How to Find the Best Audiences for Your App

Making your app perfect is a fantastic achievement, but if you don’t know how to reach your audience, it is like making a masterpiece that gets put into the attic.

You should always know who your audience is before you start working on the app. However, by the end of the process things may change. Even if they don’t, you need to make sure that what you’ve developed actually targets the audience who is most likely to use it.

Why You Need to Know Who Is Your Best Audience

It’s easy to think that an app is suitable for everyone. Unfortunately, that is never true, no matter how good an app is. Whether people don’t need your app or feel that it isn’t good enough, it’s best to accept that not everyone is going to want to use what you are offering.

Your app is going to appeal more to some people than others. Often these people who will use it have something in common, making them your target audience. You want to know what it is they like about your app, but it’s just as important to know the things that are more likely to make them appreciate it. That way you can make changes and improvements that keep your audience coming back to use it.

Consider What You Are Offering and Who Benefits the Most from It

Stop and consider why you are making or have made the app.

• What does your app offer in terms of products and services?
• Is there a problem you are trying to solve?
• How are people most likely to use your app?
• Is there cross over with other apps that you can leverage or supplement?

All of these questions will help you identify the conditions under which people will use the app. That will help inform you of who will use it.

The Audience Components to Consider

Keep in mind the answers to the questions you just considered and apply them to the people who are most likely to use your app.

Location

If your app is for a small business, you have very different considerations in terms of the location than if you are making an app for a country or continent. Know how small a focus you want to make your app.

For example, if you are making an app to help with charitable events or the news for a town, you want to include details that cater to the small community that you are targeting. If you want a much larger audience, you’ll need to study trends on a larger scale.

Interests/Occupation

A person’s interests and occupation may not be the same thing, but for a lot of people there is at least some overlap. There are several important things to consider in terms of what your audience does for a living and with their free time.

• If a user works in a buying capacity for an organization, he probably has a lot more to spend than if he is a freelancer or a student.
• If your app provides services for professionals, you’ll need to target a very different audience than if your app is for entertainment purposes.
• Determine if your app is something that people will use at work or when doing something they enjoy. For example, people might shop for work and while they are at the gym.
• Consider how to connect the app to social media based on if people use the app for work or for fun.

Age

Different age groups interact with apps differently. If your app is made for an older audience (people 60 and older), odds are they are going to need something basic. They will also need an app with a slightly different look, such as larger fonts and buttons. If your app is for kids and teens, that means an entirely different look and functionality because they already have certain expectations.

There are a lot of age groups in between, so you’ll need to consider the technical knowledge and visual appeal for the age group most likely to use your app.

Gender

Really this consideration is more about shopping enthusiasm. A lot of sites will generalize, saying men prefer to shop only out of necessity and women shop because they enjoy shopping. In reality, there are a lot of men who enjoy shopping, just as there are many women who don’t.

Instead of considering gender, think about how likely it is that someone will be enthusiastic about shopping. If you are offering something for people who love to shop, the app will have a very different feel compared to an app for people who loathe the activity.

A Few Extra Factors

Here are a few extra things to consider, depending on the purpose of your app.

• Think about the kind of education a person who uses your app is likely to have. From elementary school to grad school, there are a lot of different education levels. While this is tied in to most of the other aspects, it will definitely affect at least the content and vocabulary you use for your app.
• Consider if you want to make the app in more than one language, either now or in the future. This will change your audience and could have significant changes to your app.
• Marital and parental status usually isn’t a big consideration (unless you are working on a Dating app), but a person who is single does typically spend more time on apps than someone who is married or who has children.

Key Audience Psychological Components to Consider

There are a number of psychological factors that drive how much people use apps, and if they will continue to use them.

• Think about the personality of the people likely to use your app. Is it for introverts, extroverts, people looking to further their professional development, or looking to escape?
• Think about the habits of your target audience. Social media and games seem to understand this better than any other app type. You want to make your app something that they will want to return to, so you may want to play to the kinds of habits your target audience is likely to have.
• The mentality and values of your target audience is incredibly important because it will determine if they keep using the app. If the purpose of the app is to help make money, you want to play toward that mindset. If the app is to work as a part of a charitable organization, that is a completely different way of thinking.

Know – and Appreciate – Your Audience

Be honest with yourself about who your audience is. It is possible that you will need to make changes over time based on feedback from your audience – even if it wasn’t the audience you initially intended the app for.

The people who keep coming back to the app should be appreciated. This doesn’t mean you should just stick to them, but you should make sure they are happy as you expand and improve your app. You can pick up new users, but don’t ignore the people who enjoyed it from the beginning.

Time to Get Moving

Now that you have the necessary information to understand who your target audience is, you can develop or redesign your app to make an ideal app for those people. Over the process, you should definitely stop to consider if the app is continuing to develop in a way that will best meet the expectations of your target audience. This regular verification that you are going in the right direction will help to answer questions about the next steps.