Defining Your Target Audience for Effective Digital Ministry

Are you ready to sharpen your digital ministry? Join me, your host LeeAnn Fox, as I delve into the art and importance of defining your target audience. You'll discover why trying to serve everyone can hinder your message and learn how to tailor your approach to reach the right people. We'll explore real-world examples of how successful brands use this concept, and I'll share insights on how to adapt this strategy for your Christian blog ministry.

The conversation doesn't stop there. Let's dive into some encouragement for all you Christian content creators out there. We're discussing how to use the internet to guide people towards Jesus, not away from Him, and why understanding your target audience can not only help your ministry but also improve your reach on Google. In a world where misconceptions abound about churches and their audiences, we're challenging the status quo and offering up practical advice for navigating the world of digital ministry. Whether you're a seasoned blogger or just starting your online journey, this episode is for you.

If you are interested in taking your digital discipleship to the next level through blogging, YouTube, social media, and/or online Bible study groups, be sure to join my private FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/kingdombloggers
You can also follow me on YouTube where you will find a variety of helpful tutorials for navigating each of these important platforms: https://www.youtube.com/@KingdomBloggers

Transcript

LeeAnn Fox: 0:02

Welcome to the Kingdom Influencers podcast, where our mission is to get more Jesus online. This podcast will equip and empower ministry leaders as well as regular everyday Christians to take the message of Jesus Christ throughout the digital realm. I'm your host, LeeAnn Fox, digital Ministry Coach and the creator of the Kingdom Bloggers Ministry, and I am so excited and honored to be a part of this journey with you. Let's get started. Hey there, leanne, again from Kingdom Bloggers. So in this video as part of our Kingdom Blogger onboarding series, we are going to talk about the importance of a target audience. What is a target audience and why is it so important that you really identify who that is and a little bit on how you do that? So what is a target audience? When you start your Christian blogging journey, you know there you have to understand there are billions of pieces of content out there on the internet. In other words, so much information on all of these websites. And you know we mentioned in the previous video about the importance of understanding that blogging is about answering a search query, and so all content creators strive to answer search words and many of us are going to be kind of competing with each other, and that's okay. But at the end of the day, google has to have some way to filter through all of that, all of those websites, and ensure that they are given the right answers to the search queries, and part of the way they do that is by indexing your site and your content. Google needs to know what is the fundamental purpose of your site and so your target audience, like knowing who that is, helped you focus your content down so well that Google has no problem understanding what your purpose is and who it's meant for. And let me give you this as a different kind of correlation. So if you need to go to a store most stores if you say the name of the store, you know exactly what's in that store. If I say Academy, you know that sporting and fishing, outdoors, he stuff. If I say Victoria's Secret or Pink, you think women's underwear, and so the market that each of those, the target audience, is very clear on who those two individual stores are serving. Even with Victoria's Secret and Pink, even though it's the same company, they've branched out so they can serve two kind of entirely different markets still women. But within that women have differences in what they like, and so if you think of Target Market. In that sense, that is what we're talking about, and, with your blog, the whole concept of lifestyle blog, where you just kind of write about anything under the sun, that simply does not work anymore. Google has so much content that lifestyle blogs are too broad. We, I personally, call that a super Walmart. Right, there are other than being a box store. That's really the only way you can classify Walmart, because they literally sell everything from food to sporting goods, to women's underwear, to toys, to guard. They have everything. Don't be a super Walmart.

LeeAnn Fox: 2:51

So in defining your ministry audience, you really have to, like, sit down and think what is it I want to do? How do I wanna serve people? What is it I wanna offer them? An example might be I wanna help Christian moms be able to grow stronger in their own faith, but also be able to pour into their children, thus raising godly children. Okay, that's a purpose. So in that sense, a Target audience would be Christian moms.

LeeAnn Fox: 3:14

Now let's go a step further again, because we wanna focus it to the more specific types of search queries, but also ensuring that the people we bring are gonna relate to us in the season that we're maybe speaking to, and so the best way to describe that is with Christian mom blogs. So are you wanting to minister to brand new moms Like, literally, this is their first time raising a child? How you would pour into them, even biblically speaking, is gonna be different than the struggles and the pouring into that a mom say at my stage, which my daughter, my youngest child, just turned 18. So the struggles I deal with now are a little different in many aspects. When it comes to my children, my next season of life, what's next for me?

