How analytics can help me understand my target audience
1. Why do I need to use analytics data to understand my audience?
You might already have a marketing segmentation for your audience that has been produced using your own survey data and historic purchase data or you might be trying to develop a new audience based on a segment that you’ve identified from a shared model such as Audience Finder. But is your digital audience characteristically different to this?
The great thing about digital channels is that they can provide you with useful real-time data about your audience that can help you to refine your marketing activity.
This resource will look at the ways in which you can use data and analytics to help you understand who your audience is so you can market to them more effectively. The more you know about your target audience, the more effective your marketing will be.
We will look at:
- How data and analytics can really help you to understand your audience in terms of who they are, where they are, what motivates them and what their spending patterns are. Understanding your audience means that instead of basing your activity on assumptions – you can make informed decisions based on your data.
- How you can target them more effectively with the communications and content that are most relevant to them.
- Which analytics metrics in your digital channels you can use to help you understand your audience.
2. Website analytics
Let’s start with the analytics data you can get from your website. Your website is like the shop window for your organisation – you may be using the majority of your communication channels to drive an audience there, so it’s important to understand who the audience is and how they are using it. Google Analytics is the best tool to use for accessing data on this. It’s free and easy to use, you just need to set up an account and then your developers will be able to add the code to your website.
There are a lot of metrics in Google Analytics to help you understand your audience so let’s look at the key ones that can help give you an insight:
Audience demographics
You need to bear in mind when looking at the audience demographics stats for your website that they’re not completely accurate.
Google is making some assumptions about who is visiting your website based on their online behaviour, but in some cases there will be one computer used by multiple people in the same household so you are really seeing an approximation from the data here.
In the ‘Audience’ menu if you go to the ‘Overview’, you can see an overview of age and gender and knowing this information can really help you to tailor your content and communications. Do the demographics in your analytics reported here reflect the target audience you want to reach? If not you can use your current audience breakdown analytics as a benchmark. When you are delivering audience development activity you can then measure its effectiveness against changes in the breakdown.
What pages are most popular with your audience and why
In the ‘Behaviour’ section, you will find stats about which pages on your website are the most popular. Looking at your most popular pages report can help you to understand the motivations of your audience. For example, if you’re a visitor attraction or venue and you find that your ‘buggy park’ or ‘baby change’ pages are among the highest viewed pages, then you know it’s likely you’ve got a high proportion of parents with young children visiting. You can structure your website and communications to foreground this practical information for them and make their online experience better.
Looking at your top ‘Entry’ pages stats can also help you understand your audience. This stat shows the proportion of your audience that enters your website through each page. Don’t assume people start their journeys at your homepage. Make sure you signpost users to the next relevant pages properly from your top ‘Entrance’ pages.
What devices your audience are using
It’s really helpful to understand what devices people are using to access your website. You can see this data in the ‘Audiences’ menu on the left side of your Google Analytics. Scroll down the ‘Mobile’ menu – look at the ‘Overview’.
If you find most of your visitors are accessing your website via mobile and tablet devices, then this has implications for how you structure content. You need to think about the design of your website being ‘mobile first’ which means keeping navigation succinct and keeping word counts at volumes that are easily accessible on small screens. People accessing content via mobile devices may also be multi-tasking; sitting on a bus or eating their lunch for example so attention spans may be low and they may be more easily distracted. How will you ensure that your key messages still land with them?
Your analytics can also tell you what brands of device people are using – so do you have a high proportion of visitors using Apple devices? Making sure you offer ApplePay for buying tickets or products could really help your conversion rates as you’ll be making it quick and easy for people to purchase.
What external channels your audience is coming from
In Google Analytics your ‘Acquisition’ stats tell you which websites and channels drove traffic to your website – this information can help you build up a picture of your audience and what external places influence their behaviour.
If an external channel or website sends you high volumes of traffic or visits driven from a particular source are more likely to purchase tickets or products on your website, then this is a valuable insight. Once you have this information you can build your relationship with that external source to drive more traffic. Do you find for example that content by local community blogs drives more traffic than mainstream news outlets? Then your audience is telling you they value this kind of endorsement more.
