Have you ever heard the saying, “If you try to sell to everyone, then you’ll end up selling to no-one?” Because we are constantly bombarded with messages every day, your marketing message may end up getting lost if you are not speaking to a specific group of people. This is why identifying and reaching your target audience is essential for every business. A target audience is a specific group of people who are most likely to be interested in your product or service.
Here is an example: A toy store should not try to reach to the entire population. Their focus should be only to people with children in their lives. A toy store’s largest target audience could be parents with children ages 2-10 living in a certain region.
You can ask yourself these questions to help understand who your target audience is:
- Who is buying this product/service?
- Who could benefit from buying this product/service?
To really nail down your who your target audience is, you can layout some similar characteristics that you find in your current customers or those you want to reach. These characteristics can be demographics, such as age, location, occupation, and more. They can also be psychographics. Psychographics are how people think, including their attitudes, goals, interests, and more. Using personality traits such as “introverted,” “experience-driven,” or “unconventional” can help you further develop your audience. When identifying your target audience, you should try to be as detailed and specific as possible.
Developing a persona can be beneficial in pinpointing your target audience. Personas are fictitious characters created to mimic a real customer to humanize the segments in consideration for a target audience. Creating a persona “profile” can help you understand and visualize who your audience really is. Giving your target buyer a name, face, personality, and more may be a helpful strategy for you. It is not uncommon for you to come up with multiple personas. A good practice is asking yourself, “If my brand were a person, who would they be?” You can find examples of buyer personas here.
Understanding your target audience will help you develop targeted marketing messages so you can reach them. The reason that people make purchases is typically to fulfill their wants or needs. A marketer’s goal is to get inside the buyer’s head and understand their motivations behind their purchases. So, understanding your target audience helps you better market your product or service to them. You want to create the right content to reach the right people.
Defining your target audience is a crucial marketing strategy that your business should be doing. If you are having trouble identifying your target audience, it may be time to call in the experts. Thrive Marketing offers behavioral targeting services and can help you identify and reach your target audience to help your business grow.
