Every brand has a message to pass to its audience, but there isn’t just one audience category that a brand carries. Adopting a one-size-fits-all strategy when it comes to sharing a brand message to your audiences may not have the desired marketing effect.
It is also not as effective as streamlining your strategy to a specific audience so that you can monitor the results and determine if it is working or not. To ensure that your brand message meets the specific customers it is designed for, you must identify and define your target audiences.
This is what this article will help you to do. In this article, we will discuss the importance of understanding your target audience and show you how you can identify them for an improved marketing strategy.
Who your target audience is (and who it is not)
Your target audience is that group of your customers who are most interested in your services and products. They would likely pay for your offerings and thus, should be the ones your message (ad) is targeted towards.
The issue with getting your message across to this category of people is that there are already many other companies and products vying for their attention. For them to notice your message, it has to be specifically targeted towards them and different from the other brands’.
Your target audience is determined by various factors including age, income, gender, location, ethnicity, habits and interests, among others. Have you ever noticed that the types of ads you see online are usually related to things you like or enjoy?
It is no coincidence because based on your online behavior which is tracked by cookies, advertisers can now draw conclusions about the types of content you would like to see. They carefully sieve through your data to target you with the right type of message.
Your target audience is different from your target market. Your target audience is a group of consumers within your target market that you push specific ads they resonate with to them.
The target market is a broader category of people that you intend to sell to.
So, if your target market is nursing mothers, then the target audience who you should serve ads to could be pregnant women or new moms within a specific location where you wish to market to, and not all mothers.
Why is it important to identify your target audience?
Understanding your target audience is key for many reasons which we will explore below.
1. It's impossible to reach everybody at once
Attempting to market to everybody at once can be an overwhelming task for your marketing team because it would mean creating diverse types of messages to reach each category.
Different buyer personas exist within your target market, and some specific ads or brand messages may have no effect on them. The meaning will be lost on them or they may not see an immediate need for whatever you are offering.
Clearly identifying your target buyer helps you capture their attention because you focus on their specific needs and goals.
Knowing and understanding your target audience also helps you streamline your marketing strategy to cater to a niche in your market. This makes it easier to monitor the effectiveness of your marketing strategy to know if it's working or if it needs to be modified.
2. It helps small businesses compete with larger businesses
Larger businesses usually have the upper hand in reaching a larger group of consumers because they have the means to, but if a small business is able to identify their target audience, they would also hold a level of sway on the market.
Identifying your target audience helps you build an "army" of loyal customers who will always be interested in what you have to offer and help you bring in more clients through word of mouth referral.
When you market to a defined audience group, they can identify with you and are probably already looking for a specific product or service such as yours.
3. It helps you create a defined and effective marketing strategy
Without a defined target audience, your marketing team has to deal with a lot of trials and errors and failed marketing strategies.
You lose a lot of time when trying to market to people who are not interested in buying your product or don't see why they should buy it immediately. Stats show that small to medium scale businesses could lose up to $120,000 for bad marketing efforts, meaning that you lose money too.
To avoid all of this, knowing the appropriate people to target your message to is essential. You will be able to create a marketing strategy that works and has the desired marketing effect. It saves you time, money, mental resources, unending analysis and delays.
4. It helps you develop good leads
A generalized marketing strategy is almost like shooting at a target blindly. You may not only miss the shot, but hit something else that may be costly. When you push ads to the wrong categories of prospective customers, they may be turned off if they don't resonate with it.
This may lead to blocking your further chances at marketing to them because once they see your future ads, they react negatively to them, based on their past experiences.
Knowing your target audience helps you attract quality leads that you can convert to buyers because what you're offering aligns with their interests. Converting more leads helps to in turn, boost company revenue, which is part of the goals of an effective marketing strategy.
How to identify and define your target audience
Knowing how important identifying your target audience is, you should waste no time in defining yours for a more effective marketing strategy and in the long run, successful business.
These are effective steps to help you identify your target audience.
1. Ask yourself a few questions
As a business, you need to know the goal your business seeks to achieve. The problem you wish to solve and who you are adding value to. To be able to accurately identify this, you should ask yourself the following questions:
This will help you identify business trends and patterns that point towards who your target audience is and what you should offer them. If you don’t have specific answers to these questions, you can carry out customer surveys on social media or other preferred channels.
2. Use your answers to the questions to guide your efforts
Now that you have identified who would benefit most from your business, you can start to target them with relevant brand messages. This can help you make informed decisions on who would be better suited to use a product.
For instance, you may discover that some audience categories will spend more on specific items than some other category. A younger generation would likely spend more on fitness gear than the older generation.
3. Carry out market research and identify industry trends
You can’t afford to stay relaxed because you have a handful of customers that use your services. You have so much more potential on the market, only if you would carry out the necessary research to find existing loopholes.
There is always a market need to fill, and once you identify this gap, you are opening up your business to another category that can make up your target audience. Look out for similar products and research to see where they are channeling their efforts.
Working with market analysis tools like Attest can help you discover a whole new world of customers you didn’t know existed. If you’re not sure where to begin, this template for marketing analysis can help you get started.
4. Build a buyer persona
Your buyer persona helps to narrow down who you should target your products to the very specifics.
It helps you create a better understanding of who would likely need your product, so that when you reach out to them with your ad, your message hits the exact “spot.” Different buyer personas fit different products and services.
For example, if you’re selling fitness gear, what would be suitable for Fran the new mom and low-income secretary, may have no effect on Lola the high-class lawyer with no kids.
Where Fran may be looking for a comfortable and affordable tank top, Lola may need a classy, fitting workout bra and the cost is not a problem for her. So, create different buyer personas based on data, surveys, real-time customer experiences, and their digital engagements.
This will give you a complete view of the prospective customer so that your ads speak directly to their needs and address their exact pain points.
Conclusion
Knowing your target audience helps you to push ads more effectively and successfully. You spend less time trying various methods to get a handful of customers when you can hone in on an audience that truly needs your services.
It’s a win-win situation because the customers get exactly what they need, your revenue continues to grow, and brand credibility skyrockets.
