Online Academy
Be free or die trying
Be free or die trying
Lesson 3. Target Audience
Online Coach Academy
Lesson's transcription
Today, we’re going to talk about audience analysis: what it is, why it's important, why everyone is talking about it, and whether it's even possible to do without it. The thing is, if we want to sell to our audience—especially in an ethical way where they buy from us because of the meanings we embed in our content, the values we communicate, and our overall communication—it’s crucial to speak the language of our target audience.
We need to understand what interests our audience, who are ready to buy from us: what their pain points are, what challenges they face, their objections, their needs, and so on. If you don’t know your target audience, you’re just guessing their interests and needs. And when you guess, you often end up focusing on yourself rather than your clients. This can lead to problems with your content, sales, and products because you don’t truly understand who you’re creating them for.
This is why, for example, you see overly complicated Instagram Reels that no one watches—such as those made by nutrition coaches who break down complex topics that only resonate with other trainers and nutritionists.
This also explains why some products are completely irrelevant to the market and why sales are low because you can’t effectively communicate the real benefits you can offer during a consultation.
The first thing to note is that your target audience cannot be the entire world, even if you’re in a broad niche.
Even if you’re a trainer selling fitness and nutrition services that are theoretically relevant to almost everyone, you cannot cater to the whole world and claim that everyone is your target audience.
The more specific your focus, the clearer it becomes what messages to convey, what values to embed in your content, what products to create, and which needs and pain points of your audience to address. Therefore, it’s essential to determine who you primarily want to work with and then develop your products for this specific target audience.
For example, the needs of a 20-year-old woman attending fitness and stretching classes will be very different from those of a 35-40-year-old woman. You can’t capture both audiences with the same content or product. It’s impossible.
So, it’s crucial to decide who your target audience is, who you plan to work with, and who you intend to benefit. But even if you’re working with different groups within your target audience, segmentation is necessary.
What is segmentation? Different age and demographic categories have different needs, goals, and pain points, and they are attracted to different types of content and messages. So, if you want to work with different audiences, segmentation is key to understanding how to attract each of them to your service.
This will affect your advertising layouts, the values and meanings you embed in your ads, your content, sales funnels, and the overall structure of those funnels. It will also impact your products: you might have different price points and product focuses for different target audiences.
For example, 19-20-year-old women might be interested in fitness to sculpt beautiful glutes, shape their bodies, and take great Instagram photos. Their internal motivation might be to "make others envious," "be liked by everyone," "have beautiful photos," or "look good in a bikini." A woman recovering after childbirth will have a different goal: to regain her body after the changes it underwent.
Some audiences are willing to buy complex, personalized, expensive products, while others are more inclined to purchase two-week challenges or “magic pills.”
So, segmentation is important to attract different audiences with different offers and guide them through different sales funnels that resonate with them.
At the initial stage, if you’re just starting your work—whether online or offline—it’s better to focus on a specific target category and segment and create content, warm-ups, sales funnels, and products tailored to that audience.
Once you’ve defined your audience, you can develop it further and understand what it needs. Let’s look at some principles for defining your target audience. The basic parameters are demographics and geography. This includes the age of your audience, their gender: is your audience male, female, or both? How old are they? Age is actually important, especially in the fitness niche, as the needs will vary depending on age. The motivation will be different, and different messages will be needed in the content. So, choose very carefully which age group you plan to work with.
Next is geography: where are these people located? Is it Germany, Poland, France? Which country are you working in? Perhaps it’s a global audience. But which part of the world? What languages do these people speak? For example, if you’re developing your personal brand and services through Instagram, you can’t target two language groups simultaneously—they need to be separated in content and accounts. You might choose, for instance, a Spanish-speaking audience worldwide.
How much do these people earn? What’s their average spending? Where do they work? How much are they willing to pay for your services? What is their optimal budget? It’s also crucial to consider your audience’s interests: where they work, what hobbies they have, where they vacation—depending on whether this is relevant to your offering.