Audience location
Knowing the location of your audience can really help you to target them better both on and offline. In Google Analytics you can get high level data on where your audience is. You can see a breakdown by country or by city. You can then use this information to shape the content on your website and your communications.
If you discover that you have a high proportion of non-UK audiences for example why is this? If you are a visitor attraction and perhaps you are seeing an increase in traffic from China should you be thinking about translating some of your visit information pages?
Conversion analytics
Looking at your eCommerce stats in Google Analytics can help you understand the purchase behaviour and patterns of your audience. You will be able to see your ticket or product sales and to reorder them by volume of sales or by sales revenue, so you can see which are the most and least popular purchases with your audience. You can use this data to change your marketing strategy in real-time if you need to. For example, you might want to reduce the amount of promotional activity for an event that is selling well and increase it for any events that are less popular with your audience.
Your eCommerce stats also give you aggregate metrics such as the average basket value of transactions on your website. So over time you begin to see the levels at which your audience spend which can help you make decisions setting price points for tickets and products in the future.
3. Social media analytics
You will also find useful audience insights in your social media channel analytics, the audience breakdown can really vary by platform so make sure you have an understanding of how each platform audience differs and why.
Facebook audience insights
On Facebook you can access Insights in the Creator Studio. To find out about your audience breakdown, go to ‘Audience’ in the left side menu. This information will help you understand who you are talking to so you can work out what their motivations are and serve them the most relevant content.
Like Google Analytics, Facebook shows you the gender split and age range of your audience so that you can then tailor your content to appeal to them.
You can also see ‘Location’ data in the ‘Audience’ menu. If you are a venue or attraction and your audience is hyper-local, then you might want to think about how you prompt them to share content on their channel when they are visiting you, for example.
You can also see data on when your audience is most active, broken down by day of the week and time of day. This information can really help to shape your content planning. If you post at the most popular days and times you are likely to see the best reach and engagement.
Instagram audience insights
You also have access to some useful audience stats on Instagram. To access stats on this platform, use the app, ensure you have a Creator or Business Account (rather than a Personal Account) in order to see your Insights. You can set or your or change account type in the Settings menu
You’ll be able to see a breakdown of who your audience are by location, age and gender. So is your Instagram audience different to your visit audience? Are they younger or older than you had assumed? What does this mean for the way you shape your content on this channel?
4. YouTube audience insights
Now let’s look at video content, this can be quite a labour intensive content format to produce, so you want to be clear that what you make will appeal to your audience. Analytics for this channel are in YouTube Studio and you can access them from the Settings menu at the top right of your page.
You can see aggregate stats on audience demographics such as age, gender and what viewing countries as well as the average watch time for videos on your channel. This will help you to understand what appetite your audience has for the types of video content you currently produce. If the average watch time for a video on your channel is 30 seconds for example, are you ensuring that all the key messages you want the audience to see come before this point in your edits?
If you want to dig deeper, you can also see viewing retention stats on individual videos. So for example, if you are seeing that the videos you made two years ago are still your top performers in terms of views – why is this? What is it about them that still resonates with your audience? Once you understand what is behind this audience motivation, you can plan more video content that can tap into this.
You might also find the most popular types of video content and the viewing time varies by platform, so compare your video view stats on YouTube to those on Facebook and see how the audience behaviour differs. Once you know this you can tailor your video content by channel for the audience you have there.
5. Recap
- Use Google Analytics to get insights on who your website audience are, where they are, and what kind of content motivates them
- Use stats insights from your most popular pages to foreground the information that is most important to your audience
- Look at your eCommerce spending patterns to help you set price points and flex your marketing activity in real-time
- Be aware of the differences in the audience breakdown across each of your social media channels and tailor channel-specific content
- Examine your viewing retention stats on YouTube and make sure your viewing audience is watching long enough to see the key messages in your content
Except where noted and excluding company and organisation logos this work is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) Licence
Please attribute as: "How analytics can help me understand my target audience (2022) by Trish Thomas supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, licensed under CC BY 4.0
