Why should you define a target audience?
Simply defining your target audience ensures that your efforts, from marketing to customer service, are paying off and achieving the highest rates possible and are not being wasted for nothing. This includes:
1) Segmentation of the target market
After you have formed a view, albeit a superficial one, of your target market, it is also your turn to divide it in turn. The goal of this segment is to deliver highly personalized and specific marketing content to each specific segment within this broad target market.
There are four types of target market segmentation:
- Demographic segmentation: that is, dividing your audience according to their demographic information, such as age, gender, income level, social status, and others.
- Moral division: Here you have to divide your audience according to psychological factors such as opinions, interests, lifestyle, social status, and others.
For example, if your audience is interested in sports, you can target your ads in sports spaces and platforms, create a sports-themed ad campaign, or share sports-related content such as congratulations and encouragement, and so on. - Geographical division: This type of division means dividing individuals according to their living area.
Some customers may be local, and others may be from another region or country, and this division helps you direct your services and promote them effectively.
If your customers live in hot countries, for example, promoting merchandise or content related to the cold may not be a good idea.
Here, too, is an important point. Some countries may suffer from severe natural disasters or events, so you may want to show your customers some empathy and communicate with them during these times instead of directly marketing your products. - Behavioral Segmentation: Here you segment your customers according to their interactions with your brand.
For example, if you’re an online store owner, you could segment your customers by who made the last purchase in the last 30 days and target them with an email campaign to get them back on the site again.
or targeting those who left products in the shopping cart without completing the purchase, and so on.
In general, dividing your target market enables you to do effective marketing by providing appropriate customer service and sending appropriate content to the audience you are interested in.
2) Effective spending
We may not be exaggerating if we say that failing or neglecting to define your target audience will literally cost you a lot.
The reason is simple: marketing, whether digital or traditional, needs ads, and ads need funding. The goal here is for it to be invested in order to benefit from the purchases that these campaigns will reap after reaching the ideal customers.
And when you spend this money on content or a marketing message that reaches an audience that is not interested in it, you have lost it forever, so accurate targeting enables you to improve your marketing strategy and thus obtain the highest return on investment.
Again, there is no point in targeting everyone in the hope that you will increase your chances of winning. In fact, it will cost you much more, and you may end up with zero profit.
3) Build a stronger relationship with clients.
Because you send them a message and content that concerns them and provide a service or product that meets their needs or helps them overcome their problems, you reap their trust and loyalty in return.
Studying and defining the target audience allows you to understand their challenges and pain points, as well as what they require to overcome these challenges and fill gaps.
How do you define the target audience?
At first glance, it may feel like a quantum physics task. But in fact, it is only a set of questions and paths, after which you will have ample evidence of the nature and personality of your customers.
1) Who are your customers?
Because your product or service solves a problem or meets a need, the people whose life experiences shape and deposit that challenge or need usually share certain characteristics.
The first step to identifying these targets is to create a profile of ideal customers, also called a “customer persona” or “buyer persona.”
This file includes a detailed description of the demographic and psychological characteristics of the targets, such as:
A/ age bracket
What is the age range of your targets? Are they young, mature, or middle-aged?
This point is very important. Because customers respond in different ways according to their age group and maturity, you have to create content, products, and services that are age-appropriate.
B/ Type
Type can play an important role in shaping customer engagement with and response to your products and marketing content. In general, the two sexes differ in their needs and goals. Therefore, taking this point into account is necessary in order to achieve the return on investment that you desire.
C / Income level
Determining the average income of your target group will directly affect your marketing strategy. The behavior of middle-income or well-to-do families always aims to obtain the best result while saving money. Thus, advertisements that promise them this draw their attention.
Unlike higher-income families, they may be more inclined to respond to ads that emphasize luxury and exclusivity.
D/ The site
You do not need to be an anthropologist to know the difference between the habits of rural and urban residents, for example, as societies influence our desires and purchasing preferences according to the standard and quality of life.
To know exactly who your customers are, you can take a quick tour of your posts or those of your competitors and check the accounts of followers, commenters, and interactors in general.
You will be able to develop perceptions of their various patterns and natures through quick analysis and study.
But in some cases, your target customers may not be on social media platforms in the first place.
Customers who bought from you only once and did not return it are also in your target demographic.You are interested in knowing exactly where they are and how to find them.
2) What are their biggest challenges or aspirations?
What you think is important and cool may not be so for your target customers.
It is not right for you to think for your audience, nor to decide what you think only when it comes to their obstacles, challenges, and even aspirations.
Here, you should put yourself in their shoes. Don’t make offers according to your instincts. Rather, all your decisions must be based on accurate data, past experiences, and analyses of your customers’ purchasing and even personal behavior.
In any case, do not forget that you are there either to solve a problem or challenge they are exposed to or to fulfill a need or aspiration that they have.
When you accurately understand these two aspects (challenge and need), you will be able to make the right decisions and seize the right opportunities to satisfy them.
3) Where might they look for you?
Everyone is constantly in need of information, and there are tons of sources of information around. But the question here is: Where does your target customer go when they want to look for information?
It is your duty to identify those channels and platforms that your customers check to provide themselves with information on a daily basis. This is so that you can present yourself in front of them on these spaces, whether visual, digital, or printed, in the language and style that they like and understand.
Continuing with the example of IT managers, for example, they may not spend much time on Instagram or Pinterest (unlike artists or those interested in art, design, and fashion, for example), but they may spend most of their time on productive sites like Quora or Reddit, where they can get the latest updates and information in their field and follow up on the opinions of experts and specialists.
