How do I find the target audience for my website and mobile app to increase traffic and downloads ?

First things first. I must appreciate that the website has good content.

You should ask yourself the purpose of creating this website. Information is now available all over the place. Right from individual portals to the Feedly, Mashable, Newsify and Pockets of the world. How do you want to differentiate yourself? What do you think is your strength? What has worked for you or your company in the last 3 quarters?

Many answers lies in the purpose of the company, which only you can answer. Do you know who the target segment is? If your TG is young startups, offer them content that addresses their initial / teething problems. If your TG is startups in Growth phase, help them with content on building operational efficiencies, right hiring, employee retention, customer delight, building organisation culture, how to get the next funding, etc.

The world is moving from Content to Context. We are worried with Information Overload. So, help them to find relevant content at ease. Any amount of information is of no use if they don't relate to it. It becomes another news paper, which is anyways a crowded market.

My intent is not to give you a solution, because the right answer lies within you. My idea is to help bring that out for you. Hope this will be of some help to you.

Regards,
Shiv.

Before you start looking for the people who will be interested in your content, you need to define very clearly who these people are. Once you have a specific picture in mind in terms of both demographics (age, gender, location, education etc) and psychographics (values, interests, lifestyles, etc), it will be much easier to work out how to reach them.

In coming up with your business idea in the first place, you presumably had an ideal user in mind. What specific problem are you solving with your website? What do you know about the kind of people who experience this problem? Where do these people spend their time? What might be the barriers for these people to try your service and how can you overcome those barriers?

A detailed understanding of your ideal user will allow you to identify the communities, social networks, and so on that you need to target in order to get your message in front of these people.

When it comes to content partnerships, I would encourage you to think about “what’s in it for them?” How can you pitch your idea in a way that demonstrates the value to your prospective partner? If you can nail the “so what?” then you’ll be creating a pull demand rather than just pushing.

Get in touch if you’d like help with clarifying who you’re actually targeting or, once you’ve done that, how to reach them!