What is a target audience, and why do you need to define yours before your business can succeed with its sales and marketing campaigns?
The unfortunate truth is no matter how broadly beneficial your product or service might seem to be, it’s not going to appeal to everyone. In any industry or sector, there are specific customers who are more likely to purchase a solution or product than others.
These are the members of your target audience.
Learning which customers or prospects you should target with your sales and marketing campaigns mean you’ll spend less time and money trying to nurture the wrong leads, and more effort building relationships with your ideal customer base.
What is a Target Audience? An Introduction
Defining your target audience starts with learning what a target audience actually is. In simple terms, a target audience is a group of people identified as the most likely potential customers of your business, product, or service. They’re the people most likely to buy your solutions, invest in your growth, and respond to your marketing efforts.
Companies identify their “ideal customer” by looking at people who share similar traits. For instance, your target audience might be defined by demographic data, such as people of a specific age, gender, or socioeconomic status. Your target audience might live in a specific country, or have shared interests, goals, and pain points.
Understanding your target audience is crucial for any business owner, sales rep or marketing professional. It ensures instead of spending resources and money trying to cater to every customer, you focus your efforts on interacting with the most valuable potential customers.
How Do You Find your Target Audience?
So, how do you find your target audience? There’s no one-size-fits-all audience that works for every company. Even if your ideal customer shares some demographic characteristics with the audience of your competitors, they might have different pain points, concerns, or goals.
To truly identify your target audience, you’ll need to think about the needs and pain points your product or service can address, your position in your current market, and your ability to serve a specific customer base. Notably, you may also have multiple different types of target audiences, or various “segments” you target within your marketing strategy.
Here are some steps you can take to start understanding your customer base, and building your insights into your ideal customer.
Step 1: Look at your current customers
The easiest way to get a behind-the-scenes view of your target audience is to look at the customers you already serve. Unless your business is brand-new, you’re likely to have at least some people in your contact list who have already shown interest in your products.
Talk to these customers, and issue surveys to collect not just demographic information, but behavioral and psychographic insights too. Invest in learning everything you can about:
- Their demographics: What’s the average age of your ideal customer? Do they belong to a specific cultural group or gender? Are they located in a certain area or country?
- Pain points and goals: What problems do customers you serve want to solve? What benefits can your solution or service offer, and who can you benefit most? What kind of goals do you help your customers to achieve?
- Behavioral data: How do your customers find out about you? (i.e., social media platforms, referrals, SEO campaigns, blog post content, etc.). What does their customer journey look like, and what steps do they take when making a purchase?
It’s also worth speaking to your audience about the reasons they choose you over your competitors. Find out what your customers consider your main selling point or advantages to be.
Step 2: Leverage social media analytics
Social media platforms don’t just give companies an excellent way to enhance their marketing strategy and boost brand awareness. They’re also ideal if you want to find your target audience, and learn more about their needs.
Social media analytics and reporting tools can provide you with a behind-the-scenes insight into which customers respond to your content marketing campaigns, where your followers come from, and even what kind of hobbies or interests you might have.
Even the built-in analytical tools available for platforms like Instagram and Facebook can provide insights into your customer’s location, age, career, household income, and gender. You can also utilize additional social tools, such as social media monitoring and listening platforms, to learn more about what your customers say about your brand, and how they compare you to competitors.
Step 3: Dig into content analytics
A content marketing campaign, utilizing blog post content, podcasts, videos, and other valuable assets, can help you to grow your business and attract new customers. However, the right marketing campaign can also be an excellent source of data.
Tools like Google analytics can provide insights into demographic information, showing you how website visitors break down by location, age, and other factors. Content analysis tools can also help you to find out where visitors on your website come from, which keywords they search for, and which topics or concepts resonate most with them.
Using Google analytics and social media analytics together can help you to build more in-depth insights into your target audience. You can even use tools to analyze the ranking and performance of competitor sites, to see if you’re missing any opportunities in the form of content gaps.
Step 4: Examine your competitors
Speaking of your competitors, they can also offer some useful information on your target audience, and who your ideal customer should be. Although the competitors in your niche might not be targeting the exact same customers as you, there’s a good chance they’re trying to appeal to a similar group.
Use your analytical tools to find out which types of customers other businesses are targeting in their content marketing and social media campaigns. Find out what pain points they’re trying to address, which benefits they highlight in their marketing copy, and what customers think about them.
Analyzing the target audience of your competitors will not only give you an insight into the customers you should be reaching, but it can also help you to define growth opportunities in niches other competitors are missing. Remember to pay attention to exactly what types of content and campaigns your competitors are using to drive sales and conversions.
Step 5: Set your parameters
Making sure your sales and marketing strategy targets people most likely to buy from your company also means identifying the customers you’re not trying to reach. As much as you might like to serve every customer, there are likely to be people your product or solution won’t be suitable for.
For example, if you’re selling premium website-building software, then you’re not targeting people looking for a basic, free platform. With this in mind, look at all the information you’ve gathered so far, then identify the people you don’t serve.
Setting these parameters will help to guide your marketing efforts, sales strategy, and your overall approach to business, so you don’t waste money on the wrong tactics. It can also be particularly useful when you’re creating paid advertising campaigns, as it allows you to choose negative keywords, and specific customers you definitely don’t want to reach.
Step 6: Create your target audience profiles
Finally, after you’ve curated all the data you need about your followers, customers, and potential prospects, the next step is putting everything together. Creating an audience profile for your ideal customer, or customers, is a great way to ensure you can always step into the shoes of the right market when advertising a product or service.
Your profile should outline all of the information a marketer or sales professional would need to know when engaging with potential customers, such as:
- Demographic information: Location, age, gender identity, job title, industry, household income, etc.
- Psychographic information: Education level, hobbies, interests, values, goals, and pain points related to your product/service.
- Behavioral information: Platform usage, customer journey strategy, research strategies, preferences for communicating with companies
You can share these profiles with your team members, helping them to understand exactly what type of customers you’re trying to serve when creating marketing and sales campaigns.
Examples of Target Audiences
Understanding your target audience can seem like a complex process at first, particularly if you’re new to the concept of audience research and persona development. Sometimes, looking at examples from other leading companies can help you to guide your own strategy.
Here are some examples of target audiences, created by well-known brands:
- Apple: Apple targets customers all over the world who have an interest in innovation and excellent user experiences. They position themselves as a lifestyle company, designed to support customers in the constant search for innovation.
- Nike: Nike’s target audience is also broad, covering all kinds of people who have fitness and wellness goals. The company advertises itself as a motivational company built to inspire and empower customers of all ages and backgrounds.
- Target: Target targets customers in search of excellent deals and savings. It adjusts its marketing strategy to serve the customers its most likely to interact with on specific platforms. For instance, the language used on Target’s social media accounts is more relaxed and laid-back, geared towards a younger crowd.
Defining and Using Your Target Audience
Defining your target audience is essential, no matter which industry you operate in. The more you know about your ideal customer, their pain points, and demographic information, the more you can position your product or service as the ideal solution for them.
With the steps above, you should be able to define a target audience of your own, and use it to guide your sales and marketing behaviors.
If you want to learn more about finding your target audience and using it to your advantage, join Hard Skill Exchange today. Our sales experts will ensure you’re targeting the right people for your business.
