Target audience: what it is and how to define it

To effectively promote the company’s product on the market and create a correctly working marketing strategy, it is necessary to clearly understand who needs this product. That is, determining who the end customer is in each specific case. In this article, we will analyze in detail, using examples, everything about the most accurate definition of the target audience, what it is and why it is necessary to know it.

What is a target audience?

Every company owner should understand that studying your customer is a very important step to get a large number of customers, thanks to which you do not need to spend an extra budget on site promotion with goods or services. So, the target audience is your potential customers, people who are united by common interests, pains, fears, desires, dreams and needs. It is for these users that the advertising campaign should be adjusted. Therefore, the more you can narrow down and specify the description of the target audience, the more effective advertising will work.

For the most accurate definition of CA, it is divided into segments with common features. A group of people can be of the same age, gender, social status, marital status, live in a certain location. In addition, the description must include the following general features:

• need for a product or service; for example, a basketball player will want to buy quality sports clothes and shoes in an online store, and a motorcycle owner will want to buy replacement parts for him and update his overalls for safe rides;
• a real opportunity to spend money on what is offered; an elite beauty salon is unlikely to be popular in a residential area, and students, for example, will not buy vacation tours with a high check;
• ease of perception of changes; there are people who very easily change their preferences and buy things from different brands, and there is such a segment that is devoted exclusively to one – in this case, the work of a marketer becomes much more difficult.

It is worth noting the concept of “core target audience” separately. This is a group of consumers who actively and easily make purchases, constantly repeat orders, and even help promote the company for free by recommending the product to their friends or acquaintances. It is this group of buyers that is very important, you need to define it, pay special attention to it, encourage and interest it in various ways.

CAs are distinguished by:

• species – primary and secondary source;
• width – wide and narrow;
• type of target group – B2B, B2C.

We will consider the features of these segments in more detail below.

It doesn’t matter whether you work with a marketer or decide to promote yourself, remember – no matter how useful and cool your product is, there is still a group of people who need it. Defining a too broad target audience is the way to unjustified budget expenditures, unprofitability of advertising and longer promotion in general.

If the definition is limited to the description of “men and women 20-50 years old”, then it will give you almost no results. This is too little, and the chance to satisfy the need of such a wide audience is slim.

The first thing to find out is the type of target audience to whom advertising from the site will be directed.

Types of target audience

All CA can be divided into two types, which in turn are influenced by certain factors.

1. The primary source is the people who buy the product.
2. Secondary source – those who directly influence the purchase, but do not initiate it.

For example, let’s take a CA for a travel agency – a family with two children. A man buys a tour – he is primary. The wife and children want to go on vacation more, they influence the husband’s desire, so it is secondary.

There are many factors to consider in order to target your ads to the primary source, i.e. paying potential customers, then the result will be more accurate.

The following parameters should be kept in mind:

• the width of the audience, that is, the scope of interest – wide, for example, chocolate lovers, narrow – connoisseurs of chocolate candies with cherries inside;
• the type of target group – the B2B segment, that is, an intermediary between production and the buyer, the owner of the company, or B2C – the end consumer of your product or service;
• readiness to buy – there is a cold, warm and hot audience that is at different stages of readiness; in the first – CA who just learned about the company, in the second – those who are familiar, but do not yet have the goal of buying, the third – these are already real customers who are familiar with all the necessary information and are ready to buy;
• demographic data – gender, approximate age, marital status, income level, ethnicity, race, religion;
• user location is an extremely important parameter, includes data on the location of the CA; especially important if your company operates offline in a specific location or the online store does not have nationwide or global shipping;
• psychographic information – data on lifestyle, social status, hobbies, interests, hobbies; helps to better understand the needs of the consumer;
• behavioral data – information with which sites a potential customer interacts most often, what actions he performs on the site.

What is CA and what to consider when analyzing it is clear, but why is it so important to know?

Why is it important to correctly define the target audience?

Making a qualitative analysis of the target audience is a long and painstaking work. Many believe that due to the large number of questions that need to be researched and written down, this stage is best omitted altogether. But this is the wrong approach, because without knowledge of CA, the owners of online stores and service sites will not get the desired income as a result.

