Let’s assume that you are a Coloured Contact Lenses business operating in Australia and your sales this month are dwindling on the line. So you thought it would be a great idea to reach out to your target audience through social media. But, when you resort to finding your relevant audience, you found yourself in a pickle on where to begin, who to target and how to win their individualistic attention?
Today, I am going to cover a post that will help every other brand in the market to find their right target audience. It isn’t much of a hassle only if you choose to perform an effective research.
For the sake of understanding, I have chosen a popular social media platform INSTAGRAM.
So without further ado, let’s see what are some of the best ways to research & find the right audience.
Build Larger Marketing Personas
If you’re already running a business, then I am sure you must have carefully segmented who your buyer persona is. For those of you who aren’t aware of the term, buyer personas are idealistic individuals hypothetically created by organizations to whom they may sell their products/services.
Before you create a relevant target audience for your business, you need to ask the following questions:
- What is my product?
- Who are the people I want to sell to?
- What are these people looking for?
- What should I do to attract them?
Simple as they are, when you are able to answer these questions, then you can easily target the right audience. When X-MEN were quite the norm, if there was one thing that really attracted the audience attention massively, it was the amber colored eyes of mystique. Mesmereyez knew how to cash that.
Here take a look

By identifying what the audience really wanted, Mesmereyez nailed the campaign perfectly in August.
Take a Look at Your Demographics
Before you start your research on your desired audience, my advice to you is that you take a glance on your demographical insights on Instagram audience first. To do so, just visit Insights on the Instagram app and then click on Audience. Here, you will be able to observe three fundamental statistics.
- Gender
- Age
- Location

By using this information, you can easily custom tailor your Instagram ad campaigns to attract them.
This step will help you answer who are the people I want to sell my product?
Here I can quote another wonderful example. A friend of mine Jason was running a baby care product services and was aiming to attract newly wed couples and mothers of the first born babies. Although, this target market was quite attractive, yet his profit margins were not meeting exactly as he perceived. Actually, what Jason was doing wrong was that he was biasing his audience to particulars. He wasn’t looking at the big picture and instead aiming for a specific type; whereas, he should’ve aimed for all mothers. We often think that our products can be classified into a more custom niche. But, when you are selling a product for a macro-audience, micromanagement is not the best idea.
When you know your audience demographic, you can easily sell your service/product to them.
Study Your Competition
Now, this is something that everybody tells everybody. But truth be told, not everyone can study the way you can. And here lies all the difference…
It may sound unethical, but you gotta steal ideas from your competitors. However, just steal ideas, not the concept! Identify your competitors and visit their Instagram pages. Now check the following:
- What is your competition posting?
- What is the engagement ratio on their posts?
One of the remarkably known indian fashion clothing brands run by Nikhil Thampi thought it would be a great idea to post a pup on their Instagram account. And a somewhat indirect competitor of the brand, Anushka Moore thought it would be relatively interesting if they do share their own pups too for traction. Now, neither Anuskha nor Nikhil has the slightest intention to steal anyone’s work! It was just that an idea they both might’ve subconsciously shared which led them to nail perfect engagement.
Here check out both the cuties 🙂


Do you see how it all worked out for both of them?
By studying your competitors, you can get an idea of what exactly is working in the market.
And knowing what really clicked can help you create the best of impacts.
Sending DMs Aren’t a Bad Option
Not much of a fan of sending the word out through Instagram’s post?
Make the experience a whole lot better for your followers by sending them a DM. You can start by simply inquiring why they choose to follow you and what is it that inspires them to be a part of your brand? This especially works out in your favor when you notice that someone appreciates content.
So just send them a nice casual message asking them how they feel about your brand.
To give you an example, here’s a small sweet message that always work:
“Hey! We’ve noticed you’ve been following us for a while, thanks so much for the love! Quick question: what kind of content would you like to see us post? We’re trying to deliver the best XYZ to our followers, and your feedback would be much appreciated!”
Sounds awesome, doesn’t it?
Use the Right Hashtags, So They Can Find You
Do you know that using the right Instagram Hashtags can really upscale your posts and get a good amount of attention from the incoming visitors? When hashtags are appropriately used, they compel the audience to click on your Instagram post. Many individuals make use of hashtags passively.
They perform a thorough research, post them and hope for the best to happen.
Hashtags that are carefully researched are called target hashtags. Such hashtags are tags that are commonly searched by the audience on Instagram by the global audience. It is important that your target audience should keep the same interests as you, so when you use them in your posts, the chances of these posts to appear in front of your desired target audience becomes prominent.
Here’s a complete guide on how to perform a research on Hashtags.