How to define your target audience?


The entire marketing strategy is based on a basic element called “target audience”, which big businesses care about and allocate huge budgets for its study. In this article we will try to learn how to determine the target audience?

What is the Target Audience? And How is it Important?

The target audience is the market segment on which your business is based, and your marketing campaigns are focused. And in which you take advantage of the audience's willingness and ability to buy, and persuade it to respond to the products and services you offer.
The size and type of this audience varies, according to the product/ service offered. The product/ service can focus entirely on a very small and specialized segment, such as those who are interested in purchasing Rolls-Royce or Lamborghini cars. And it can include broad segments, such as smart phone buyers.
It is critically important to define the audience in the marketing strategy as it is the cornerstone of the rest of the steps. Without it, it is not possible to determine which product/ service features are best to offer, and without it the marketing campaign will run in a closed cycle of randomness and confusion.

How to define your target audience? Benefits of defining your target audience. How can you define the characteristics of your target audience?

Benefits of defining your target audience

1. Reducing expenses

When you precisely define your target audience, you avoid spending exorbitant budgets on segments that are not interested to respond to your product/ service. If your entire business relies on audience C from segment C, there is no need to extend your ad campaign to include A or B. So instead of spending your money on three segments, and reaching only 33% of your target audience, you'll be able to focus on just one segment, and reach 100% of it with the same costs, in a more effective and impactful way.

2. Keeping the audience at a manageable level

If you stand alone at the center of a circle, while dozens of people talk at the same time around you. Will you understand any of them?!
The same can be applied when dealing with a heterogeneous random audience, you will not be able to deal with its renewed requirements periodically, and you will not be able to understand what kinds of products/ services it really want. As for focusing on a specific audience and working on studying it accurately, this will not only help you to understand your customers and their nature, but also will help you keep this audience at a level that can be managed and dealt with.
You can get the audience to buy luxury products because of the compelling marketing messages you provide. You can persuade it to "buy now" for fear of running out of offers. You can even persuade it to buy products it might not need at all just because one of the influencers mentioned them. Whatever the message, the whole thing is subject to focus, and that will not come up with a random audience.

3. Precise identification of priorities

The audience identification process helps to organize and schedule priorities. If the results marketing research indicated, the people of Area X and Y are more likely to buy your products. But the region (Y) is likely more than the region (X) by a difference of 20%, the priority in the advertising process will of course go to the region (Y). The same applies if the advertiser feels distracted in identifying the segment that he wants to target, then audience research will intervene to help reach an accurate result that works to determine which segments are the most priority? Which one is more likely to respond to the targeted advertising message?

4. Careful planning

Defining your target audience is the first step in building a successful marketing strategy, so there is no step to take, without going through the stage of identifying your target audience first. The website design will fail if it is not designed to serve the preferences of the target customers. The content will also not affect consumers if it is not written in a way that serves their purchasing aspirations and expectations. The same applies to other marketing steps and platforms that are used to advertise the product/ service. If your audience is teenagers, and you resort to postal messages in the advertising process, then you are wasting your money on advertising that is not related to your real audience and you will not reach it in the first place.
From here it is possible to understand the role of the target audience in the marketing strategy, and why large companies give it this much attention, and why the market is filled with multiple researches about it? It is the main component upon which the rest of the marketing steps are based, and it is the primary link between each component, and an indispensable measure of success or failure of the marketing strategy.

How can you define the characteristics of your target audience?

As we explained in the previous lines, the process of defining the target audience is a very important and several important steps follow. So before starting any advertising or marketing activity, please follow these steps:

☞Find out which segment you want to target

The factors that make up the target audience are numerous, so the audience can be determined according to:

  • Demographic segmentation: Here the determination is made according to gender, age, religion, social level, family size, or even its geographical region.
  • Psychological segmentation: Here the audience is determined according to the nature of its marketing activities, in addition to their psychological preferences and interests, along with their personal opinions and the platforms they prefers to follow.
  • Segmentation according to the nature of consumption: Your audience can be determined according to the rate of consumption of any product/ service. You can determine which audience is entirely dependent on this product, which they use from time to time, or average consumption. You can also limit the audience according to the type of products they consume, there are those who prefer to buy luxury products, there are those who are looking for medium quality, and there are those who prefer to buy products that fit their low budget.
  • Segmentation by preferred brand: As you focus on introducing famous brand products, it is best when you campaign for product advertising to focus on emotionally associated brands. If your new collection is all about NIKE products, focus your advertising on the segment interested in Nike's product lines. If your products revolve around Gucci products, it is best to advertise to this brand's consumers only.

☞Keep up with the latest developments in audience research and analysis

Market research should be your constant companion if you want to own a successful business. It is your guide to understanding the market and knowing what customers are really looking for, and which means are best suited to address them? Without market research, you seem to cross the road with closed eyes. Without it, there is no link between you and the audience, so you will not be able to understand its requirements, and it will not be able to understand the product you are trying to promote.
If your business is centered around attracting men interested in newly released iPhones, then you must know the physical level of the target audience, the language they respond to easily, the features they liked in this product, the frustrations they were exposed to, the age group they belong to, and other characteristics which will undoubtedly help you craft a compelling and effective marketing message.
You can resort to these researches either by searching the global studies published online, or you can download the analytical studies published by famous platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat. These studies will help you take a closer look at the audience of social platforms, and also provide you with accurate numbers and statistics that will undoubtedly serve your business.

☞Monitor your competition

Competitors' websites are an easy way to know which audience you want to target and the nature of their purchasing preferences. When you visit the competitor's platform, you will be able to see which products are the best selling for them, thereby knowing the taste of the buying audience. It will also enable you to view customer reviews and opinions, helping you know the frustrations your audience doesn't want to be exposed to. You'll also know how this audience interacts with the opponent's offers and discounts, and which way is right for them? Which methods did not influence them?

☞Define the characteristics of your product/ service carefully and determine who will need it

Focusing on the characteristics of the product/ service you provide will greatly help you reach a more accurate segment of your target audience. For example, if your product is high in price, then this point will help you determine the social level that you want to target. If your product is heavy in weight or dark monochrome, here women will not be part of the target audience. If your product is sarcastic or humorous in nature, then undoubtedly the elderly category will not be a target group. All of these are examples of one feature of the product, so what is the result if we analyze each individual feature and collect the results at the end to come up with an accurate description of the audience to attract?

☞Test your product on a segment smaller than your target audience

After applying the previous steps and collecting the information, you can use the experiment as a way to test the validity of the steps you have taken?
You can craft content that fits the segment you reached, then publish it and wait for the audience to interact with it. If the experiment proves the effectiveness of your target segment, you can generalize it in your marketing plan as a whole, if the content does not receive the expected interaction, you can study the factors that caused this to happen, then do process it and test it again. If it fails, then you can change the target segment and repeat the steps more accurately and with a closer look than before.
If you adhere to these steps, you will be able to define your target audience with high accuracy, and thus you will be able to lay a strong cornerstone upon which to build the rest of your marketing activities. Yes ... the process seems difficult, with some boredom - or a lot of it in reality - but it is an important step to reach your ultimate goal: achieving sales, and raising awareness of your brand.