What is a target audience? It’s the group of people you’re trying to reach with your marketing efforts.
Describing the target audience is a simple technique, but it is the very foundation on which you will build all your marketing and business activities in the future. Understanding the goals, motivations, concerns, needs, and problems of your target audience is the right way to competent planning and business development in any field.
Let’s take a look at why this is so important, analyze examples of target audience descriptions, and explore common mistakes that can become an obstacle to profit.
Why do you need to describe your target audience? What is the business benefit?
Creating and promoting a product that fully meets the needs of potential customers is only possible if you have thoroughly researched your target audience. A clear understanding of it guarantees a lot of benefits – from creating relevant adverts to developing measures to stimulate customers and increase their loyalty.
Understanding and effectively working with your target audience keeps you ahead of your competitors. It is necessary to analyze consumers:
- marketers;
- e-commerce entrepreneurs;
- contextual and targeted advertising managers;
- copywriters to write selling texts.
Hoping for spontaneous purchases in today’s reality is utopian, and in highly competitive industries, it’s absurd.
Defining the target audience is essential for:
- planning business strategies;
- identifying and attracting new customers;
- crafting personalized marketing offers;
- developing a user-friendly online store;
- creating compelling unique selling propositions (USPs);
- growing a personal blog or social media presence;
- optimizing ad spending by selecting the best channels and refining targeting;
- running successful PR campaigns and marketing events;
- scaling business operations and expanding the customer base.
If you ignore the stage of describing the target audience, you risk wasting your advertising budget by directing your marketing resources to groups of people who do not need your product. Precise audience targeting boosts sales while optimizing marketing expenses.
Examples of target audience descriptions
First of all, it should be understood that the description and significant characteristics of the target audience are more difficult to collect the broader it is.
A key characteristic of a well-defined target audience is its clear segmentation based on needs and behaviors.
1 example. Vague characterization of the target audience
Washing powder. Let’s answer the question – who buys it? Women aged 22-60. This answer does not take into account the characteristics of the product at all. It is not known what price category the product belongs to, what type of washing it is intended for, whether it has additional properties, or whether it is hypoallergenic or not. A more accurate characterization should include, at a minimum:
- marital status;
- average income
- presence of children;
- amount of time free from work;
- attitude to environmental issues, etc.
This data is also not exhaustive, but it can already bring you closer to a sale. A vague description is fraught with excessively high advertising costs (with up to 70% of the budget wasted), low competitiveness of the product, and its likely failure in the market.
2 example. Specific description (target audience example)
Fashionable women’s designer clothes.
- Audience – women aged 28 to 45.
- Geography – one country, big cities.
- Average income – from 1000$ per month.
- Field of activity – work in reputable companies, which allows them to spend money on fashionable branded clothing.
- Higher education (or several).
- Free time (consumer activity) – from 20:00 to 00:00.
- Interests: career growth, stylish appearance, fashion trends.
- Main traits – success, passion for work, self-sufficiency, determination.
- Preferences – vacation abroad.
- Marital status – married (1 or more children), divorced.
This description gives us a narrow range of solvent potential customers for whom designer clothes are of real interest. Both young students and women over 50 can buy, but it is more likely to be rare, or they will prefer products in the lower price segment.
How to understand your target audience? Ways to create a customer profile
A comprehensive description will not be limited to socio-demographic and some behavioral characteristics. To create advertising messages that hit the “pains” of a potential buyer, you need to understand what problems and tasks they want to solve with your products and services. So, you need to segment your target audience.
If, for example, all potential customers of a cleaning company need cleanliness, the reasons for contacting them may vary greatly:
- acute lack of free time (working young families);
- lack of appropriate equipment and special tools (apartment owners who rent out their apartments);
- the need for regular office cleaning (businessmen, entrepreneurs).
Thus, each segment of the target audience will respond to a specific advertising message addressed to them and meet their individual needs. Let’s take a look at the methods and tools you can use to create a reliable portrait of your target audience.
- Sociological surveys. You can use special online services (Google Forms, survio.com, etc.), many of which have free features.
- Questionnaires. One option is a form in your account that allows you to get information from those who have already bought your products.
- Direct communication with customers and personal observations.
- Training and professional consultations. The experience of successful entrepreneurs in bringing goods to the market will certainly be useful.
- Web analytics services from search engines. Google Analytics makes it easy to collect data about website visitors.
- Social networks. Here you will find an inexhaustible source of information about your customers – their interests and hobbies, field of activity, and leisure. At the same time, you will also get data about groups and websites that are popular with your customers, so that you can turn them into platforms for advertisements.
- Call tracking. Thanks to a system that identifies the source of the call and allows you to record it, a lot of data is generated for analysis. You will find out what questions your visitors are looking for answers to, what problems they have, what search queries they use to come to your resource, etc.
- Mystery shopping. This method is suitable for evaluating the work of your competitors, their service, and the quality of goods. It also provides an opportunity to borrow original and interesting ideas from them.
How to understand your target audience? Ways to create a customer profile
A comprehensive description will not be limited to socio-demographic and some behavioral characteristics. To create advertising messages that hit the “pains” of a potential buyer, you need to understand what problems and tasks they want to solve with your products and services. So, you need to segment your target audience.
If, for example, all potential customers of a cleaning company need cleanliness, the reasons for contacting them may vary greatly:
- acute lack of free time (working young families);
- lack of appropriate equipment and special tools (apartment owners who rent out their apartments);
- the need for regular office cleaning (businessmen, entrepreneurs).
Thus, each segment of the target audience will respond to a specific advertising message addressed to them and meet their individual needs. Let’s take a look at the methods and tools you can use to create a reliable portrait of your target audience.
- Sociological surveys. You can use special online services (Google Forms, survio.com, etc.), many of which have free features.
- Questionnaires. One option is a form in your account that allows you to get information from those who have already bought your products.
- Direct communication with customers and personal observations.
- Training and professional consultations. The experience of successful entrepreneurs in bringing goods to the market will certainly be useful.
- Web analytics services from search engines. Google Analytics makes it easy to collect data about website visitors.
- Social networks. Here you will find an inexhaustible source of information about your customers – their interests and hobbies, field of activity, and leisure. At the same time, you will also get data about groups and websites that are popular with your customers, so that you can turn them into platforms for advertisements.
- Call tracking. Thanks to a system that identifies the source of the call and allows you to record it, a lot of data is generated for analysis. You will find out what questions your visitors are looking for answers to, what problems they have, what search queries they use to come to your resource, etc.
- Mystery shopping. This method is suitable for evaluating the work of your competitors, their service, and the quality of goods. It also provides an opportunity to borrow original and interesting ideas from them.
