It still amazes me. When I write copy for a company, I always ask about their target audience. I have to know who I’m writing to in order to create a message that will bring a response. But about half time, client is absolutely stumped about who their target audience is and what they want.

At risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ll say it again: “You have to know your target audience before you can advertise effectively.”

It just makes sense. How can you deliver what customer wants unless you know what that is? How can you present a message in a way customer will respond to unless you know their communication style? Bottom line… you can’t.

So exactly how do you find out who your target audience is and what they want? It’s actually easier than you might think. Here are my top seven ways to define a target audience. Each is quick, simple, and free/cheap.

1. Ask. Devise a survey or questionnaire and send it out to those people who you think *might* be interested in your product or service. Take a week or two to write a list of questions that you’d love to have answers to; then create an online survey, and send out link. Be honest. Tell people why you want information and what you plan to use it for. Also remind them that survey is completely anonymous.

If you really want to boost responses, offer a prize drawing. Perhaps you could give away an Amazon gift certificate to one lucky winner.

TIP: I use Survey Monkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com) because they have easiest and most flexible tools I’ve found. Not to mention, for surveys that only need 100 responses or less… it’s FREE!

I happen to live in Orlando, Florida, probably one of largest "billboard capitals" of nation. Our major Interstate, I-4, is littered with them. There are so many you can't help but look at them. And they're expensive. Plan on about $6,000 a month for one billboard on I-4, and that's without lights or any special production elements.

The big guys here, Disney World, Universal Studios and Sea World has most of billboards on I-4. Well, they are ones with money. And they are quite elaborate. Three-dimensional, specialty lights, moving pieces, top-outs. The first time they put ET (you know "phone home") billboard up on I-4, I almost drove off road, it looked so real.

Unfortunately, not all creative teams who come up with designs for billboards have same knowledge or skill level that folks at Universal have. Too bad, because if you have a poor billboard design, you might have well stuffed your money into that perennial black hole (this goes for poorly designed newspaper and magazine ads too).

I hate to pick on one company's billboards, but they are so bad, it makes them an easy target. We'll call this company's billboards Easy Target Mall (the billboards happen to be promoting a mall). Because there was a new mall opening in our town, right on I-4, Easy Target Mall wanted to put lots of billboards on Interstate-4. So they proceeded to buy several billboards right at ramp entrances and exits to new mall. OK. Not a bad strategy so far. While new mall was under construction, Easy Target Mall already had their billboards up. (Just to say, "Hey don't look at them, look at me!).

The first problem arose with first billboard series for Easy Target Mall. One had a very colorful background with a wrapped present on it. The copy read "It's somebody's birthday somewhere." My first reaction was "So? How does this pertain to me?" I thought about it as I continued down road (that's a bad sign if someone has to try to figure out your advertising message). Half way home it hit me "Oh," I said. "They are trying to imply that because someone is having a birthday somewhere, you might also happen to know someone having a birthday and that means you should go to Easy Target Mall to buy a gift. Right?"

Hands on buzzers. True of False. Do you think it's a good idea that consumer has to try to figure out what your ad means? Reading a billboard while going 55 miles an hour? If you even see it your lucky. How many of you think that consumers would even bother to try to figure out what it meant?? Oh, maybe one in 10,000? I started laughing and wished I had a piece of action in selling that billboard space to Easy Target Mall.