Part of the guide: Blog Traffic
In the last post Introduction To Deep Target Audience Analysis, I covered many things.
I explained precisely why you need to understand your audience. In this post I’m taking a more “how-to” approach.
More specifically, you need to understand the demographics of your target audience as well as the psychology behind their decisions.
Demographics are the key to any successful ad campaign.
Obviously, knowing the demographics of your audience will allow you to effectively target them in a paid ad campaign.
So What The Heck Are Demographics?
Essentially, demographics are the fundamental characteristics of an audience: age, income, education, occupation, country, and status.
Then you have the more psychological/personal demographics, such as likes, interests, hobbies, and the sites they visit.
Before You Use The Tools…
The first step is to find where your audience hangs out. You can only analyze existing sites. So, you must find the sites that your target audience is using before you analyze.
Start by looking for sites where your target audience spends money. It’s not a bad idea to spy on competitors at this point. An example niche could be weight loss for new mothers.
After women give birth, they have excess weight to shed. Weight loss for new mothers is super targeted. So, you could start with sites that offer new parenting advice or more specifically, sites for new moms.
Once you have a specific topic, Google it. The idea is to find the most popular site where new moms or moms in late pregnancy hang out. If your niche is big enough, you could simply search for sites in your exact niche, like “weight loss for new moms.”
For instance, searching “how to lose weight after pregnancy” yields over 3000 monthly searches. Two great resources are:
Both sites are great candidates for Deep Target Audience Analysis.
Demographic Tools:
The two core tools for analyzing your audience are:
- Google DoubleClick Ad Planner (works, checked as of 2024)
- Quantcast (works, checked as of 2024)
Google Ad Planner is by far my favorite tool. After entering BabyCenter.com into Ad Planner, it gave me these results:
It clearly shows that ages 25-34 are the most active on the site. Knowing this, you can craft your ads to target that age group and increase conversions.
It also provides demographic info like income level, gender, and education. Knowing the sites your audience visits has countless benefits.
You were never meant to do this alone
Reading this changes nothing. Doing it with people who show up changes everything. That is the whole difference between the people who transform and the people who keep starting over.
Start free →Analysis Tool 2: Forums
Forums are excellent for finding emotional triggers. For example, I found a weight loss and fitness post-pregnancy forum on Mothering.com (works, checked as of 2024).
Analysis Tool 3: Blogs
Blogs are another fantastic analysis tool. Look for blogs that have an active following in your niche. The comments often reveal emotional triggers you can use in your ad copy or sales pages.
Analysis Tool 4: Twitter
Twitter is a powerful tool for real-time audience insights. You can search keywords like “weight loss” or “pregnancy” and monitor what your audience is discussing live.
In Prosperity,
David Wood
P.S. Leave me your thoughts, comments, and questions below.
Comments
Amelia Rodriguez
I really enjoyed reading this post! The breakdown of demographic analysis is so clear and easy to understand. Thank you for providing these valuable insights. Keep up the amazing work, David!
Michael P.
I’m not entirely convinced about the impact of demographics alone. Do you have any case studies or additional evidence to back up the claims made here? Would love to see more data to support this.
Sophie L.
This is a fantastic post! I was curious about the tools you mentioned for analyzing audience demographics. Are there any alternatives to Google Ad Planner that you recommend for someone just starting out?
Tommy Lee
While I appreciate the information, I think there could have been more detailed examples. The mention of weight loss for new mothers is helpful, but more niche examples would have enhanced the post.
Hannah Martinez
This post reminded me of our conversation at the last conference. It’s great to see you expanding on the topic. How have you been? Let’s catch up soon!
George Walker
I went through a similar issue when I was trying to market to a very specific audience. Your advice on researching where the audience spends their time really resonates with me. Thanks for sharing!
Alina K.
If you’re looking for alternatives to Google Ad Planner, I highly recommend checking out tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs. Both provide great insights and might be useful depending on your audience’s needs.
Sarah Connor
I never really thought about audience analysis in this way before. Your post opened my eyes to how critical it is for ad campaigns. I’ll definitely be using these tips in my next marketing strategy.
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The line that stops me is ‘the comments often reveal emotional triggers you can use in your ad copy.’ Read plainly, that means finding a new mother’s most vulnerable postpartum moment on a forum and repurposing it to sell her something. The demographic tools are just spreadsheets. That sentence is the actual method, and it’s worth asking what kind of person goes looking for triggers instead of just needs.
Four separate tools, forums to read, blogs to read, Twitter to monitor live. That’s not an afternoon, that’s an ongoing job on top of the actual business. Realistically I get through Ad Planner and maybe one forum before the kids are up again.
The strongest case against this post’s whole premise, not necessarily mine: demographics are the weakest predictor here, not the key. Two women can be the same age, income and education and want completely different things from a weight-loss ad depending on why they’re actually there. The post’s own forum and blog steps are doing the real work, hunting for psychology. The demographic tools at the top might just be the part that’s easiest to screenshot.
Fine. ‘Google Ad Planner, works, checked as of 2024.’ Google killed that tool the better part of a decade ago. Whoever added that reassurance either never actually checked it, or checked something else and called it the same name. Either way it undercuts the confidence of everything else in the post that I can’t verify myself.
The example sites, BabyCenter and FitPregnancy, are both very America-focused. In Turkey the audience gathers in different places, mostly Instagram groups and local forums, not necessarily the international sites. Is the actual method — finding where an audience spends money, then running it through a demographic tool — still meant to transfer, even when the platforms are completely different?
Elif, I think what’s being missed here is that the two named sites are just illustrations, not the method itself. The actual instruction is: find where your specific audience already spends time and money, then run that property through a demographic tool, whatever tool is available where you are. If Instagram groups and local forums are where new mothers in Turkey gather, those become your ‘BabyCenter’ for this exercise. The steps translate even when the specific platforms don’t. Where I’d agree the post falls short is that it names exactly two US tools and never once addresses what someone should reach for when neither of those covers their market.
Ade, let me say that in fewer words: find where people already hang about, then look them up on a tool. That’s the whole ‘deep’ analysis, dressed up.
Ade’s translation point is really just: input = ‘where audience gathers,’ output = ‘demographic profile,’ tool = variable. Correct framing. The post just hardcodes the tool instead of leaving it as a parameter.
Elif’s question about translation across markets is one I have wondered about myself, from Johannesburg. Rebuilding at sixty-one, I find these frameworks assume a level of comfort with scrolling through forums and social platforms that does not come naturally to me. The underlying idea, that you should go and observe where people already are before spending anything, still strikes me as entirely sound, whatever the platform happens to be called these days.