How to Find Your Target Audience on Instagram

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

In order to more effectively use Instagram to build your business, you must learn how to find people on Instagram who are in your target audience. In this post, we tell you how to do that.

Everyone Is Busy, Busy, Busy

Can you see it? Can you feel it? Everyone out there is busy figuring out how to increase their Instagram following, looking to improve engagement, and get their business off the ground. You too, right?

We don’t need to tell you how effective Instagram is for promoting and growing your brand. Individuals and companies alike know this well. What’s more, the possibilities are endless. You can show the human face of your company, share its ideals, and tell its stories. All of this brings your company closer to the public.

But here’s the problem. People confuse the medium with the purpose.

This is not a race to see who can attract the most Instagram followers. Instead, it’s a tough fight to get noticed and sell.

So first, you will have to understand who your ideal customers are. These are the people in your target audience. They are people who would love to meet you, follow you, and buy your products or services.

Once you understand who they are, you will be better equipped to find them. So what are you waiting for? Come on. Let’s see how.

Who Are the People in Your Target Audience?

The beating heart of any marketing strategy is building relationships with the right people. The right people are the people in your target audience. And each one of them is your ideal customer.

Therefore, searching for these people—your target audience—should be one of your priorities when developing a strategy on Instagram.

So who are these people on Instagram who are in your target audience?

It all seems obvious when you get right down to it. They are your ideal customers. But do you know who your ideal customers are? Do you really know? Or do you just think you know?

To get the clearest idea about these people, it can be helpful to create fictitious representations of your potential customers. These are called buyer personas.

Use these questions to search for answers that shape your ideal customers:

Who are they?
What are they doing?
What goals do they aspire to, and how can you help them achieve those goals?
Where are they?
What are they passionate about?
What types of content do they want and with which they interact?
Which hashtags do they use and follow?

We know it sounds crazy, but creating a reference model will help. With a model of someone in your target audience, you can better understand your ideal customers in general.

You’ll be better able to get inside their heads and know what they think and do. Moreover, you’ll better understand their approach to evaluating their options to solve a problem, or while looking for something that satisfies their passions.

Put Yourself in the Shoes of the People in Your Target Audience

Learn all about who your ideal customer might be and gather information about them. This aspect is fundamental. When you know what your buyers want, your approach will be more likely to create a bond of trust that your competitors can hardly unhinge.

What may now seem like a waste of time will be your compass in your journey in search of your target audience among your Instagram followers. For example, you will probably discover that your audience is much more diverse than you had thought. This will lead you to develop diversified strategies that will enrich your marketing plan.

Think about it.

To create engaging content, you need to know what your ideal customer likes.
Then you can write engaging captions for Instagram because you’ll know what gets their attention.
You’ll be better able to use the right hashtags, because you will know which hashtags they follow.
You will also post at the right times, since you’ll know when your target audience is on Instagram.

What’s more, you will be able to create a solid base to promote your content and grow a following of really interested people who want to interact with you. The sooner you define your target audience, the sooner you can start to structure strategies that attract them.

How to Find and Reach Your Target Audience Among Your Instagram Followers

It’s easy to say, but difficult to do: Where do you find, and how do you reach your target audience on Instagram?

Put away your pencil and compass; you won’t have to reinvent the wheel. Often the answer you seek is so close that you can’t see it. If you have defined the profiles of your ideal customers and segmented them into possible target audiences, now is the time to go and look for these people on Instagram.

Start with trending topics in your industry. Find out who pulls strings in conversations on the topics targeted toward your business. The easiest way to reach potentially relevant conversations and, consequently, the most interesting profiles for you, is to take advantage of hashtags. Additionally, you can choose to buy Instagram followers in 2020.

Find Members of Your Target Audience Among Your Competitors’ Followers

You could even find members of your target audience on Instagram your competitors’ followers. Therefore, finding out who your competitors are and what they are doing is a strategic move to increase your own followers on Instagram:

Who are your competitors?
What are they talking about?
What hashtags do they use?
Do their followers interact? If so, what do they say? Who are they?

So scroll through the list of followers who are engaged with your competitors and look for active people who could match the profile of the potential customer you have built. Look at the profiles, participate in the conversations with a few comments, and leave some likes to their contents.

Finding members of your target audience on Instagram is painstaking work that will take some time. However, it’s important work. Just make sure you create relationships with followers who are “real,” active, and potentially interested in your products and services.

Analyze Your Content: What Do Your Instagram Followers Like?

You need to monitor often in order to understand if the dynamics change or if new needs arise. Nobody ever said it was going to be easy to find your target audience on Instagram. However, if you want to be successful on Instagram, some apps and bots can help you and facilitate your work. In whatever way you approach it, you must be active and consistent.

Also, analyze the content you have already published with an eye toward discovering what works best. Which contents are more appreciated and which generate the most interactions?

Follow Influencers and Evaluate Their Collaborations

Influencers are the pathway to your target audience on Instagram. Not every one of them, of course. You will have to find those profiles capable of creating a greater effect in your sector.

To this end, analyze their followers and apply the strategies you have put in place with your competitors. However, if you want to make a leap forward, start collaborating with the influencer. They can allow you to reach the followers you are missing today.

To get started with approaching an influencer:

Define Your Goals

Do you want to collaborate with an influencer to increase awareness of your brand? Or do you want to increase sales? Whatever your goal, clarify it and use your insights about it to create synergy with the Influencer.

Define Metrics to Evaluate Collaborations

How will you keep track of your performance to understand if you are reaching your goal of finding your target audience on Instagram? You must define your metrics to measure the performance of your campaigns. For example, you’ll need to keep track of impressions, reach, interactions, and so on.

Conclusion

Follow the suggestions here to make the best use of Instagram for building your business. If you take the time and expend the effort, you will be sure to find members of your target audience on Instagram.