Many people today operate with such a concept as target audience, although they do not realize the full depth and complexity of this term.
The main property of the target audience is its needs and inclination towards certain topics, thanks to which this target audience can be effectively (the result for an entrepreneur is a successful sale) to offer any goods or services.
Here are just some typical examples:
- Men aged 20-35 who play sports will be the target audience for the creators of sports nutrition;
- Women with a child under 2-3 years of age are the target audience for manufacturers of products for babies;
- Pensioners suffering from high blood pressure will be more likely than other members of society to buy blood pressure monitors, etc.
The task of determining the target audience is key for every entrepreneur or manufacturer who wants to derive maximum benefit from their activities.
What types of target audience are there?
Each field of activity has its own rules for choosing target audience. The types of target audience depend on many factors, for example, on the solvency of potential clients, their wishes and all sorts of preferences, desire to follow popular trends, etc.
Each researcher of the issue has the right to make his own classification, but today Central Asia is divided by specialists into two main and large-scale camps:
- The main part or the main target audience. This includes those people who directly make decisions about which brand of goods to buy and what services to order. Representatives of the main part themselves initiate the future investigation; they are the owners of the money;
- Indirect part. The characteristics of this target audience may vary, but the common thing is that its representatives have a passive role in a future purchase or order. They cannot initiate the transaction, do not have money at all, or enough money to purchase something.
This division is now the most used and widespread. Research into target audiences of both types is important for marketers, as it allows them to develop the most workable solutions to implement their assumptions.
How to identify the target audience and analyze it?
A huge number of marketers are involved in determining the target audience, who strive to guess the wishes of potential clients as much as possible and make sure that the goods and services of their partners are sold out as intensively as possible.
The values of each target audience may diverge significantly, so it is important to define your target audience very clearly. For example, you can try to form a target audience of gadget lovers, but if you ask how many of them love smart watches or smartphones, it turns out that there are very few of the former. Therefore, a smartwatch seller cannot count on such an audience.
To determine your group of buyers, for whom certain things will then be offered, you can use simple sources, for example, the Internet. Today, almost everyone uses it, so there is no problem in finding out the mood of the people and their disposition to buy this or that thing at a certain price. It is important not only to compile a database of interests of your potential buyers, but also to periodically refresh and optimize it with updated data.
For example, periodic surveys are suitable for this. Analytical services Wordstat and Google Trands will help you understand the overall picture of demand on the Internet for a product or service at a specific time in the desired region. Using these services, you can find out in which region which queries are most popular. For example, you can see how the demand of the target audience (the number of requests on the Internet) for the purchase of scooters grows or falls over time. This tool is useful for performing analytics.
Selecting the target audience and selection criteria for the group
To determine your potential consumers, you must first of all draw up a portrait of a typical client. This is necessary in order to clearly understand with whom you will have to interact and what rules you should adhere to.
Drawing up a client portrait should take into account the following important points:
- Selection of target audience begins with determining age;
- The gender of a person plays a very important role, since women and men in most cases are aimed at completely different objects for purchase;
- Income level. The key point to which the manufacturer or seller of goods or services must adapt. If people don’t have the kind of money you expect from them, then no matter how good your proposal is, it will not receive a response;
- Marital status, level of education and cultural development, field of activity – these are no less important points that are always worth remembering.
The description of the target audience should be as complete as possible, especially where it concerns really important things. This is the only way to expect maximum response from the consumer. The benefit of drawing up an adequate portrait of the average client is that the entrepreneur will be able to take extremely reasonable steps and minimize the likelihood that there will be no takers for his product.
Segmenting your target audience using the 5W method
Target audience segmentation is the process of dividing potential buyers into separate groups that will have similar requirements for a product or service. The more competently the segmentation is carried out, the more accurately you can determine the group of people interested in the product. People are not original and they always have some common views on the product, requirements for it, wishes regarding delivery features, etc.
Segments of the target audience, even regarding the same market position, may be so different that they will not agree with each other on the main issues. For example, take washing powder. One lady needs powder for washing children’s clothes, another – for washing in any water temperature, the third needs a powder with a strong deodorant effect. They all end up in different interest groups.