For example, if you organize fitness tours, this could be important. How do they spend their free time? How important is the topic of health to them? How important is appearance?
For example, if someone works in a field where presentation matters—sales, entrepreneurship, or a startup founder who needs to pitch to investors—their appearance might be important, and this could be a point of focus.
The profession can influence a person’s internal motivation. What is the person’s situation? Perhaps they are new moms recovering after childbirth, and you want to work with them. What might be their interests, needs, and challenges?
Often, new moms don’t have time to go to the gym, which is where online training with a coach comes in. They lack support—this is where coaching and interaction are key. They want to get back in shape but don’t have much time to work out. Perhaps they need workouts they can do with their baby. They might not have time to eat properly, and so on. What solutions can we offer? Let’s take, for example, a woman who seems to fit your target audience. What’s important to her? Does she want to look good for her husband? Or does she want to improve her appearance to boost her personal life? Or does she want to look good to present herself well and succeed in her career?
You can also explore why someone might want to lose weight, build a fit body, or focus on nutrition, and so on. There has to be some internal motivation.
Firstly, this will help you in your work: when someone’s motivation starts to fade, you need to find triggers to reignite it, the ultimate goal for which they started all this.
Secondly, for selling, it’s crucial to understand the person’s motivation and what you can offer them. You’re not selling a set of workouts or personal training; you’re selling the end result, the ultimate idea, the final emotion. That’s why it’s important to understand why someone needs this.
Why do they want to lose weight? Their stomach isn’t in the way; most clients don’t have a physical need to lose weight.
The need is always more emotional—they want to achieve something through weight loss. All effective sales content we create is not based on basic information like "how to lose weight," "which foods to include or exclude from your diet," "how to perform the correct techniques," or "what the correct exercise technique should be." It’s built on the internal motivation of clients and what resonates with them.
Today, we’re going to talk about audience analysis: what it is, why it's important, why everyone is talking about it, and whether it's even possible to do without it. The thing is, if we want to sell to our audience—especially in an ethical way where they buy from us because of the meanings we embed in our content, the values we communicate, and our overall communication—it’s crucial to speak the language of our target audience.
We need to understand what interests our audience, who are ready to buy from us: what their pain points are, what challenges they face, their objections, their needs, and so on. If you don’t know your target audience, you’re just guessing their interests and needs. And when you guess, you often end up focusing on yourself rather than your clients. This can lead to problems with your content, sales, and products because you don’t truly understand who you’re creating them for.
This is why, for example, you see overly complicated Instagram Reels that no one watches—such as those made by nutrition coaches who break down complex topics that only resonate with other trainers and nutritionists.
This also explains why some products are completely irrelevant to the market and why sales are low because you can’t effectively communicate the real benefits you can offer during a consultation.
The first thing to note is that your target audience cannot be the entire world, even if you’re in a broad niche.
Even if you’re a trainer selling fitness and nutrition services that are theoretically relevant to almost everyone, you cannot cater to the whole world and claim that everyone is your target audience.
The more specific your focus, the clearer it becomes what messages to convey, what values to embed in your content, what products to create, and which needs and pain points of your audience to address. Therefore, it’s essential to determine who you primarily want to work with and then develop your products for this specific target audience.
For example, the needs of a 20-year-old woman attending fitness and stretching classes will be very different from those of a 35-40-year-old woman. You can’t capture both audiences with the same content or product. It’s impossible.
So, it’s crucial to decide who your target audience is, who you plan to work with, and who you intend to benefit. But even if you’re working with different groups within your target audience, segmentation is necessary.
What is segmentation? Different age and demographic categories have different needs, goals, and pain points, and they are attracted to different types of content and messages. So, if you want to work with different audiences, segmentation is key to understanding how to attract each of them to your service.
This will affect your advertising layouts, the values and meanings you embed in your ads, your content, sales funnels, and the overall structure of those funnels. It will also impact your products: you might have different price points and product focuses for different target audiences.
