How to Target the Best Podcast Audience Possible (Part 2)

Do you know your people?

Identifying your target audience is crucial for creating a successful business podcast.

But it’s equally important to understand your target audience.

Why?

Because knowing what they’re dealing with and what’s going on in their brains will help you create a show that truly resonates with them and adds value to their lives.

In other words, it’s how you create content they care about.

So in this article, I’m going to dive deeper into how to target your perfect podcast audience by helping you use the information about your ideal demographics (aka your WHO) to understand the underlying psychographics (aka their WHY).

(If you haven’t already, make sure to check out How to Target The Best Podcast Audience Possible (Part 1) to help you find the demographic that makes sense for your show. Then follow the steps outlined below.)

STEP 1: DEFINE YOUR AUDIENCE’S DESIRES

By now you know that successful business podcasts start with one core audience in mind.

It could be parents who are remarried and struggling to blend their families, entrepreneurs looking to start their own eCommerce stores, or anything in between.

Whatever niche you decide to focus on, it’s crucial to understand what it is that this group wants.

As I said before, knowing what drives them is what will allow you to be as helpful and valuable as possible.

And at the end of the day, we’re here to understand these folks so we can serve them best.

So take some time to consider your audience and outline their core desires.

What is the main goal they have or the major problem/challenge these people are looking to solve/overcome?

For example, with my own company, my target audience consists of coaches, consultants, and membership owners aiming to serve their audience through their expertise.

I know that they want the following things:

1. To grow a more engaged audience of prospects

2. To generate more sales and income

3. To build up their authority/celebrity in their industries

4. To build relationships with the major players in their industries

5. To scale how efficiently they can spread their message

You can also consider the aforementioned example of remarried parents who are trying to blend their families. They want:

1. To create a stable, loving home life for all their children

2. To build a positive relationship between the children and their step-parents/step-siblings

3. To ensure the children respect their step-parents’ authority

How about your audience?

Grab a pen and paper and list out 3 – 5 core desires that drive them. (Again, the more specific you can get, the better.)

If you’re having trouble defining these desires for your audience, don’t panic—it just means you need to do a little more research.

To start, I recommend trying to connect directly with people who are in your niche.

You can find them through professional or social groups, or they could even be existing clients of yours.

Either way, you can have a straightforward conversation with them and ask them about their motivations and goals.

Nothing beats hearing it directly from the source!

If that’s not an option for you, try looking at your potential competition instead.

Find the other products, services, and/or podcasts that already serve the same market and see what they offer.

Their wording on their sales pages, the titles of their books, the headlines of their most popular articles, etc. can give you a good look inside what makes their content resonate with that niche.

Remember, just because you aren’t sure what core desires drive your target audience doesn’t mean no one knows what drives them.

Doing a little research can get you pretty far when it comes to understanding what conversation is already happening in your industry and what you can do to be as helpful and valuable to your audience as possible.

STEP 2: FIGURE OUT YOUR AUDIENCE’S WHY

Now that you have your audience’s core desires jotted down, you can start to think about why they want these things.

What is it that makes these goals important to them? What is driving their want to solve the problem you can help them solve? Is there something they are afraid of or trying to avoid?

Your aim here is to really understand the emotions and values of your audience, the problems they are facing, and how you can help them to overcome those problems.

Understanding those things means you’ll not only be able to help your audience achieve their goals, but you’ll also be able to connect with them on a deeper level.

And discovering how best to serve your audience with your show will naturally lead to helping them down the road with your products and services.

So take a look at the list you made of your audience’s core desires and put some time into sorting out the motivations behind them.

Continuing with the example of my own company, the wants of my audience boil down to three main “whys”:

1. They want the certainty and peace of mind that they are going to be able to provide for themselves/their families.
   (Fear of/Desire to Avoid: Money concerns)

2. They want the freedom that comes with taking back control of their time and money.
   (Fear of/Desire to Avoid: An unhealthy work-life balance)

3. They want to share the message and the value of the gift they have with the world to contribute and feel significant.
   (Fear of/Desire to Avoid: Not making their mark on the world)

And going back to the previous example of parents who are trying to blend their families, their “whys” might look something like this:

1. They want to make the reality of having separated parents/step-families as easy as possible on their children
   (Fear of/Desire to Avoid: The negative impact of divorce)

2. They want their new spouse to accept and be accepted by their children
   (Fear of/Desire to Avoid: Resentful feelings between children and their step-parents)

3. They want to keep harmony in their households
   (Fear of/Desire to Avoid: Fighting and tension)

What are the reasons behind your audience wanting the things they want?

Write those down, too.

Again, if you’re having trouble figuring it out, don’t be afraid to ask them directly or take a look at the resources already available to them.

Then you can put your spin on how you can help and start creating content around guiding people toward what they want—while at the same time avoiding the traps, pitfalls, and scary bits of where people can get stuck.

NEXT STEPS

Taking the time to follow the steps outlined above will help you really zero in on your target audience and make sure that what you create for them is a valuable resource.

From there, you can work on creating a community of the specific group of people that you know you can help.

I’ll cover exactly how to do that in my upcoming blog, How to Target The Best Podcast Audience Possible (Part 3).

Keep an eye out for that post next month!

Do you have more tips or ideas for understanding your target audience? Leave them in the comments below!