your target audience in social networks, you need to:
- Manually analyze the target audience.
- Buy a parser and select it automatically.
The first option is more reliable. You will be able to analyze the page yourself, find triggers that you can cling to, and find the place where you will upload content. But this can be done when your product is niche, and you can track the potential niche manually.
Take for example one company that makes unique products. His name is Andrey Zakharyan. When he launches another course, he looks at which of his community (regular customers who have been with him from the very beginning) will suit this course. And if there are many such people, he does it. If it helps them, the product enters the market after some time.
But this is possible only in cases where you have an almost unique product, but not for widespread use. You can analyze 200-300 people manually. This will take several weeks (and familiarity with them). If you have a wide audience, you will have to use social media scrapers, for example, TargetHanter.
As you can see, parsers have a lot of tools for analyzing the target audience. You send a link to a community, a person, an interest block, a video, analyze polls, products, friends, and so on. Parsers help to make a wide selection for advertising. That is what they are for. You are unlikely to be able to manually analyze everyone who is subscribed to the public about the construction of Vkontakte. But programmatically, it's easy.
This is the main function of parsers. But such programs also allow you to understand what content comes to the target audience, and make it as interesting as possible. The algorithm is no different from the standard one. Brainstorming -> analysis -> segmentation -> advertising. Only instead of Wordstat you will have to use other programs.
Gathering the target audience is the foundation for promoting the product. Without a clearly defined target audience, you will not be able to understand who to sell your product or service to.
