Why Thinking About Your Target Audience Matters
Reposted from the Literary Marketing Newsletter.
Who’s buying your book? Who’s coming to your literary event? Who will donate to your literary non-profit? Who will take your writing class? Too often I hear “I don’t know” — but “everyone!” also isn’t the answer. Really thinking through who your ideal reader or target audience is is one of the biggest actions you can take to improve your marketing today.
What Is a Target Audience or Ideal Reader?
When you create a product or service — like a book, a writing class, or a literary non-profit — there’s a particular type of person who is most likely to be interested in or buy that product or service.
For example, if you’re offering a class on writing fiction, someone interested in writing fiction will ideally sign up — not someone who writes memoir or poetry, or someone who doesn’t write at all.
If you write YA fantasy, your ideal reader is someone who likes to read YA fantasy — not someone who reads adult non-fiction, nor would it be “everyone.”
Why a Target Audience Is Important to Think About
When you know who your ideal reader or target audience is, then you can speak to them more directly in your content and messaging. You can post on social media about topics your ideal reader would be interested in or you can address their pain points or challenges with a solution you offer.
Back to the example above. If you’re offering a class on writing fiction, and either don’t know who your target audience is or think it’s everyone, your messaging may be “Hey everyone, come take my class!” But if you hone in on your target audience, what their challenges are, and how your class can help, your messaging becomes much more direct: “Are you a fiction writer struggling to map out your plot? Come my take my class that can help you figure out that structure and get you to a completed first draft.”
Similarly, if you write YA fantasy, you can think about what content your ideal reader would be interested in — world-building, characters, fan art, book recs like yours — and create very specific content that would get them excited to read.
How To Create a Target Audience Persona
One approach that marketers take is not to just think about who their target audience is in a broad sense, but they create a persona of someone who would be that target audience.
Continuing in our example, don’t just think about a vague fiction writer who is struggling with plot. Create a character (we’re good at that!) with a name, age, profession, interests, where they live, where they find information, what online spaces they frequent, their challenges to writing, and more. I like to look up stock photos or avatar images on Canva and add them to my persona.
For example:
Penny, 32
Lives in Boston
Admin at an ed tech company
Loves to read literary and historical fiction
Likes to write short stories in her free time
Wants to start plotting out a novel but feels overwhelmed by it
Follows lots of Bookstagrammers and book content on social media
How To Use Your Persona To Create Better Content
Now, when you create content, speak directly to Penny. Create content on the platforms where she spends her time. Address her pain points about writing longer-form fiction and how you’ll solve them with your class. Create content that would appeal to a busy professional who writes on the side (like the benefit of saving her time). You can even think through whether an in-person class would be good for Penny or if something like an email newsletter course she can take at her own pace would be better.
In just a few short steps we’ve gone from not knowing who the target audience is or thinking it’s everyone, to having a focused plan for what to create and who to create it for.
