Have you ever felt drawn to a product after watching an advertisement on social media or in a magazine? If yes, that means the advertisement struck a chord somewhere that connected with you. For example, a working mother comes across an advertisement showing a woman just like her, getting through life and passing all the obstacles with flying colors.
That’s how the right target audience can create a powerful impact on your business.
One of the mistakes businesses make is intermingling the terms target market and target audience. A target market is a group of people to whom businesses sell their products because they need them. In comparison, the target audience is a narrowed-down version of the target market that is combined based on demographics and other similarities.
Understanding the target audience and how to approach them is the key to the success of marketing campaigns. Otherwise, your marketing efforts can fall flat, costing your business a fortune.
If you’re unsure how to find your target audience and how it can benefit your business, read this article as it unearths the benefits and challenges of having a target audience with examples.
Table of Contents
What is Target Audience?
A target audience refers to a specific group of people who are interested in a business’s products and services. Businesses should target these individuals in their advertising campaigns. Target audiences have common demographic characteristics such as:
- Age
- Location
- Gender
- Income
- Education
- Consumption Habits
- Employment
- Social Class
Your target audience research strongly influences your marketing strategy. Therefore, it’s essential to have clarity about your customers to plan your future products, marketing campaigns, advertisements, social media engagements, and website content.
Similarly, businesses that advertise and sell products to their target customers increase sales and eventually grow rather than spending money and effort on an unknown customer base.
Understanding the Target Audience?
When understanding the target audience, we’re discussing ways to define our specific customer base. That is, to gather information on their purchase needs, intentions, interests, and pains that influence the decision-making.
Following are some ways to define your target audience for a better understanding.
Recognize a Specific Need
It is vital to recognize your target audience to understand the specific need they want to satisfy. There are two factors to consider before acting:
- How to find and approach them?
- How can you help them?
Answering the first question is easy. Where is your target audience located physically, what online channels do they spend time on, and how often do they visit your website? Additionally, how to construct a clear message that resonates with their needs.
Secondly, what problem are you solving? For example, local startups want to hire affordable VAs (Virtual Assistants) for their business. Now, you know your target audience is local startups. Your message should address their needs clearly and in detail, targeting affordable VA services.
Understand Their Interests
What are your customer’s interests? Based on their behavior and demographics, what hobbies do they have? Asking questions gives marketers a clear idea of the motivation and thinking behind purchasing a specific product or service.
For instance, customers who like skiing in winter are advertised with skiing destinations, warm clothing, and equipment.
Similarly, suppose your target audience is bike travelers who spend their leisure time on the road. In that case, you can approach them with solutions such as handmade leather gloves, air-cutting jackets, and even bikes, depending on the industry and your products selling.
What Are Their Intentions
What are your customers’ findings? About what are they researching and gathering information? For example, customers type search queries about the products they seek, such as restaurants, jackets, laptops, televisions, etc. Collecting data can help you track your customer’s source and buying intentions.
Pains They Want To Resolve
Customers can feel emotions like depression, agitation, and anxiety if they can’t solve their problems. The solution is to ask targeted questions about their challenges and experiences. Many channels are available to gather crucial customer insights into your customer’s life. After all, online forms, feedback, follow-up emails, phone calls, and in-person meetings are meant to understand your target audience.
Note: All the above ways not only help you understand your target audience but make you realize the potential of your product or service. You and your products become relevant in customers’ life when you understand their desperate needs.
Benefits of Target Audience
Having a target audience has several benefits. As mentioned above, it sets the tone of your marketing strategy. Approaching your target audience first is recommended to pocket your foreseen profits rather than running after irrelevant customers.
Most businesses spend ample time planning their target audience strategy and message rather than executing it.
You want your marketing campaigns to run smoothly without hitting obstacles and unforeseen delays. Since time is crucial for any marketing campaign, delays might affect your company by losing a big chunk of the marketing budget, hurting your ROI (return on investment).
Therefore, before you begin selling your products or services, planning whom you want to sell to is essential. It will clarify the message you’re trying to deliver to your target audience and increase your brand’s worth by establishing trust.
Moreover, having a target audience builds a relevant connection between the brand and the customer, increasing sales and saving time and resources.
Challenges to Target Audience
Creating a target audience based on an ideal customer needs to be evaluated now and then. We live in an era where needs and preferences constantly change. Businesses need to research and live up to the changing customer demands continuously.
As businesses grow and expand their product lines, they also expand their customer base, diversifying their target audiences. Even a well-research target audience can become narrow enough to exclude potential customers.
Hence, target audiences should not be the end of a marketing strategy. They should be reevaluated whenever the company feels the need or experiences change.
Examples of Target Audiences
Target Audience: Men aged 30-40 who live in UAE, have a Master’s degree in Communication, have a monthly income of AED16,000 – AED18,000, and are looking to find the right studio apartment. They trust brands like Jubail Island.
Demographic Traits:
- Age: 30-40 years old
- Gender: Male
- Location: UAE
- Education: Master’s degree in Communication
- Income: AED16,000 – AED18,000 per month
- Values: Looking for the right studio apartment, trusts brands like Jubail Island.
Bottom Line:
- A target audience is a group of people that share common behaviors and demographics when buying from businesses.
- They are similar in age, gender, location, education, employment, etc.
- Target audience has several benefits, such as; creating effective marketing campaigns and constructing a clear message to communicate with customers.
- Businesses should reevaluate their target audience occasionally to keep up with the changing customer demands.
