Marketing

What is the target audience? And why is your particular target audience so important? This is exactly what we will talk about today.

When you have a business, you serve a certain segment of the population. Many entrepreneurs believe that everyone is their target audience, although in fact this is almost never the case. To succeed in business, you need to work with a small group of people who are willing and able to afford your product or service.

For example, if a consumer lives outside your delivery area, he/she is not part of your target audience. The same can be said of consumers who do not have the money for your products.

We will look at this point in more detail later on, but for now you need to understand that the target audience is the group of people your marketing and promotional initiatives are aimed at. These are those who can really convert to customers.

Content of the article

What is segmentation?

How to define your target audience in 5 steps?

Question your current customer base
Engage with your audience
Turn disappointment into motivation
Examine the competitors
Know who your target audience is not

Understanding the target audience: 2 real-world examples

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Fun and Function

What is the difference between the target market and the target audience?

People often confuse the target market with the target audience, although these are different marketing concepts.

A target market means everyone who may be interested in your products and services. And the target audience is the group of people you target for certain marketing activities or announcements.

In other words, these are people who can respond to your marketing asset through conversion. The asset may be a landing page, a post in the VK, a letter written for a particular segment, or a general email newsletter.

Your target audience covers part of your target market. For effective marketing, you need to segment it to send the right messages to the right customers at the right time.

What is segmentation?

Imagine for a second that you are developing a Facebook Ad campaign. You don’t need your ads to be seen by “everyone”. You want to earn money, not waste your entire budget – so you only need to show them to your target users.

Facebook allows you to narrow your audience based on demographic data and other criteria. You can set the income range, target men or women, exclude people who do not have children, etc. – depending on your marketing program.

At the same time, you know that different segments of your target audience may be interested in your product or service.

For example, you sell sports goods. Part of your audience may include teenagers involved in sports. The second segment could include professional athletes and the third segment could include middle-aged men and women who want to get back in shape.

Through segmentation, you can create buyer persona. Each of them represents a separate part of your target audience, so you should serve them with different marketing and advertising assets.

Why is this so important?

Imagine that you have attended a car dealership. You talk to the salesperson, but they don’t ask for anything about your needs and desires. For the next hour, he shows you sports cars and sedans, talking about beautiful leather seats and great seat belts.

Finally, you say to him angrily, “I am the father of four children. I need a minivan that my children can’t destroy.

From this example, you can see how important it is to identify your target audience. Trying to sell a two-seater sports car to the father of four children, you are unlikely to get any results.

When a consumer visits your lending, you need to create an instant connection with them. Images, headline, texts and CTA elements should call for what this user wants. Otherwise, it will simply close the tab.

How to define your target audience in 5 steps?

Ann Handley from Marketing Profs once said “Even when you advertise something to your entire audience or customer base, you still only reach out to one person at a time.

That’s great advice for every entrepreneur who wants to understand the target audience and market.

Handley focuses on narrowing the audience as much as possible. If you are just talking to one person – a user on the other side of the computer screen – you need to know as much as possible about him.

What are her or his painful points? Fears? Doubts? Objections? Based on this information, you will be able to create a message that will not only resonate with the consumer, but also sound convincing.

Interview your current customer base

Surveys are seriously underestimated, although when using effective questions, they can give you a lot of data to identify the target audience.

According to SurveyMonkey’s survey, the average market survey includes 13 questions, while surveys in total range from 4 to 14 questions. Keep these statistics in mind and remember that your customers lead their lives. If you ask them to take a survey that takes too long, they won’t finish it.

First, you could ask people about something like this:

What makes you saddened the most when it comes to [your niche]?
How much are you willing to pay for the [product] with [feature list]?
Which social networks do you spend the most time in?
Do you have any pressing questions related to [niche]?

Use the survey responses to think through your customers and then create layouts, email accounts and other marketing assets. For example, the latter question can give you a few ideas for writing posts with catchy CTA buttons at the end.

Engage with your audience

Content marketing is of great importance to every entrepreneur for a reason. With its help you not only bring traffic to the site, but also open up topics for conversation.

Pay attention to questions, criticisms and jokes. They can give you a better idea of what your target audience wants and demands.

The same goes for social media. Instead of rejoicing at the happiness of having received 10 comments for a post at the VC, write to each user and mark out the nuances that can help you understand your audience.

Turn disappointment into motivation

Now that you have interviewed consumers and begun to participate in the discussions, focus on the pain points and objections. Find out what problems your current customers and subscribers are facing.

Let’s say you work in the SaaS industry and promote your CRM system. You will find that your leaders are not impressed with the ability to communicate with customers through multiple channels. This is frustrating.

Turn your frustration into motivation. If your SaaS product has a great solution for cross-channel customer service, use it as a selling argument when communicating with the target audience. You know what the big deal is, so you change the equation and give people a useful alternative.

Create a list of the most important disappointments and motivations. In this way, you will always be able to return to them as your business develops.

Examine the competitors

You never need to copy your market rivals – it can end badly. However, if you follow your direct competitors, you will be able to target your target audience even better.

Explore their home pages, lendings, lead magnets and product descriptions. See what competing companies don’t do and give users new opportunities.

Know who your target audience is not

You now have a better understanding of how to define your target audience, but you also need to know who to exclude. This is very useful when you advertise through search or social media in particular.

Screen out potential customers that do not match the description of your target user. Find out who doesn’t deserve your time and attention.

For example, you can only sell to women. This immediately excludes half the audience. Well, or all is less dramatic.