For example, 19-20-year-old women might be interested in fitness to sculpt beautiful glutes, shape their bodies, and take great Instagram photos. Their internal motivation might be to "make others envious," "be liked by everyone," "have beautiful photos," or "look good in a bikini." A woman recovering after childbirth will have a different goal: to regain her body after the changes it underwent.
Some audiences are willing to buy complex, personalized, expensive products, while others are more inclined to purchase two-week challenges or “magic pills.”
So, segmentation is important to attract different audiences with different offers and guide them through different sales funnels that resonate with them.
At the initial stage, if you’re just starting your work—whether online or offline—it’s better to focus on a specific target category and segment and create content, warm-ups, sales funnels, and products tailored to that audience.
Once you’ve defined your audience, you can develop it further and understand what it needs. Let’s look at some principles for defining your target audience. The basic parameters are demographics and geography. This includes the age of your audience, their gender: is your audience male, female, or both? How old are they? Age is actually important, especially in the fitness niche, as the needs will vary depending on age. The motivation will be different, and different messages will be needed in the content. So, choose very carefully which age group you plan to work with.
Next is geography: where are these people located? Is it Germany, Poland, France? Which country are you working in? Perhaps it’s a global audience. But which part of the world? What languages do these people speak? For example, if you’re developing your personal brand and services through Instagram, you can’t target two language groups simultaneously—they need to be separated in content and accounts. You might choose, for instance, a Spanish-speaking audience worldwide.
How much do these people earn? What’s their average spending? Where do they work? How much are they willing to pay for your services? What is their optimal budget? It’s also crucial to consider your audience’s interests: where they work, what hobbies they have, where they vacation—depending on whether this is relevant to your offering.
For example, if you organize fitness tours, this could be important. How do they spend their free time? How important is the topic of health to them? How important is appearance?
For example, if someone works in a field where presentation matters—sales, entrepreneurship, or a startup founder who needs to pitch to investors—their appearance might be important, and this could be a point of focus.
The profession can influence a person’s internal motivation. What is the person’s situation? Perhaps they are new moms recovering after childbirth, and you want to work with them. What might be their interests, needs, and challenges?
Often, new moms don’t have time to go to the gym, which is where online training with a coach comes in. They lack support—this is where coaching and interaction are key. They want to get back in shape but don’t have much time to work out. Perhaps they need workouts they can do with their baby. They might not have time to eat properly, and so on. What solutions can we offer? Let’s take, for example, a woman who seems to fit your target audience. What’s important to her? Does she want to look good for her husband? Or does she want to improve her appearance to boost her personal life? Or does she want to look good to present herself well and succeed in her career?
You can also explore why someone might want to lose weight, build a fit body, or focus on nutrition, and so on. There has to be some internal motivation.
Firstly, this will help you in your work: when someone’s motivation starts to fade, you need to find triggers to reignite it, the ultimate goal for which they started all this.
Secondly, for selling, it’s crucial to understand the person’s motivation and what you can offer them. You’re not selling a set of workouts or personal training; you’re selling the end result, the ultimate idea, the final emotion. That’s why it’s important to understand why someone needs this.
Why do they want to lose weight? Their stomach isn’t in the way; most clients don’t have a physical need to lose weight.
The need is always more emotional—they want to achieve something through weight loss. All effective sales content we create is not based on basic information like "how to lose weight," "which foods to include or exclude from your diet," "how to perform the correct techniques," or "what the correct exercise technique should be." It’s built on the internal motivation of clients and what resonates with them.
If we want to create content that sells, triggers emotions, and addresses the "pain points" of our clients, we need to understand who our end client is and how we can help them.
The more specific we are in defining our audience, the easier it will be to speak their language and sell them our product or service.
At the same time, we are against toxic marketing, pressuring clients, or being rude. Feel the difference in how content is presented to a trainer:
"Look at how beautiful my body is—that’s because I work out 24/7 and eat right, while you, lazy bum, still can’t make it to the gym? Message me, and I’ll teach you how to squat so you can grow a beautiful, toned butt like mine."
