A Comprehensive Guide to Target Your Instagram Audience

Having in-depth knowledge of your Instagram target audience is an essential part of a successful Instagram marketing strategy .

If you don’t know what interests and motivates your followers, you will have a hard time producing the right content to engage them as a specific group. And if you don’t know when they’re active, you won’t be very successful at reaching them at the right time. This can lead you to lose your potential customers.

That’s why it’s important to learn how to find your target audience on Instagram and discover the best Instagram marketing campaign tactics to reach them. In this article, I have shared with you information about marketing efforts that will help you do exactly that. Happy reading!

Awareness

Before you start finding your target audience, the first step is to recognize and define yourself. Being able to define yourself will help you get to know your target audience.

First you should ask yourself these four questions:

1. What is my product?
2. What audience do I want to attract? (Or for whom is my product designed?)
3. What is my audience looking for?
4. And how do I attract that audience?

When you can answer these questions, you will have a roadmap and you will be able to get closer to finding your target audience.

Demographic Information

Demographic information about your Instagram social media audience can be very helpful when you begin your research. When you click on the “Followers” option from the “Statistics” section of the Instagram application, you can see the three most basic statistics about your followers here: their gender, age and location.

This is especially important for running Instagram ads in the future because by using this data you can get your content in front of your Instagram audience.

Here you can get useful information about people who are already following you. For example, if your ideal audience is middle-aged men, but Instagram tells you that most of your followers are millennial women, then you’re clearly doing something wrong with your sharing strategy and probably need to rethink it. If your account and demographics are compatible, you can continue on this path.

Followers Analysis

Demographic statistics cannot give you all the information about your audience because they are demographic, not qualitative. It is important to find your followers’ personal preferences, interests, habits, and life philosophies in order to create your content strategy correctly.

You can start analyzing your followers here;

Click on people who like or comment on your latest posts. Check out what they post on their account, what hashtags they use, and what language they prefer. For example, if your followers use a lot of emojis, you can attract their attention by including them in your content.

After that, you can see what your followers are following. By looking at this, you can get an idea of ​​what they are looking for. 

They may be following your competitors or similar accounts you don’t know about. Or they may have interests different from your field. So how can you use it?

For example, your followers follow many accounts that quote as well as they follow you. Then you can try to attract attention by sharing inspiring quotes from time to time.

Reviewing Competitors

You have examined your own followers, it is your competitors’ turn. You can learn a lot by looking at your competitors’ Instagram audience. 

See what kind of followers they have and what kind of posts they are posting. Which content received the most engagement? If you create your content based on this, you can capture your target audience.

Another thing you can do is follow your competitors’ followers and engage with their accounts. Overwhelm your competitors’ posts with likes and comments on a few. You’d be surprised at how many people will follow you!

In addition, you can directly check who likes and comments on your competitors’ pages, and you can like and comment back! If you’re brave enough, you can even do it directly from your opponent’s page. 😇 Don’t be shy and introduce yourself too much, interacting will make you look likable!

Competitor analysis is especially useful if you’re starting from scratch and don’t have any followers yet. You can gain a competitive advantage!

Inspiration from Followers

The power of asking is an art form that is often underappreciated in marketing. It’s a pity that it’s not known because if you never ask, you never know what your audience is interested in. 

Ask them what type of content they would like to see more of in the texts you write under your social media posts or with story polls. What kind of content? What kind of format? Stories or Reels?

Especially with story surveys, you can find the topic that interests your followers and turn it into content. To do this in stories, ask what topics they are interested in. 

Ask which format they find more interesting. Short videos? Should it slide? You can also ask why they followed your account in the first place.

Another thing you can do in addition is to DM your followers. There’s nothing wrong with DMing a new follower to ask why they decided to follow you and what they can expect to see on your account. Especially if you notice that someone regularly likes your content or, even better, comments on your content all the time, just drop a small marketing message on their DM!

Here is a simple example you can use:

“Hey! We noticed that you have been following us for a while, thank you very much for your interest! Quick question: What kind of content would you like to see us post? We strive to bring the best XYZ to our followers and your feedback is invaluable!”

If you get a return, make sure to feed them into your content, and don’t be afraid to ask! You will definitely see the benefits.

Correct Use of Hashtags

Using the right hashtags on Instagram can dramatically increase your reach on the platform. What hashtags do is get you in front of the right audience. However, many people passively use popular hashtags, meaning: they research them, post them, and hope for the best.

The thing is, the target hashtag is the type of hashtag your audience will use on Instagram, so it only makes sense to be proactive. Your audience should have the same interests as you, so if you use and follow the same hashtags, it’s a clear indication that you’re a good match!

First, research well-targeted trending hashtags. Next, go to the user’s profile and like their other photos. Leave a meaningful comment or two and if you think this user fits your target audience perfectly, you can follow them too. There is no harm in following other people as a brand, especially at the beginning of your Instagram journey.

Repeat Success

And we have come to the last step. Seeing what works and repeating success! If you’ve been posting for a while, you should start tracking and replicating the engagement rates of your posts to understand what type of content your target audience finds most interesting.

Your ideal Instagram audience is people who are genuinely interested and eager to engage with your content, and the goal is to find a lookalike audience by posting the types of posts that have proven successful before.

Conclusion

Researching your ideal audience on Instagram is not a one-time thing. There’s no way to solve this once, go straight to content creation and promotion, and never have to worry about it again.

Instagram audience research is a work in progress. The more time you spend, the more you learn about your target audience and, ultimately, the more refined and targeted your content strategy becomes.

I hope this article was useful for you. If you are still having difficulties in analyzing your target audience, you can contact DigiPeak team for more guidance on social media management.