What is a target audience?
A target audience is the specific group of people that you
want to reach with your marketing. That means your marketing collateral—from
your email copy to your tagline to your brand story—should appeal to this group
of people. menfashdesign
Here’s a great example of a targeted marketing campaign,
including the video and the messaging, from AirBnB.
The voice in the video is young and impassioned. The imagery
isn’t highly produced. Instead, it looks almost like a great iPhone video taken
in the moment. This is clearly targeted to an audience of younger adults
seeking authentic, spontaneous experiences when they’re traveling. And it
works.
That’s why it’s so important to find your target audience.
If you want your marketing to appeal to this group of people, you need to make
sure you create everything with them in mind.
Target audience vs target market
We need a quick clarification of terms here: Your target
audience isn’t your target market. Your target market is who your product or
your service is intended for. Your target audience, on the other hand, is the
specific group of people within your target market that your marketing is
trying to reach.
So if, for example, your target market is small businesses,
your target audience could be local service-based business owners, or marketing
managers for small ecommerce retailers, or freelance marketing consultants. Or
it could be all three. ethicmenvoguee
Businesses often have more than one target audience within
their target market.
Here are some more examples of target audiences:
And on an even deeper level, you’re going to have mini
target audiences for every campaign you create. In fact, HubSpot found that
most marketers create content for multiple audiences, with three target
audiences being the most common.
Why do you need a target audience?
With those examples, you can see why knowing your target
audience is so important. It’s the context you need in order to come up with
content and messaging that resonates. The PPC software provider that serves
small business target audiences is going to have an entirely different look and
feel with its branding and marketing collateral than the PPC software provider
that serves enterprise businesses.
And the ad a senior living facility creates for seniors
themselves is going to be very different from the one it creates for adult
caregivers of their senior parents.
Types of target audiences
Your business can have a bunch of different target
audiences, since these will align with the focus of your marketing efforts and
your goals. In some marketing campaigns, you might get super-specific. If you
run a landscaping business, for example, that could mean focusing on all your
customers in one town with one event or discount to improve your customer base
in that one area.
TruGreen, a Tennessee-based company, targets new customers
in Boston with this Google Ad and the accompanying discount. businessdirectorypc
When you’re working to identify your target audiences,
though, you’ll want to focus on the types that align with the marketing
channels you focus on regularly. Here are some examples:
How to find your target audience
If you’re not incredibly clear on who your target audience
is—for your branding in general, for a specific marketing channel, or for a
certain campaign—you need to take a step back to identify it. You can determine
who your target audience is by looking at who is engaging with your product,
your brand, and your marketing. Here’s how:
Here is an infographic that lays out the above steps,
courtesy of Venngage:
And here’s a closer look at each step!
1. Start with your customers
Your customers are the people who are using your product or
service, so clearly, the positioning of your offering, the solution you
presented, your marketing, or a combination of these worked. That’s why this is
the perfect place to start.
First, look at the demographics of your customers—what are
their job titles, where do they live, how old are they? Are there any patterns
that emerge as you do so? Pay careful attention to patterns with your loyal,
repeat customers. Then see if there are patterns in your one-time customers.
Next, it’s time to talk to your customers. This is the best
way to get an idea of why they love your brand, your product, or team. That’ll
help you with your positioning, including the benefits you’ll highlight in your
copywriting and conversations. allinternetbuziness
Plus, it’s a great time to ask where your customers are
spending their time and getting advice. Is it certain Instagram influencers,
industry newsletters, or trusted company blogs? These customer insights are
great data points to have, because you can prioritize these channels for your
marketing.
Questions related to problems/pain points:
Questions related to lifestyle/behavior:
Questions related to your competitors:
2. Look at your social followers
Your social followers are another existing audience that you
can look at to see who your current marketing is appealing to. Even more, it
gives you an idea of the consumers genuinely interested in your brand.
According to Sprout Social, the most common reasons people follow brands on
social channels are to get access to discounts, to keep up with company news,
and to find out about new products or services.
You won’t have the same access to your social followers as
your customers. If you still want to do an interview, make sure it’s a quick
survey with super specific questions. Otherwise, focus on demographics and
behavior. Here are some things to consider:
Again, you want to pay special attention to the people
engaging more with your social profiles.
The good news is that you can use a tool—even a free tool—to
analyze this data. Buffer, for example, also offers a free tier.
3. Dig into your content analytics
The next existing audience you need to take some time to dig
into is your website visitors. Who is reading your content already? Who is
downloading your whitepapers? Who is engaging with your videos?
Google Analytics is the natural place to start when you’re
looking for this type of information. You can learn:
There’s even an Interests tab where you can look at affinity
categories and in-market segments:
4. Check out your competitors
You have competitors. Regardless of your product, your
offering, and target audience, you have competition. And you can use them.
Take a look at who your competitor is targeting in their
marketing. Where are they advertising? Facebook? Instagram, or Twitter? Who are
they addressing in their ads? What pain points are they stressing? Analyze
their ads, their messaging, and their brand to put together a target audience
and see how it compares with yours—including how it overlaps and how it
differs. The overlap might help you see, and the difference? That’ll help you
better articulate your brand’s differentiation.
Here, monday.com clearly identifies the difference between
its target audience and Trello’s: marketer on bigger teams, in charge of more
projects, who get started ASAP.
In addition to the audiences your competitors are targeting,
you want to know which of those audiences is actively engaging with its
content. Duve into its social following to similarly identify the overlap and
the difference. For a step-by-step process, check out our guide to competitive
analysis on search and social.
5. Set your parameters
This last step might seem like an outlier in the process,
but it is super important: You need to identify who your customer isn’t. Take
the monday.com competitive ad example above. The team clearly decided who their
audience is—and who their audience isn’t. Their audience isn’t someone looking
for a simple, free Kanban solution. (That’s what Trello’s for.)
So for this step, take a look at all of your
information—your customer interviews, your social following, your website
visitors, and your competition’s comparable audiences. Then identify the gaps
that you definitely don’t serve.
Creating your target audience profile
After you’ve aggregated all the data about your followers,
all the anecdotal information about your customers, and all the details from
your competition, the final step is to put it together in a target audience
profile.
Here’s some information to include:
Your target audience profile will include specifics that are
relevant to your brand, too. Here are some examples of target audience profiles:
And with this information, you’ll want to develop personas
to share with your team. These are detailed, fictional characters that make up
certain buyers within your target audience
Target audience examples
Let’s finish off with some examples of target audiences for
brands we’re familiar with, to help you firm up your understanding on this
concept.
Wild One
Let’s say your product is dog gear—harnesses, bowls,
leashes, toys. Your target market in this case is people with dogs. In order to
reach your target market, you might have user-generated content in your social
ads featuring happy customers, a newsletter with top dog stories of the week, a
blog on pet care, and whitepapers for first-time pet owners. Your branding is
sleek, modern, and minimal. Your target audience for this marketing campaign
isn’t just pet owners; it’s young Millennials or Gen Zers who have their first
dog.