And this version:
"Hey, look, I managed to build my dream body on my own, but I know it’s hard for you because you’ve tried so many times to eat right and go to the gym, and it just didn’t work out. You’d quit and then start over again. I can imagine how frustrating that must be. You’re already doing great, but your desire and motivation aren’t enough because, besides that, you need the knowledge and experience that took me years to build. It was hard for me too! Message me, and we’ll find the right solution for you together."
Which approach makes you more inclined to reach out to someone? The choice is yours :) But the approach is different. In the first case, you set yourself against the person; in the second, you are ready to move forward with them, associate yourself with them, and show that you genuinely understand their pain.
Once you start understanding your clients' pain points, you’ll start selling your services to them.
The more specific we are in defining our audience, the easier it will be to speak their language and sell them our product or service.
At the same time, we are against toxic marketing, pressuring clients, or being rude. Feel the difference in how content is presented to a trainer:
"Look at how beautiful my body is—that’s because I work out 24/7 and eat right, while you, lazy bum, still can’t make it to the gym? Message me, and I’ll teach you how to squat so you can grow a beautiful, toned butt like mine."
And this version:
"Hey, look, I managed to build my dream body on my own, but I know it’s hard for you because you’ve tried so many times to eat right and go to the gym, and it just didn’t work out. You’d quit and then start over again. I can imagine how frustrating that must be. You’re already doing great, but your desire and motivation aren’t enough because, besides that, you need the knowledge and experience that took me years to build. It was hard for me too! Message me, and we’ll find the right solution for you together."
Which approach makes you more inclined to reach out to someone? The choice is yours :) But the approach is different. In the first case, you set yourself against the person; in the second, you are ready to move forward with them, associate yourself with them, and show that you genuinely understand their pain.
Once you start understanding your clients' pain points, you’ll start selling your services to them.
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Sometimes your specialization is very niche, and your client is a very specific person. But more often, your clients can be divided into different segments.
For example, a manufacturer of watch screwdrivers likely has a very specific target audience—watchmakers. However, in a flower shop, the segmentation will be broader—it includes men buying gifts for their wives, women going to visit their mothers or friends, and students purchasing flowers for their teachers. These clients can vary widely in profession, age, interests, etc., and each requires a different approach.
That's why segmentation is important.
As a specialist without the resources of a large company and big advertising budgets, it’s best for you to choose a specific segment and focus on it.
For example, a manufacturer of watch screwdrivers likely has a very specific target audience—watchmakers. However, in a flower shop, the segmentation will be broader—it includes men buying gifts for their wives, women going to visit their mothers or friends, and students purchasing flowers for their teachers. These clients can vary widely in profession, age, interests, etc., and each requires a different approach.
That's why segmentation is important.
As a specialist without the resources of a large company and big advertising budgets, it’s best for you to choose a specific segment and focus on it.
Buyer
The buyer and the consumer are not always the same person.
Take a flower shop, for example. A man is the buyer, but who is he buying the flowers for?
Similarly, a client might purchase a certificate to work with you and gift it to a friend, spouse, etc.
Take a flower shop, for example. A man is the buyer, but who is he buying the flowers for?
Similarly, a client might purchase a certificate to work with you and gift it to a friend, spouse, etc.
Consumer
In this case, the wife, mother, or friend for whom the flowers are bought is the end consumer. You need to consider the needs and interests of both the buyer and the end consumer if, in your business, they are two different people.
How to Create a Buyer Persona?
The simplest way to find out what your client wants is to ask them! That's why we conducted the interviews!
Question: What do your existing clients value about you?
Meaning: This question helps you understand your strengths and what your clients expect from you and your services.
Question: What is the most common request you receive?
Meaning: You need to ask yourself this question—analyze what clients ask you most frequently.
Question: Who is your audience—age, gender, occupation, income?
Meaning: This helps us understand where to find this audience and how much they are willing to pay for your services.
Question: What result does a person want to achieve after working with you?