They may also prefer serious and direct language, far from exaggerated humor. Unlike young high school students, they prefer to follow fun and sarcastic content and spend most of their time on platforms such as Instagram or YouTube.
4) What is the value of your product or service?
It may seem like a stupid question, but in fact, everyone is always looking for something that will make their lives easier and less complicated. This is a natural human desire, and your customers are no exception.
Think about how your offering, whether it’s a product or a service, could change their lives for the better. What problem are you solving for them? What benefits do you offer within the product or service package? What is the great value behind it?
Always remember that competition isn’t easy, and it probably never will be. As a result, it is critical to define your competitive advantage, which distinguishes you from the rest of the competition.
5) What might make them think of you negatively?
Yes, we love optimism and pray for it, but it won’t hurt you to be realistic and think about the negatives and flaws, especially with regard to defining the target audience… Remember that you will build everything in your business on this step.
Just as you should consider what customers desire and aspire to, you may also want to consider what they do not aspire to and avoid.
As we said in the previous example, serious customers may not like an exaggerated sense of humor, and it may even make them feel that the company in front of them may make fun of them. At the same time, young people do not like pompous or complicated language while being addressed, and they may also feel that it is mocking them or, worse, that they themselves are mocking the company!
This can be measured on anything and in any category.even in the colors of the advertising slogan and visual identity. Dark colors suggest seriousness, control, and professionalism, while light colors suggest friendliness, optimism, and humor. Using it inappropriately may confuse and disturb the target audience.
In conclusion, your knowledge of this information will give you greater opportunities to help their families and influence them, and the sooner you avoid these negatives, the sooner you will gain their satisfaction and conviction about you, perhaps always.
6) How can they trust you?
Everything you know is based on customer trust.No one, including you and us, buys a product or service that they don’t trust.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the ratings and opinions of customers on online stores are invaluable to sellers because they know that it builds the trust they seek, and this explains the fact that Amazon is worth billions today.
Before you ask and expect your customers to trust you, you must know the way to that trust first. Trust is built by listening to customers’ needs, maintaining the relationship between you and them, and most importantly, appreciating every positive reaction they have to your company. Whether it’s a comment, a rating, or a nomination post for their circles of knowledge
In determining the target audience, it is important to know the stages of the journey of building your target customer’s trust towards the company he deals with. You can even analyze the performance of competitors to see why customers trust them.
Some customers, for example, prefer superior quality in the product or service as a whole and its advanced features; others value after-sales services and fast shipping; and others need to be sure that there is a solution to their problems and the possibility of getting their money back.
All factors differ from one category to another, but each segment of customers has a common character that they must share in order to be able to put their trust in a company.
7) Define your competitors as well:
Although we are talking about the target audience, surprisingly, identifying competitors is also an integral part of defining this target audience.
You can always learn from analyzing competitors’ marketing activities and events, studying the elements of their success or failure, and thus having a deeper understanding of the nature of the audience responding to these campaigns and efforts.
Then you can use these conclusions to improve your targeting and enhance the performance of your marketing campaigns without having to repeat the same mistakes that your competitors made, and for free. Among the things you can study are:
A/ What are the e-marketing platforms they use?
If your competitors are using a particular platform that is making them successful, your customers are more likely to be there, too. As a result, you can analyze the types of content and offers that receive the most interaction and implement them in your company with your audience.
Follow the time and format for publishing the content, whether it is visual or textual. So is its quality—is it interactive, promotional, or educational content? Of course, which of these types has the highest interaction rate?
In this way, you can target the same audience base with the same type and format of content, and you know—without the need for experience—that it interests your audience.
If your audience, for example, is young adults or teenagers who interact more with contests or satirical posts on Instagram, then it’s time to take care of the company’s Instagram account and develop an interactive content plan with a schedule.
B/ What are the biggest challenges facing their customers?
Identifying the challenges your audience faces enables you to present your products as excellent solutions to these problems. It is likely that you and your competitors are seeking to solve the same challenges and problems that your customers face.
By researching and studying competitors, keep track of the points they don’t cover or where there is a defect in their approach so that you can avoid them in your company.
This defect may be in the product or service itself or even in their marketing practices, such as not responding to customer comments or using language that is not preferred by the public, and so on.
Before we move on to the next point, note that targeting the same audience does not mean that a company is competing with you.
When you define your target audience, you are not creating an exact replica of your competitors’ target audience, but rather benefiting from their practices and efforts to better understand your audience and make more accurate targeting.
Of course, if your competitors are targeting the same target as you, then copying is fine, as long as you make sure the situation is the same between your company and theirs.
8) Re-evaluate and improve your products/services
After you have completed all of the above analyses of the market, competitors, and target audience, the next step is to put all this information into practice by answering the following questions:
- What are the characteristics and features of the company that will attract more customers?
- What might prevent or discourage new clients?
- What type of content and ads will my current audience or potential audience like to see?
This simple analysis will enable you to constantly customize your offering of services and products, thus attracting more customers.
Remember that the market is constantly changing, so you want to stay updated so you don’t lose your precious audience in the middle. Finally, start building your target audience on the ground!
Identifying and maintaining a target audience is the first step before launching your marketing campaigns or even putting your products on the market.
Remember that there is no one place that offers everything to everyone, so you need to know who will be interested in what is presented.
Take your time in developing and defining your target audience before launching your company’s business and marketing strategy; you’ll find that you’ve saved yourself and your team a lot of trouble.
Read also: What do you know about the target audience?
