Etsy Target Audience

One of the best things you can do for your Etsy shop’s growth and visibility is to define your target audience. This means finding out exactly who your ideal customer is and talking directly to them.

Why is target audience important?

If you speak to everyone, you effectively speak to no one. Yup. By keeping things generic, you will appeal to no audience at all. If you know exactly who you are trying to sell to, you can tailor your content so it speaks to them in a way that they appreciate.

One of the first things we studied on my digital marketing masters degree was audience personas and the importance of understanding your audience. You need to dig deep and find out what makes your perfect customer tick. This is basically the key to everything when it comes to marketing your Etsy small business. Etsy can be a crowded place, with over 9 million sellers and 95 million active buyers, you cannot (and should not) try to target all of them.

Did you see what I did there? Although audience understanding is completely essential for all businesses, I am writing this helpful target audience guide for you, a small business owner, selling on Etsy. I am speaking to you, and only you.

In my product business, before we started to do really well, we thought our target audience was ‘busy working mums with young kids’. On further digging and speaking to some of our real regular customers, it turns out we had it wrong.

Our most loyal and regular customers are actually much older than we first realised. They were far more in the ‘glamorous grandmas who want to show their families how thoughtful they are’ category. This was a game changer for us. Our ideal customers actually weren’t all on Instagram or TikTok, they were far more active on Facebook. Who knew? They also didn’t appreciate our range of swearing cards that we were oh-so-proud-of.

The thing is, once you know who your customer is, you can get really accurate with how you talk to them.

How to find your perfect Etsy target audience

If you have an existing customer base, this can be a great place to start. Ask them if they would answer some questions for you or you could set up a survey.

Look through your existing orders, are your customers mostly male or female? Are they all called Jean and Marjorie, or are they Hannah and Louise? You can begin to get a rough idea of your customers’ genders and ages from their names. Are they all based in one area? Do you sell mostly in the UK or are you popular in USA or somewhere else?

You could also ask your social media followers. Polls in stories on Instagram are a great way to ask quick questions and gather information informally, without putting too much pressure on your followers to answer lots of questions.

If you don’t have access to this information, you will have to use a bit of educated guess work.

Step 1: Look At What You Sell

Are your products for men or women? Perhaps it’s something that will appeal to both men and women equally, but the chances are that you already know whether your audience are mostly men or mostly women. Another thing to bear in mind here is that you may sell products for men, but your customers may be mostly women purchasing gifts (or vice versa).

What is their approximate age? Are they in a particular stage of their life- working, retired, parents of young children, parents of older children, not parents, students?

Step 2: Dig Deeper

Once you have this information, you can start to go a little deeper.

• What is important to them?
• What problems do they have?
• Which social media platforms do they use?
• What are their hobbies and interests?
• What are their goals?
• What do they value most?
• What are their fears?
• What are their priorities in life?
• What motivates them?
• Where do they shop?
• Where are they located?
• How much money do they have to spend?

Get really specific.

If you need some help with this, try my Chat GPT prompt, available here.

Step 3: Create a Persona

I’ve created a free template for you here. Download it by clicking on the link below and print it out. Fill in the blanks and start to create a profile for your ideal Etsy customer.

Step 4: Create Content That Speaks To Your Ideal Customer

Remember, if you try to speak to everyone, you speak to no one. By targeting your perfect customer and making them feel seen, your messaging will have far more of an impact and you will see better results.

You can then start to build a content plan, using your audience’s pain points, motivations and dreams as inspiration.

You can also tailor your Etsy listings to appeal to them, style your photography accordingly and develop your tone of voice.

Step 5: Analyse, Rinse and Repeat

Always follow this up with analysis and tweaking as necessary. Check in and see how your changes have affected your sales, conversion rate, social media follower numbers, engagement levels etc. You should be able to spot whether you are targeting the right people because you will start to see results.

Remember, nothing happens overnight and these things do take time, so just keep on keeping on!