There are several ways to check whether you are targeting the right audience with your marketing campaigns.

The logical place to start is by analysing who currently buys your products and then trying to sell more often to them or to more people with a similar profile. Legislation on customer data is generally becoming stricter worldwide and varies significantly in the UK, the EU, in specific U.S. states and other international territories.

For e-commerce platforms selling motorcycle gear - such as Motocard or 24mx - they have a clear view of the online user journey from the top of the funnel to the final purchase. So it is far easier for them to gather customer data than for those who do not sell their products online or only sell through third parties such as distributors.

Acquiring as much data as you lawfully can on your current buyers and carrying out customer surveys allows you to build up a more accurate picture of your audience.

You don’t have to be a sophisticated e-commerce player to use Google Analytics, social media analytics and data gathered from advertising and retargeting campaigns to build up a clear picture of who is interested in your brand. Close analysis of this data can allow you to segment your audience and specifically target those who appear most likely to become paying customers.

Look closely at the demographics and audience characteristics as they differ between your social media followers, website traffic, those who click on your ads and most importantly those who actually buy your products.

You can also conduct market research and monitor motorcycle industry trends to see which products you might want to develop or update in order to appeal to new audiences.

Competitor analysis is another important tactic. Can you work out who is buying from your competitors and why? Again surveys will help here and you can include questions on whether those answering have purchased from a specific brand. With this information in hand you can morph or expand your existing target audience if you believe purchasers of other similar brands can be persuaded to come your way instead.

For example, as Alpinestars expand their offering into the helmet market, they will be studying the competition closely and considering which competitor helmet brands they can take market share from, with a specific target audience in mind. 

As the brilliant Neil Patel explains, you can also create target personas within your projected target audiences in order to hone in even more accurately on who to sell to. So your target personas might be as different as ‘young Mark the first time British motorcycle buyer’ and ‘Sandra the wealthy experienced American adventure rider’.

The personas are fictional characters whom you imagine to sit in your overall target audience and around whom you build varying marketing narratives, with personalised content targeted to audience segments in separate campaigns. 

The last point on best practice with regards to understanding your target audience is to continually revise the overall picture. Is your website user and customer data significantly evolving over time? Are you growing significantly in terms of followers on social media, yet your sales remain at a similar level? Consider these points on a regular basis and check back in on who you are aiming your marketing content to.