Even experienced marketers cannot randomly select potential customers for a random company, and competent website owners understand even more that you cannot know your customer perfectly without analysis.

When you manage to do the CA analysis correctly, in addition to saving the advertising budget, you immediately get the opportunity to:

1. Improve the product and adjust the current assortment.
   There is such a well-known expression – “for every product there is a buyer”. For example, an average 60-year-old retired man will never appreciate a new iPhone in the same way as a 30-40-year-old businessman who is constantly online and has many meetings a day with partners. In the first case, the gadget is simply not needed, and in the second case, it is a status indicator and a way to declare yourself as a serious person.
2. Create a promotion strategy and advertising campaign, which will give the best results.
   Understanding which segment the product is intended for, it is easier to choose the format and place of promotion, create advertising creatives and show the most profitable aspects of the company’s product or service.
3. Choose a tone of voice, i.e. a style of communication with clients, so that they feel comfortable.
   Thanks to understanding how it is convenient for your target audience to communicate, you can receive high-quality feedback, improve the level of service and the product itself, and include such actions in the advertising campaign that will attract a large number of new customers. Depending on the age category and social status of a person, you need to choose a communication format and follow it both offline and online. As a result, the company’s image and customer loyalty will improve.
4. To bypass competitors.
   A poorly configured ad that misses the target becomes a fatal mistake – your potential customer goes to a competitor. Of course, in this case, he will not return to you. The effectiveness of the marketing strategy is very closely related to the knowledge of CA, because by finding your audience and identifying loyal customers, you can get much more income than having ten customers who buy only once and do not return.Loyal customers become so-called “brand advocates”, recommend your company and product, attract new customers with their sincere recommendations.
5. Speed ​​up promotion and development of the site, social networks (Facebook, Instagram, etc.).
   The time and costs of promotion will be significantly reduced, which will improve the overall state of affairs and allow you to correctly allocate the budget and get better results at the end.
6. Find points for growth.
   To grow your business and increase your market share, you need to focus on customers who already trust your brand. They are the key to development; their feedback and suggestions will allow us to improve or create a radically new assortment that will be purchased with pleasure.

Let’s consider an example of how the selection of a specific portrait of the target audience affects business.

You are the owner of an online school that teaches SMM specialists You are targeting all women who are interested in the topic of promotion in social networks and are waiting. But time passes and it becomes clear that a relevant offer should be aimed at a narrower audience.

After collecting information and conducting a detailed analysis, you conclude that your courses are interesting to many people, but segmentation will make advertising more targeted and give a better result. You take into account age, marital status, presence of children, language of communication, desired income, previous promotion experience and even whether a person has taken similar courses before and what result he got. And now the launch of various advertisements, aimed at specific people, gives a WOW effect! Attend the course:

• mothers on maternity leave who aim to earn money for their child’s wishes and whims;
• students who decided to try to develop themselves in a new direction and earn an income of $1000 per month over time;
• people who had a negative experience on similar courses, but still want to get to the bottom of it and make money online;
• SMM specialists who have work experience, but want to update their knowledge and get fresh information on the market.

And this is already a huge number of segmented target audience, understanding the needs of which you can achieve the maximum effect from the advertising campaign.

What is target audience segmentation and why is it needed?

As we mentioned, segmentation is the division of the entire target audience into certain groups. Each segment has a list of characteristics:

• geography and language of communication;
• socio-demographic data;
• psychographic;
• Internet experience (important for digital product promotion);
• needs – internal (related to a person’s emotional state) and external (the goal of obtaining is social approval);
• possible objections – reasons why a person is not ready to buy here and now; you need to work with objections, proving to the potential buyer the advantages of buying the product.

The division into segments provides insight into the demand for the product and the estimated number of potential customers.

How to make a portrait of the target audience: practical methods

There are 4 main ways to identify potential customers for your product.

1. “5W” is a method when, in order to gain an understanding of who to sell to and what are the features of the target audience, we answer 5 questions: What? Who? Why? When? Where?

