How To Discover & Define Your Target Audience
What is a Target Audience?
A target audience is the people — clients or customers — who are most likely to care about and be interested in your product or service. They are the type of people you want to be connecting with. They are those who align with your business’s principles and resonate with your message. These people will fit into a group defined by various traits. It helps to get a little technical and organize these traits into categories like demographic, psychographic, and challenges. Demographic traits are the more external or physical aspects that differentiate people, while psychographic traits are related to psychological factors like motivations and priorities. Challenges are all about the why - Why does that person want or need your business and what is it your business can do for them?
Demographic examples: gender, location, age, occupation, education, income level, and marital status.
Psychographic examples: personal interests, attitudes, values, desires, and behaviors.
Challenges are frustrations, pain points, or problems that your product or service can solve.
Why Define a Target Audience?
Understanding your target audience is incredibly beneficial. It gives you a direction. Once you understand who you are directing your message, you'll have an easier time deciding how to express your message.
For the same reasons it's important to refine the look of your brand, you need to define who your brand is meant to speak to. If you don't know who you're speaking to, you might as well be speaking to a wall.
"When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one"
- Meredith Hill
By the way, who is Meredith Hill anyways? Well, I had to look her up and it turns out she's a Wall Street analyst turned Travel Industry Expert. She founded the Global Institute for Travel Entrepreneurs, published a best-selling book about how to be a successful travel entrepreneur, and won Travel Entrepreneur of the Year! I'd say she knows a thing or two about business and marketing.
People want to listen to messages spoken to them. They want to feel like they can relate to your business and that your business understands their needs and desires. If you know your audience, you can speak their language and help solve their problems. Plus, if you can strike a chord with your audience by connecting to them on a personal level in some way, you'll benefit by gaining their trust, which is an important factor in a person’s decision to buy.
Meredith Hill was also quoted saying:
“People don’t buy products, they buy solutions”
Once you've defined your target audience, the opportunities to utilize that information are endless. Here is a list of just some of the ways you can utilize your target audience:
Intentional use of money and resources, instead of marketing/catering to everyone
More intentional and personal outreach to those more likely to purchase
Crafting marketing strategies
Define core customers
Building a business plan
Making business decisions
Choosing a direction for branding
How to Discover Your Target Audience
There are market research companies that charge big bucks to conduct this type of research but, for many small businesses, you can find these answers on your own. Once you start asking the right questions you'll begin to get an idea of what categories your audience fits into.
First, determine what challenges your business is seeking to solve for people. What can your product or service do for others? What challenges will your product or service fulfill? Then you can research what type of people share this problem. What demographic characteristics contribute to this person wanting or needing your business? What psychographic traits influence their decision to choose your business? Once you've compiled a list of characteristics that define a group, you can start creating 'Buyer Personas'. These are fictional characters that fit into your target audience group and can be incredibly helpful in adding context to the type of people your business is targeting.
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Start broad, but gradually get more specific. The more specific you can be with defining your target audience, the more effectively you can utilize the information.
Collecting information on your audience:
The best way to research your target audience is to gather and analyze data. There are built-in analytics included with most of your digital channels (ie. Instagram, Facebook, website, and Google Business Profile). Use the data available to you to research and monitor your audience. You can also use tools like Google Analytics to further dive into your website traffic data.
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Consider interviewing or conducting surveys of your customers. Then analyze the data. One way to gather data from your current customers is to offer an incentive, like a discount code or freebie, to your website visitors or social media followers who fill out a survey or poll. Questions and polls are super quick and easy to use on Instagram Stories!
Try looking at businesses similar to your own, such as your competitors. Analyze their audience and learn from what works for them. What do their customers all have in common? What might make your audience different from theirs?
When to Establish Your Target Audience
Before you do anything! Ideally, you establish a target audience when you build your business plan. Everything you do in your business should be based on who you are speaking to. But, that's not to say that you won't be fine-tuning this along the way. As your business grows and evolves, so will your audience, and it's important to pay attention to who is watching and listening. Plus, the longer you're in business, the more data you'll have acquired, which means you'll have a lot more information to use and learn from.
Consider these important business questions and see how a target audience can help you make an informed decision:
Where are you going to set up shop? — Where it is convenient for your target audience.
What are your hours going to be? — At times that work best for your target audience.
What kind of marketing tactics are going to work best for your business? — The kinds that work best based on your target audience.
What kind of branding elements align well with your business? — Well, that all depends on who your target audience is (no, your branding colours shouldn't be your favourite colours… they should be colours that speak to the tone you are trying to express - a tone that speaks to and resonates with your target audience)
I think you get the point ;)
Whether you're a new business, or you've been around for generations, defining a target audience is important for any business, at any stage. It takes the guesswork out of your marketing strategies and helps you find a voice and tone that works for your business. Every time you question the look of an ad, the tone of a message, or a new product or service, consider how your target audience would respond and question if it benefits them. Once you put the time in to understand your people, your people will better understand your business.
When we build websites or refine a business’s online presence, we always keep in mind the target audience the business is speaking to. If you’d like to chat more about target audiences, websites, digital channels, or anything else, feel free to send us a message!
