Why You Need to Define Your Target Audience and How to Do It

     Everyone agrees on one point about the target audience — it is a key concept for a business. Any company's marketing strategy depends heavily on how precisely it is defined. Yet defining the target audience often runs into problems, because mistakes creep in that cancel out the effect of advertising and lead to negative results.

     What a target audience is

     By definition, a target audience is a community of people interested in getting your product or service. In practice things are less clear-cut. Take a line of business like this one — selling car parts: they interest car owners and also various auto repair shops, which fall within your target customer circle too. So the target audience is best seen as a group of people who are highly likely to be interested in a specific offer.

     A target audience can be described by the following important factors:

1. Interest — it is important to spark interest in the product or service, taking into account the individual characteristics of a given category of people and their needs.

2. Purchasing power. It is important to split the potential audience into groups by purchasing power. If the product is expensive, only those who can afford the purchase can become its target audience.

3. Openness to new things. Many consumers are extremely firm in their conservatism and find it hard to change their tastes and long-held preferences. They are unlikely to become a target audience for new brands. For a newcomer in business, the promising target audience worth the effort of winning over is people who respond well to advertising and are open to new brands. 

     Once you have an accurate portrait of the potential audience, aim at it the marketing messages that will appeal most to your groups of future customers. This audience should be broken down into separate segments by various parameters: geographic, professional, social, financial, educational and others.  

Types of target audience

     Target audiences of businesses can be divided by how important they are to the business. The first level — the core audience, which has a direct interest in a particular company's product. These people plan the purchase in advance and already feel loyal both to the product and to the company offering it. The second level is people with an indirect connection to the product.

     In addition, target audiences are divided into three  groups — B2C, B2B, B2G.

1. B2C — business to consumer. In other words, the company is focused on meeting the needs of end consumers, and the people who use the company's products become its target audience.

2. B2B — business to business, meaning a business aimed at keeping another business running. In this case the target audience is the intermediary structures that bring goods to the end consumer. This also includes companies that use materials, spare parts and components made by other companies to run their own business.

3. B2G — business to government, whose target audience is government bodies or state enterprises that place orders under public procurement. So to promote your products and draw attention to them, you will have to influence the responsible officials ,who choose the contractor for the government order.

Why does the target audience matter?

      If you don't study your target audience's needs well, any advertising will be ineffective. If you ignore the specifics of your target audience, you can't make a business truly successful. Whoever knows the main traits of the typical customer for their products gets plenty of advantages that help the business grow. To improve your business prospects, follow these useful tips:

• learn to adapt to the preferences of your potential buyers; this makes it easier for them to decide in your favor and buy exactly your range;
  
  
• learn to win the trust of the interested group of people and advertise your products in language they understand;
  
  
• identify the criteria that matter most to your audience and bet on them;
  
  
• personalize your ad mailings as much as possible, make communication with customers individual and targeted;
  
  
• choose the right advertising tools and smart marketing moves.

A way to identify a promising target audience

     There are several ways to define a target audience, and here we will go through one — the most common and effective. To use it, split the audience into segments with the help of five important questions:

1. What? Define the product's main characteristics — its appearance, functions, what it is for, its pros and cons, its features and everything else related to it.

2. Who? Work out who finds your product interesting and important: a man or a woman, age range, interests, marital status, financial means, etc.

3. Why? Determine which criteria the buyer uses to make a positive purchase decision: price, reliability, quality, brand and so on.

4. When? Establish when your customer shops: in the daytime or evening, in physical stores or online, on weekdays or weekends, and so on.

5. Where? Understand where the product is bought: in shopping malls, at markets, from street vendors, online or somewhere else.

     The target audience is also divided into four categories:

1.  Geography — breakdown by region, city and district to account for the specifics of consumers in different places.

2. Demographics — the buyer's age and gender, religious preferences, whether they have a family and children.

3. Social status — education, income, whether they own a home and a car, and so on.

4. Psychology — worldview, principles, lifestyle.

     To identify the characteristics you need, there are the following marketing tools:

• polls on social media;
  
  
• themed surveys on your website;
  
  
• offline questionnaires;
  
  
• market research.

     If you want your business to be profitable and stable, pay attention to refining the portrait of your target audience. This will help promote your products among the most promising group of target consumers.