You can have the best marketing plan and execution in the world, but if you don’t know who your target audience is, you are going to struggle to see any improvements in the number of enquiries, leads and sales you have.
In this article, we are going to discuss the importance of knowing your perfect target audience and how you can find it.
What is a target audience?
A target audience (also known as target market) is a group of people who share similar characteristics and behaviours that you think would best suit your business and could become potential customers and clients. Depending on what is right for your business, your target audience could be a niche market, a geographical audience or a mass audience.
The term segmentation is often used in terms of target audience. This means you will break up your audience into smaller groups enabling you to deliver very specific targeted marketing to.
It’s important to remember that just because you are marketing to one specific target audience, doesn’t mean that you can’t accept or will not get sales from other groups. It is just the audience group that you will be focusing your marketing efforts on.
Here are some general ways of grouping potential audiences:
- Age
- Gender
- Income
- Location
- Interests and hobbies
- Behaviours
Why is knowing your target audience so important?
Before you begin marketing, you need to know your target audience so that you can ensure your efforts are hitting the right mark. Knowing your target audience well means you’ll be saying the right thing to the right people, in the right places. It will also help you to market your business more effectively, with a smaller advertising expense. Not only this, it will save you lots of time and help you build better relationships with those individuals who fit the criteria of your target audience.
Should you go niche or broad with your target audience?
When deciding on how broad your target audience is going to be, there really is no right or wrong answer. You have to decide based on your ideal buyer persona. There are a few pros and cons for both a niche and broad audience.
Niche – Deeper relationship, more focussed messaging, more focussed budget, less opportunity for sales.
Broad – Wider brand awareness, larger opportunity for sales, bigger budget required, ideal for fast moving consumer goods.
How to identify your perfect target audience
- Analyse your current customers – Are there common features that jump out at you when you review your customer list?
- Look for industry trends – Who’s buying in the wider sector?
- Carry out market research
- Look at your competitors – You may have a different target audience in mind, but it will give you move information about who is buying similar services
- Look at your website and social media analytics
- Create a buyer persona (or avatar)
Creating a buyer persona
When putting together a buyer persona or avatar, go through the following questions and think about your ideal customer and how they would answer these, even if you don’t consider them to be relevant to your business.
- Gender?
- Age?
- How do they dress?
- How do they like to be perceived by others?
- Do they have children and/or pets?
- What level of education do they have?
- What’s their occupation?
- Where do they shop? Clothes/supermarket
- What’s their biggest worry in life?
- What’s most important to them?
- Political leanings?
- Are they glass half full or glass half empty?
- What media do they consume?
- Who is their role model?
- Who would benefit most from using your service/products?
- What pain points do they have in their life?
Once you have a clear idea of your target audience, you can start putting together your marketing plan to make sure you are getting your content in front of your target audience. Make sure that any marketing activities you choose are relevant to them and that your marketing messages will resonate.
Have you already found your perfect target audience and now need help with reaching them with your product or service? We can help!
Martin & Jones Marketing offer a range of monthly marketing packages to help your business thrive. Have a look at our packages here.