Meaning: What is the ultimate result the person is seeking? This is what you need to sell to the client.
Question: How will a person’s life change after achieving this result?
Meaning: Here, we look for the internal motivation of your client—what drives their desire to achieve this result. This internal motivation should be conveyed to the audience through your content.
Question: What fears prevent your clients from coming to you?
Meaning: These objections and fears should also be addressed through your content.
Question: How much is a client willing to pay for results and changes in their life?
Meaning: This helps us gauge the price range a client is willing to pay for our services—and decide whether we need to target a different audience level or if our expectations align with reality.
Question: What objections did clients have during the interviews?
Meaning: How could you address these objections through content in the future?
Meaning: This question helps you understand your strengths and what your clients expect from you and your services.
Question: What is the most common request you receive?
Meaning: You need to ask yourself this question—analyze what clients ask you most frequently.
Question: Who is your audience—age, gender, occupation, income?
Meaning: This helps us understand where to find this audience and how much they are willing to pay for your services.
Question: What result does a person want to achieve after working with you?
Meaning: What is the ultimate result the person is seeking? This is what you need to sell to the client.
Question: How will a person’s life change after achieving this result?
Meaning: Here, we look for the internal motivation of your client—what drives their desire to achieve this result. This internal motivation should be conveyed to the audience through your content.
Question: What fears prevent your clients from coming to you?
Meaning: These objections and fears should also be addressed through your content.
Question: How much is a client willing to pay for results and changes in their life?
Meaning: This helps us gauge the price range a client is willing to pay for our services—and decide whether we need to target a different audience level or if our expectations align with reality.
Question: What objections did clients have during the interviews?
Meaning: How could you address these objections through content in the future?
Let's Create a Profile of Your Ideal Client, Like Designing a Character for SIMS
And then compare your ideal client with your actual audience survey. What direction should you take? What is missing for your audience? Where should you look for them?
Demographics:
Age: What is the age range of your ideal client?
Gender: Does your ideal client fit a specific gender, or is it gender-neutral?
Occupation: What does your ideal client do for a living?
Income: What is their income level?
Gender: Does your ideal client fit a specific gender, or is it gender-neutral?
Occupation: What does your ideal client do for a living?
Income: What is their income level?
Psychographics:
Interests: What are their hobbies and interests?
Lifestyle: What kind of lifestyle do they lead?
Values: What values and beliefs are important to them?
Lifestyle: What kind of lifestyle do they lead?
Values: What values and beliefs are important to them?
Behavior:
Buying Habits: How do they make purchasing decisions? Are they impulsive or methodical?Preferred Channels: Where do they usually shop or seek information (online, in-store, social media)?
Challenges: What problems or pain points are they trying to solve?
Challenges: What problems or pain points are they trying to solve?
Goals and Aspirations:
Short-term Goals: What immediate goals or needs do they have?
Long-term Aspirations: What are their long-term dreams or ambitions?
Expectations: What kind of experience are they looking for when interacting with your business?
Long-term Aspirations: What are their long-term dreams or ambitions?
Expectations: What kind of experience are they looking for when interacting with your business?
Motivations:
Internal Motivation: What drives their desires? What do they hope to achieve emotionally or psychologically?
External Motivations: What external factors influence their decisions (e.g., trends, peer pressure)?
Customer Journey: How do they prefer to be guided through the buying process?
External Motivations: What external factors influence their decisions (e.g., trends, peer pressure)?
Customer Journey: How do they prefer to be guided through the buying process?
Fears and Obstacles:
Common Fears: What fears or concerns might prevent them from making a purchase?
Obstacles: What challenges do they face in achieving their goals?
Obstacles: What challenges do they face in achieving their goals?
Homework
Analyze the interviews you conducted, list the main requests, pain points, objections, and mistakes of your potential clients, and start addressing these through your content.
Analyze the interviews you conducted, list the main requests, pain points, objections, and mistakes of your potential clients, and start addressing these through your content.