2. “From the reverse” – think through the customer’s path from the end point to the first contact: what did the person get from the purchase, what were his needs and desires initially. Then analyze which target audience segments are most likely to have similar needs and run your ads.

3. “From the product” – describe all the unusual properties of the product that it may have, compare with similar products of competitors, highlight all the pros and cons of yours, add data from a survey of your real customers and describe the CA segments.

4. “From the market” – we study the market, looking for real ready-made reports on the sales effectiveness of a similar product, conduct a CA survey, analyze the performance of competitors, compile a detailed description of the target audience.

The most important action after describing the CA is testing hypotheses and determining the most effective one.

Please note that the method of determining the target audience is selected depending on the type of resource.

The target audience of the website

The CA of the site is interested in the content published on the site. Understanding that one of the segments is precisely such visitors, it is much easier to think over the content plan and choose methods of promotion. Analyze existing user data or analyze competitors’ sites using specialized services.

Target audience of the online store site

It is divided into 2 types:

• who comes to see reviews, read the description, compare prices;
• who comes purposefully to buy.

If possible, the task is to retain the second group and interest the first with the help of quality content, interesting offers, bonuses.

Target audience of advertising

There are also users who are looking for an opportunity to advertise their own site or product on third-party sites. They can also be determined using special methods, which we will talk about later.

Additional methods of determining CA

To obtain more detailed data about potential customers, there are 4 more interesting ways:

1. Analysis of the sites of competitors and their customers. We conduct website analytics and watch social networks.
2. Social networks, forums. Collecting data from social networks works well, because there you can see what and how customers ask competitors, what worries them, and what problems they want to solve. Forums are a whole separate world where people can describe their needs in detail, and this should be used for their own purposes.
3. Analysis of user behavior on your site. It is necessary to monitor the behavior of visitors, which pages they visit, what they click on, how long they stay on certain pages.
4. Questionnaires, surveys. This is one of the fastest ways to get feedback and adjust your product so that it meets the needs of consumers as best as possible. All the questions that we have already described can be added to the survey: age, gender, place of residence, education, marital status, income, hobbies and, of course, a request to indicate what problems a person encountered during the purchase of a product or service.

Portrait of the target audience: an example

An example of a portrait of the target audience can be as follows:

When we have received this general description, we highlight the portrait of the consumer, that is, we clearly segment those women who want to open, for example, a beauty salon.

Thanks to a detailed description, it becomes clear the goal, motivation, feelings, problems, needs of the potential client that your business should solve.

Tools for target audience analysis

To evaluate the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, you can use tools that will help you get analytical data in digital form. Let’s consider them.

Facebook and Instagram

Data from these social networks is one of the best ways to get important data about CA. Here you can get metrics from groups and communities, discover user interests, and targeted advertising will tell you how to narrow the audience using various parameters. A big advantage is the presence of business tools within these social networks, with which it is easy to create and promote events involving your product.

Google Analytics

Google is the first place most people go to search for goods and services. Potential buyers find options for solving their problem in the search engine, compare benefits and study reviews. Google Analytics helps you measure the entire customer journey, which will tell you how to improve your product and website.

Affinity Index

The relevance index is used in marketing to track how much better the target audience interacted with the event than the base audience. With the help of the affinity index, it is possible to analyze a person’s lifestyle and hobbies in order to predict possible changes in the preferences of a particular website visitor.

Email segmentation

The tool should be used after receiving warm customers, that is, those who are already interested in your product. Subscription forms and email campaigns segment existing subscribers from the site and provide insight into what to offer them as the next stage of sales.

To summarize

Understanding how to determine the target audience in general and separately for the site, social networks or other resources, you will develop a quality marketing strategy. You will have the most accurate information about people’s problems and needs, their objections and dreams, priorities and socio-demographic data. This will help to create and launch advertising that will hit the target and turn the customer from cold to warm or even immediately hot, ready to buy.

By helping your potential customers grow their business or improve their quality of life, you will automatically gain loyal customers, increase the number of new customers and increase your income.

Olha Tyshchenko

Editor

Author's page