Each project comes with its own set of challenges and crises. If you are a marketer or responsible for launching this new project, there is no doubt that defining the target audience is one of the first challenges that must be at the top of your business list.
And because the audience is the raison d’être of any project, determining the target audience will not only help you determine the purpose of your entire project but will also help you create content and direct your marketing efforts efficiently to the audience of this project and thus its success.
Due to the thorny details of managing customer relations and the intense competition, it is always easy to overlook some details while managing and launching marketing campaigns. So you always need to keep your goal in mind: reach your right audience in the right place at the right time.
Before we get started with this guide, let’s go over everything from the beginning and explain exactly what a target audience means.
What is the target audience?
The target audience is simply the category of consumers that a company directs its marketing efforts to, with the aim of raising their knowledge of the existence of the services or products of this company.
The goal here is targeting, being present, and communicating within a market that includes a group of individuals who share the same educational level, goals, interests, and challenges and have a common need for or desire for the products or services offered by your company.
The data that is used to determine the target audience usually includes:
- Age group.
- Type.
- Educational background.
- Social situation.
- Location.
- Consumer habits.
- Personal interests and challenges.
Let’s say an app design and development company helps IT professionals manage file sharing via mobile phones.
We can imagine defining its target audience as follows:
Manager with more than ten years of experience in the field of data technology management, age thirty or more, mostly male, married with two children or more, completed university education, may possess an advanced education certificate, and spends his spare time reading social media that enhances his technical knowledge, like Quora, Reddit, and so on.
Or, for example, if a company offers educational games for children, its target audience is children, mothers, education professionals, and teachers.
And if your company provides graphic design services, then your target audience is company and project owners, as well as marketers over the age of 18. Note that here we are talking about the target audience, not the target market.
The difference between target audience and target market
The term “target market” refers to a group of people who share characteristics and behaviors that companies target in their marketing strategy.
As for the target audience, it is a sub-category of this larger target market, and it includes a specific group of consumers out of a larger and broader group, which is the target market.
The first step to identifying the right audience is defining your target market accurately. This lays the foundation for the subsequent steps and directs your efforts in the right direction.
The process of defining the target market begins with examining those targeted by competitors, then following up and identifying common features and behaviors among them, and finally determining their demographic characteristics, respectively.
Read also: 5 reasons why you should use content marketing
