Figure Out Your Target Audience

When you are ready to publish your book you will need to consider who will be interested in reading your book. By taking the time to identify your audience, you will be able to market with a purpose. But how do you identify your target audience? It’s something that takes some work, but I’m here to help in figuring out your target audience!

In part one of the Getting to Know Your Audience series on Bound to Writing, I will provide tips to help you figure out who to target. As a self-published author, I’ve been in this position. The task of finding your audience is something that will take time. This time is worth it because you will spend your marketing efforts targeting the people most interested in your book.

So what are the ways to figure out your target audience? Let’s delve deeper into audiences!

What is a Target Audience?

A target audience is an audience that would benefit the most from reading your book. For example, a book with themes on growing up would be geared towards children and teens. That means your marketing efforts should be focused on children and teens because they are your target market.

Why do I need a Target Audience?

To ensure you receive maximum reward for your marketing efforts it’s important to have identified your target audience. Instead of shouting into the void you will have a purposeful plan on reaching the people that are more likely to be interested in your book.

Without knowing your audience, you can be spending unnecessary time and money trying to talk to people that aren’t your audience.

Steps to Figuring Out Your Potential Target Audience:

What is your genre?

Determine the genre of your book by looking at the overall picture of your book. Do two people fall in love? Then you may have a romance on your hands. Did someone die and the characters have to solve the crime? Then you probably have a mystery or crime book.

Don’t worry if you have multiple genres. There are many books do! This can widen your target market options for now, but you can narrow them down later once you answer the rest of the questions below.

Need help figuring out your genre? Use this article: The Different Genres of Books.

What are the main themes of your book?

Take a look at your book. Is there an underlying theme of friendship? Or do you have a murder mystery? By knowing the theme of your book, you will know that you want to target someone that enjoys the themes of your book.

If your book has multiple themes, pick the ones that are the most prominent in your book. Focusing on too many themes can narrow your target market too much.

Need help figuring out your themes? Check out this list of Common Themes for help. This list has a great overall list of themes. If you know the genre of your book, you can always do a Google search on “genre” themes.

What age is your main character?

The age of your main character can play a big part in who is your target audience. A younger main character can mean that your target audience is younger.

However, this isn’t always the case. It depends not only on the character’s age, but also the themes of your book. For example, a 10 year old main character goes through major emotional trauma. This may not be fit for an audience of 10 year olds, so your target audience would not be based on the main character’s age.

Who is your ideal reader?

All of the above questions lead to this question right here. Who is your ideal reader? This is the person you believe should be reading your book. It’s the person that you image will love your book from beginning to end.

Sketch this person out. What is their age? Do they have glasses? Is their favorite spot to read on the beach? What is their occupation? Take the time to think about who you believe is the person that will relate to your book. It doesn’t have to be a real person. Just an imaginary person that envelops all of the traits and characteristics that you believe will like your book.

Ultimately, your target audience is anyone that you want to read your book. If you feel that 13 year olds will devour your adult horror book than target them. However, you may not receive the traction that you want.

You also may define your target audience today and realize down the road that you were wrong. It will be a minor setback but change your marketing tactics as soon as you can so you can start targeting the right group of people.

Finding your target market is essential in getting your book to be recognized.

Stay tuned for next week as I discuss where you can find your target market!