techsupport Almost all entrepreneurs first ask themselves the question: who will become the buyer of my goods or services? Even companies providing entertainment services, like National Casino Canada or Netflix, have such a question. To answer this question, business owners have to understand their target audience.
What Is a Target Audience
The target audience is a basic concept used in marketing to refer to a certain number of people who share common interests, needs or themes. A brand’s target audience is those people who can become potential buyers of a particular product/service. To define your target audience as accurately as possible, it should be divided into several sectors based on general characteristics: gender, age, geography, financial, professional, etc. It’s important to remember that the target audience of your product/service cannot be absolutely all people living, for example, in one area, city or country. Each individual product has its own unique characteristics, which leads to the formation of an equally unique target audience.
How Should a Target Audience Look Like
A representative of a particular target audience can be people who meet several criteria, namely:
- They must be interested in the product. For example, a company that sells meat products will not have customers among vegetarians.
- They must be able to buy the product. For example, only a person whose income is high or very high would be a consumer of select black caviar.
- They must be receptive to advertising. Here we are talking about the fact that “fans” (regular customers) of a particular brand will be difficult or almost impossible to lure to another company that trades in similar products/services.
Why Search for Your Target Audience?
The main requirement that any marketer has for their customer is to identify their target audience. Remember, the fewer potential customers, the more likely they are to actually make a purchase. The most clear and detailed definition of the target audience will help build a successful, and most importantly effective advertising campaign. If you know your customers “by sight,” you can:
- Create unique offers that will be of interest to customers. This will allow the goods or services that you sell to be in demand, and therefore – sell well.
- Find new customers easily.
- Improve your loyalty program. This is what can guarantee you that the lion’s share of customers who have made a purchase from you at least once, will come back to you again and bring their friends with them.
How to Identify Your Target Audience: Basic Methods
There are a lot of ways to identify your target audience. One of them is the 5W segmentation method. The peculiarity of this technique is the detailed answer to several questions: what, where, who, when, why:
- What?: What exactly is the buyer going to buy?
- Who?: Who is your buyer? (their main characteristics – gender, age, marital status, level of education, social status, occupation, hobbies, and so on).
- When?: When and how often does your customer make or is ready to make a purchase?
- Where?: Where does your customer tend to shop? (near their home, in large malls, in online stores, and so on).
- Why?: Why do your customers buy your products? (external characteristics, price level, prestige, uniqueness of the product, etc.).
Another method of questioning is similar to the previous one in its content, but less structured. It includes many questions, the most common of which are as follows:
- What is the gender of my potential client? (This point is important if you produce highly specialized products. For example, lipstick or aftershave cream).
- How old are they?
- Where do they live? (country, city, neighborhood).
- What is their level of education? (graduated from school, university, still studying, regularly receiving new knowledge).
- What is their marital status? (Active search, married, divorced, widowed).
- What is their income level? (low, medium, high).
- What are their hobbies and hobbies? (rock climbing, diving, painting, extreme driving, and so on).
- Are there any problems they are experiencing, during or before the purchase? (lack of money, inspiration, etc.).
Common Mistakes When Searching for a Target Audience
The most common mistake when choosing your target audience is to make too “big” a portrait of your target audience. In nature there is no such product, which is needed absolutely all. This should always be kept in mind. Let’s assume that once you have successfully found your target audience and never came back to this question. The mistake is that modern markets are developing very dynamically, every day there are new unusual products that attract customers. We recommend to all our clients to revise the portrait of the potential buyer at least once a year and a half. This procedure will help you always stay on top of your game and interact effectively with consumers.
Algorithm of Actions After Defining the Target Audience
Once you have a portrait of your consumer, you need to move on to the next steps: think about what their day might consist of.
For example, a mother with many children starts her morning with a trip to school/daycare, then goes shopping, then goes to school/daycare again (to pick up the kids), then returns home and stays there until the next day. It follows that you can only interact with her (advertise your product, encourage her to make an impulse buy, etc.) during her free time.
You must identify the algorithm of actions of the representative of your target audience after they have a need to buy. For example, when a girl’s car breaks down, she starts looking online for a solution to her problem. This means that you should make every effort to make sure that your offer is shown to this person at the right time in the right place. Another step is predicting the person’s actions before they have a need for your product or service.
