What is the target audience
The target audience (TA) is a group of people, united by some common characteristics, who are actual or potential consumers of a product or service.
For example, a company produces children’s toothbrushes. Their target audience is women with small children, this is immediately clear. But it’s not that simple. How much do these brushes cost? If it’s not cheap, then these are women with small children and with a family income of average. If a product can only be purchased in the European part of Russia, then the location is added to the description of the target audience. And as a result, a fairly detailed portrait of the average buyer is formed.
Some entrepreneurs neglect researching their target audience, thinking that everyone needs their product. But this doesn’t happen, different people have their own preferences. Everyone uses soap, plus or minus. But, let’s say (this is just an assumption for an example), women will prefer a more gentle product, men will prefer something that can be washed from head to toe, pensioners will prefer cheaper soap, factory workers will prefer something that cleans machine oil well. That is, needs differ, and therefore buyers will pay attention to different things.
Why understand who your target audience is?
There are several reasons why it is worth studying.
1. To represent who you are really working for
People for the most part are quite predictable in their consumer behavior, that is, usually there are no surprises when studying the target audience. It just allows you to understand who exactly your client is. The average buyer acquires a set of qualities and preferences, and it becomes clearer for whom, in fact, you are producing your product or service. We will talk later about how this understanding will be useful.
But this does not mean that there is nothing to be surprised by when studying Central Asia. Let’s say an entrepreneur produces special gels for beard styling. They make hair softer and more manageable, allowing you to style it so that the hairs do not stick out in different directions. Bearded men are expected to buy the gels. But suddenly it may turn out that the overwhelming number of clients are women. Some of them buy the product as a gift because they are uncomfortable with the fact that their partner’s beard prickles during hugs, and they want to avoid this. And others came after a review from a beauty blogger, because this gel amazingly fixes eyebrows. And now the real target audience is no longer bearded men, but women doing makeup.
And here there will be something to think about. For example, about changing the fragrance from sea breeze to lavender and releasing the product as an eyebrow gel and generally moving in this direction.
2. To create unique selling propositions
A unique selling proposition (USP) is the promotion of a product by identifying special benefits for the consumer. But a USP is difficult to develop if you don’t know the client’s needs. You can, of course, follow the path of assumptions. However, if you make a mistake, everything will be in vain. Studying your target audience will help you avoid wasting resources.
For example, a company produces orthopedic pillows. And when forming a USP, you can pay attention to different points. For example, if the target audience is people over 30 years old, they can be hooked by the idea that thanks to such a pillow they will have less back pain. (Yes, thirty now is the new twenty, but they didn’t tell the spine about this.) If these are women, they may be motivated to buy by the thesis that the correct sleeping position helps to avoid wrinkles and deformation of the facial skin, and therefore somewhat delay the appearance of visual signs of aging.
The product is the same, but the presentation is different. And thanks to this, you can attract different audiences.
3. To make advertising more effective
For marketing purposes, understanding the target audience is key. Let’s take targeted advertising. You have a budget of one hundred rubles and a means to maintain potency. If you target everyone, it will be like shooting sparrows from a cannon. Let’s say that the advertisement is viewed by a hundred random people, including children, women, and men. The message will reach only 5 people out of 100 who follow the link, and only one will make a purchase. That is, the cost per click will be 20 rubles, and purchases – 100.
But if the target is aimed at men from 50 to 79 years old (namely at this age can be observed peak of erection problems), then there may already be 30 people who clicked, and 10 people who paid. This makes advertising much more effective.
4. To develop the tone of voice and design
Modern business is often not only about sales, but also about creating a community around the brand. This approach allows you to “grow” potential customers, increase the loyalty of existing ones, promote values, organize promotions, and so on.
But to do this effectively, you also need to understand who your target audience is. For example, a company opens accounts on social networks. She needs to plan what she will post there, how she will communicate with subscribers, what profile design to choose. In one case, the audience will be attracted to memes and jokes on the edge. In the other there are only expert texts written in a rather complex language. But if you do the opposite, there will be no success.
5. To grow your business
We partially touched on this point in the example with beard gel. Studying your audience will help you understand where to move next. However, we are not necessarily talking about dramatic changes.
For example, the company produces expensive face creams. The target audience is mainly women of different incomes. Moreover, the segment of those for whom this is not the most affordable purchase is quite high. They’re just willing to pay for quality. But it is obvious for the company that, taking into account inflationary processes, it will be forced to raise the price. This means that the described segment of buyers may fall off, because for them the creams will become too expensive. But you can think about, say, reducing the cost of packaging in order to save costs and customers.
6. To attract new clients
Studying the target audience helps to understand who the company’s clients are and who are not, but in general they may be.
Let’s remember the old example again – this time with soap. Let’s say a manufacturer targeted women and marketed the product as a product for sensitive skin. Soap is now associated with softness and femininity, so men don’t buy it. However, this does not mean that it is not suitable for them. That is, you can adjust your marketing strategy to attract them too. More sales, more money – this is the goal of business.
How to understand who your target audience is
It is most effective to delegate this task to marketers: they know how to work with the necessary tools. In addition, specialists study this for months and years; it cannot be explained in two paragraphs.
The following tools are usually used to study the target audience:
- surveys and interviews – they allow you to find out information about your customers first-hand;
- Yandex Metrica and Google Analytics – show who finds the company using what queries and links;
- social network analytics.
What you need to know about your target audience
Usually several points are examined.
- Demographic and social indicators: gender, age, marital status, level of income and education, presence of children, field of activity and position.
- Geographical indicators: where the client is located. Depending on the needs of the company, this can be determined with varying accuracy – from the city to the street.
- Personal qualities: needs, values, fears, hobbies, significant influencers and brands of the day.
- Consumer behavior: buys online or offline, impulsively or deliberately, how often and how urgently.
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