LeeAnn Fox: 3:55

The struggles I have just in general, focusing down your niche, your target audience, to a very specific person, and while we as Christians are here to share the gospel with the entire world, as a Christian blogger you can't do that. You have to share it and pour into that one person. Other people are gonna show up and that's totally cool. My ministry, who I like to pour into or who I consider my target audience and what I do here, is really Christian women. But I do have some men who follow my stuff and who have taken my courses and who are in my Facebook group. So I'm not necessarily not speaking to them, but I'm more focused on the mothers. But the blogging stuff is blogging Like it doesn't matter if you're a mom or you're a man, and so in that capacity too, you will find that even though you're speaking to this one person, others are gonna kind of come and show up, and that's okay and you may adjust things as you go. But you have to understand you are not here to satisfy and serve every single person, because when you fall into that trap, you will be more concerned with adapting your concept and you're delivering your everything to meet every single person's needs, and that's just not how it works.

LeeAnn Fox: 5:01

Even churches if you didn't know this, you would think all churches are here for the same reason, which is to minister and help people get their salvation or get closer to salvation. God gives the salvation up to ministers. But even churches, when they are created, each individual church has a target audience, right Market, who in their community they're truly trying to reach? My church, for example, our target is the unchurch, those who are not saved, who don't like church. Really, that's more of our target market. We wanna minister those who have either turned from God or just simply don't believe, and so we wanna bring more people in Some churches, more cater to an older demographic, some cater maybe to more of the younger, and so it's a little more trendy stuff going on there. The message is the same, but how it's delivered and the resources that are utilized, the funding and budgeting that goes into that for every church is really intended for a very specific market that that church has deemed their goal. And so, as a Christian blogger, you have to do the same thing if you want to see growth.

LeeAnn Fox: 6:02

So I do have a free training called defining your ministry avatar. The link will be down in the notes section and that will kind of help you with a foundational approach to kind of figuring it out, figuring out one what do I wanna help people with? Well, who do I wanna help? What do I wanna help them with? And then, from there, gathering the data, gathering the research to find out exactly what it is they need help with, not what you think they need help with, because that's the defining factor here. It's about them, not you, and so you have to do your research to figure out their Google search habits and all that, and I do have a whole nother video in our series that kind of talks about that.

LeeAnn Fox: 6:38

So again, your target market, your target audience. Sometimes you may hear it called an avatar. The same thing. That is, defining who, what and how, who you're gonna serve, how you're gonna serve them and in what capacity, and so this is a very important step towards building your ministry. Honestly, you haven't already purchased your hosting and set up your actual website. I would not do that until you've kind of gone through and done this part of getting ready, because this is very important.

LeeAnn Fox: 7:05

If you don't and it's okay if your target audience changes over time or maybe as you get in here, you start rethinking that's totally okay. But if you don't research the market, you cannot possibly create a plan for success. Every successful business, even if you're not monetizing this, you have to approach it from a business mindset. Every successful endeavor, a business building whatever started with a plan that was put on paper. That plan may change and evolve over time, but there's still a plan there in place. If you don't have a plan for what you need to do and how you need to get there, you're gonna be walking in circles for a very long time.

LeeAnn Fox: 7:41

So, anyway, I hope this made a little sense.

LeeAnn Fox: 7:44

I hope this is getting you either more encouraged, because you already have that passion to know exactly who and what it is that you wanna serve, or maybe I've got your mind thinking that, whoa, I need to take a step back and kind of rethink and put a little more effort into this part of it, because I hadn't really done that.

LeeAnn Fox: 8:00

Either way, my goal is for you to be successful in this, because we need more Christian content creators on the internet, and my job the reason I feel God has put me here is to help you get there. That's all for today. Thanks so much for listening. Be sure to share this episode with anybody you think might be called into Christian blogging. As always, make sure you come over to my Facebook group the links are down in the show notes and stay tuned for next week, where we're gonna be talking about the costs associated with starting a Christian blog ministry. And remember, if you are not using the internet to push people towards Jesus, the enemy is using it to push them away from him. Bye y'all, god bless and have a great week.