There are many segmentation methods, but the most famous and popular among them is the 5W method. This is the 5 questions method, which consists of answering the following:
- What – what product or service do you offer, how do they differ from others;
- Who – here segmentation takes place by buyer: for whom is your offer intended, who can buy it;
- Why – a motivational component that explains why people will want to buy this particular item;
- When – This is a division in relation to when the consumer will need to buy the product offered;
- Where – Where a person may come across the idea that he should get his hands on the thing you are offering.
This is segmentation of the target audience according to the 5W rule. It is quite specific and allows you to quickly determine the portrait of your future consumer. Having a portrait of the target audience compiled using the 5W method, you can take on product development much more confidently.
Defining the target audience: how to correctly describe the target audience
There are many characteristics that can be used to describe target audience. Most often, division occurs according to the following key parameters:
Geolocation
It is very important to understand where your future client is, where he lives, works, what he does in his free time, where he will use the thing that you are trying to sell him.
Demographics
This includes age, gender, marital status, presence or absence of children, and other similar things. They are of key interest to a competent marketer, as they allow one to very accurately determine a person’s hobbies.
Socio-economic characteristics
How much money does your potential visitor have, how much of it is he willing to spend on what you offer him, what status and place he occupies in society, what he does in his business life. The portrait of the target audience, an example of which was given above, will be incomplete without such information.
Psychographic segmentation
Quite a difficult task, which sets the goal of taking into account the mental characteristics of the consumer. But studying them is difficult, so the picture here will always be incomplete.
Behavioral factor
The most important point, which, if implemented correctly, can replace all the others. For example, if you are going to sell fishing gear, then it is not at all necessary to know the age, place of residence and mental characteristics of each fisherman. It is enough to know that they love spinning rods and large bright floats.
Taking into account these points, you can create a very clear portrait of the future consumer and guess his aspirations.
Characteristics of the target audience and features of working with it
There is no need to stay on the decision to work with the target audience for long – you need to move on to studying it and using the information received. The process generally looks like this:
Creating a unique selling proposition (USP)
When you understand who you want to target your proposal to, you need to specify it and bring it to its final form. Any target audience, examples of which are shown above, craves something new, more accessible, interesting and profitable. You have to give it to her, taking into account all the characteristics of the average client. The product may be typical, but its design options, some features and features of the advertising campaign must be adjusted to the collected information.
Active use of the Affinity Index
This concept refers to how much more actively the target audience interacted with the object of their interest compared to other people. If the index is high, then the target audience was determined correctly, but if not, the analysis of the target audience was carried out with errors and needs to be corrected.
Using multiple channels to interact with target audience
Many advertising agencies are conservative in this regard and use at most 3-4 channels. But the more there are, the better, so there is no point in saving here. You can use search engine optimization, contextual and targeted advertising, email newsletters, message boards and forms, as well as a ton of marketing tools.
All these tools and a competent choice of the target audience together will definitely give the desired effect and allow you to beat your competitors in the development and popularity of your business.
What does the issue of stereotypes mean for the target audience?
The concept of the target audience, methods for defining it, and other difficulties create the impression of talking about something too far away. But we should not forget that the target audience is, first of all, ordinary people. And they are fully susceptible to a huge number of stereotypes – patterns of behavior and thinking accepted by the majority of society.
Stereotypes can be of various kinds, but they leave a very strong imprint on every person and force him to act with an eye on them. And it will work in exactly the same way when purchasing a product or service.
The general characteristics of the target audience should always imply the effect of stereotypes on society, even in a somewhat crude and generalized form.
Using a portrait and characteristics of the target audience: what tools to work with
If you already have criteria for selecting the target audience, a portrait of the target audience has been drawn up, then all that remains is to apply the data in practice. This can be done using a huge number of different programs.
Here is just a small part of the target audience search services and applications present on the network:
- Similar Web;
- Plarin;
- SocFishing;
- Hiconversion;
- Allsocial and many others.
