A key factor in building your Personal Brand is deeply understanding your target audience. 

Many people invest time and energy into finding that perfect niche, creating just the right profile, posting at the best times, etc. But they miss out on giving what their audience wants. 

Even if you do everything right but don’t deliver on what the people want, your Personal Brand will not grow. 

But, not to worry. 

This article will tell you everything you need to know in order to cater to your audience without giving up on your brand.

Knowing Your Audience

Let me start off by giving a personal example. 

My secret to success so far, both in the online business world and in the influencer world is that I know my audience extremely well. 

So, for instance, I made a video on “How to become confident in speaking English in 30 days.” 

I got this idea when I noticed that many of my Instagram followers were posting comments like, “I am camera shy”, “How can I speak like you?”, or ”How do I become confident?” under my other videos.

I understood that there was a void that needed to be filled. 

That video alone bagged me more than half a million views on Instagram and at least 10k followers. 

The point remains: understanding your followers well really pays off.

Hacking into Their Psyche

I am going to tell you how to understand your audience, not at the surface level but at a deeper psychological level.

You are going to use the exercise below to identify the hopes, desires, and pain points of your audience so that you can target them better.

For the idea you have chosen for your Personal Brand, define the audience in as much detail as possible using the 4 criteria given below.

Criteria 1: Who Are They?

Do not just define them plainly as just men or women.

Go into incredible detail by defining them under various criteria like age, gender, profession, country, region, etc.

Let’s assume that you are operating in the fitness domain.

You can define your target audience as “20-30-year-old alpha females looking to develop fitness routine after work hours”

Notice how much detail I have gone into defining them.

In my understanding, these are the women who want to be athletic, and sporty, and this is because they want to come across as independent and strong leaders. 

When you define the audience in as much detail as this, your entire targeting changes.

From how you title your videos, to how you place a promotional ad for your content, everything changes.

For example, the title of your fitness video can be: How Staying Fit Will Enhance Your Leadership Confidence.

Now if that is the title of the video, it will be very specific and all these alpha females would want to watch your video.

So, once you have mastered the art of understanding your followers, your content will automatically attract them.

Criteria 2: What Are Their Pains & Fears?

Continuing with the above example, alpha females’ pain points could be that they are unable to manage time between college & fitness, or office & fitness. 

They want to juggle a lot of things at work, but at the same time, they have the fear of becoming out of shape and not being able to fit in the chic dress they might have bought recently. 

In this case, you can position your videos with details like “How To Do Home Workouts To Have A Summer Body With My 30-day Fitness Routine”.

Criteria 3: What Are Their Hopes & Dreams?

Dreams could be to run a marathon, hike around the world, or just look sexy at a friend’s party.

For example, for one of my brands, Ultimate Academy, the dream of my target audience is to be able to settle in Australia or Canada and live a rich life. 

In that brand, I have made smart online prep courses for IELTS and PTE – the two English tests that people need to take before applying for Australian or Canadian PR or student admissions.

On the sales page or introductory material of those courses, I do not talk about what is the content that I am going to cover in those courses. Instead, I talk about how these courses will help them achieve their dream of living abroad.

That positioning is all that matters when developing online brands. 

And to position your content like this, you need to have an understanding of the hopes and dreams of your followers.

Criteria 4: What Are The Obstacles In Their Path?

If we take the example of fitness space again, an obstacle a lot of people face is that they are on a shoestring budget and cannot afford a gym membership and protein supplements. 

Using this insight, you can create and position your content to cover topics like: How To Build Muscle Using Cheap & Natural Protein Sources. 

What You Have to Do

Your task is to spend 1-2 days filling in as many details about your audience under each of the 4 criteria above.

One way you can gain insights into these criteria is by asking your existing friends and followers on Facebook and Instagram. 

Just put up a story asking people to DM you if they are interested in talking about whatever your chosen field for your Personal Brand is.

Alternatively, you can also message your friends who you think fit in the same category as your target audience. 

The insights you will gain from your friends will apply to thousands and tens of thousands of other people on the internet.

By doing this short, yet extremely important exercise, you will never have to worry about your content reaching the right people. 

Your content will speak for itself if you’ve put so much thought into creating it. 

Now that you know how to attract your audience, the next thing you need to know is how to keep your content evergreen. 

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Over on my blog, Digital Nomad Academy, you can find several other articles and masterclasses that will teach you different aspects of building your own laptop lifestyle.

Also, for behind-the-scenes mischief, you can follow me on Instagram and join 30K+ others like you who are in different phases of building their location independent lifestyles.

Hope to see you around globe-trotting one day 🙂