An important thing to remember when you go looking for your online market is that nobody can tell you more about your audence than your audience itself. With that in mind, here are five ways to find your online audience:

Watch the Entrances and Exits

Google Analytics lets you see what sites your visitors come from and what search terms they used to find your site.

Google Analytics can also track which links on your site your visitors follow. By creating a number of outbound links to various other kinds of sites, you can, in essence, create a multiple choice questionnaire to see what sort of things interest your visitors.

If a notable portion of your visitors click through to various Twitter tools, you may wish to have a stronger presence on Twitter. If they instead look at playlists and music shops, Last FM or Pandora might be a better place for you to direct your attentions.

Poll the Audience

If your website receives heavy traffic, or if you have a large and active mailing list, you can always ask your existing visitors which media they follow and what websites they frequent.

Surveys should be short, simple, optional, and unobtrusive. Participants should also receive some sort of reward for completion. This reward doesn’t need to be complex or fancy, an early glimpse at the poll results, or a small badge that can be added to a personal webpage or social media profile will frequently suffice.

If you feel that you need more information, than a single short survey can provide, consider using a series of surveys rather than compiling all your questions into one big monster survey.

Ask a Star Client

If you hook a client in your niche market, ask them about mutual interests, and how they pursue those interests online. Just remember, this needs a personal touch, you should be approaching them as one individual to another, not as an impersonal company in search of new markets.

Observe the Competition

You can use Google to see where your competitors are looking for market share. Just type in link:www.rivalcompanyname.com for your search, and it will show you every site that links back to your rival company.

Go Shopping for a Day

Take advantage of the anonymity that the internet allows in order to create a secondary persona. This new identity should be a shopper interested in finding the sort of products or services you offer… but not you specifically.

Using this virtual second skin visit various forums, advice sites (like Allexperts.com or Lazytweet.com), and internet channels, and see where they suggest you go looking for help.

Consider the sites (even the non-industry related sites) that receive the most recommendations as possible locations for a web presence.

Unexpected Discoveries?

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