How Do You Get to Know a New Audience or Customer Segment?

Picture this. You’re getting ready to work with an audience or customer segment you know very little about. The challenge is exciting, but you’re not sure what this audience wants, expects, or needs. How do you get familiar with the audience so you can effectively market, sell to, and interact with them?

Many of our clients at Lokion find themselves in a similar situation when creating or expanding business lines. We recommend the following approach to help you build familiarity and understanding with your new audience:

Review what you know (and don't know) about the audience segment

Collect any analytics, market research, or customer feedback you have about them, then get the right stakeholders together to discuss your current understanding of the audience segment. What do you know about them? What are their goals, frustrations, and needs? As you flesh out your initial picture, think about what you don’t know or can’t answer. This will guide your future research.

Create one or more personas

Personas are a way to organize and visualize different audience segments. A persona is a “summary person "who represents a particular audience segment and what you know about them so far.

Creating personas helps us understand audience needs, experiences, behaviors, and goals. And the “summary person” aspect makes it easier to remember and empathize with our audiences. For instance, if you’re brainstorming new ways to connect with a particular segment of new customers, which audience summary is easier to remember and empathize with?:

• “Will this idea appeal to customers who have been with us for less than 1 year and are mostly between 30 and 40 years of age and are at a low to medium engagement level?”
• “Will this idea appeal to Newby Ned?” 

The latter is much easier to remember.

Conduct research to deepen your understanding of each persona: Gather analytics, conduct user tests, talk to focus groups -- whatever you need to do to learn more about your persona and what they need from your organization.

Revise each persona to reflect your research. Personas should evolve over time as you learn more about them.

Walk with each persona through a journey map

Your organization now has a clearer understanding of your new audience segment, as represented by a persona. Now it’s time to get a handle on how they interact with your organization, and a journey map can help.

In a journey mapping exercise, your team walks with one or more personas through every step and touchpoint as they interact with your organization to complete a task or accomplish a goal. This helps identify pain points and opportunities for improvement throughout the journey.

Build on what you know

With well-defined personas, extensive research, and a clear map of their journey with your organization, your team now has a clear picture of your new audience segment -- and a solid foundation for new insights and understanding.