A target audience is a particular group of people or organizations that are likely to view your business’ service or product. Target marketing allows you to focus your marketing dollars on that specific market that is more likely to buy from you. To help your business reach clients and generate business more efficiently, follow the 4 steps below to help identify your target audience and grow your business.
1. Analyze and understand what your product/ service is.
The more you understand your product or service the easier it is to identify your target audience.
Start off by creating a list of each feature your product or service offers and the benefits that come with each feature and how these features solves a problem for your customer. To create your list you may want to ask yourself some of the following questions:
- What is your exact service and product?
- How does your product or service benefit your customer?
- Does your product or service stand out amongst its competitors?
2. Look at your current customer base.
Identify their reasoning for purchasing your product or service. Ask yourself, why do your current customers need your product/service? What problem do they have that your product or service solves? Look for common characteristics amongst your viewers/customers, it is likely that other people like them could also be interested in your company.
3. Choose specific psychographics and demographics to target.
To reach your target audience you need to figure out how to emotionally connect with them. You can do this by choosing to target specific psychographics and demographics.
- Demographics help you classify your target audience by facts and statistics. Examples are age, location, ethnicity, gender, income status, marital status, and education level.
- Psychographics help you classify your target audience by their attitude and personality. Examples are values, interests, their likes, dislikes, and lifestyle choices.
4. Evaluate your target market.
After finishing all of the previous steps, you should have decided on a target audience. Now you must evaluate. A few questions you should ask yourself are, do enough people fit the criteria? You don’t want to break down your target too much, having a too narrow audience can cause your marketing campaign to underperform. On the other hand, having a too wide target audience makes it more difficult to create a detailed strategy. Also, remember that you can have more than one niche and deliver your marketing campaigns accordingly to each.
Identifying your target audience can be a hard task to do, but once you know who your product or service is targeting it is much easier to make marketing decision. A well-defined target audience also allows you to figure out which media outlets and marketing tactics will work best for you.
Lastly, we just want to mention that a great follow up article to this one is How to Create a Marketing Strategy and Marketing Plan for Your Small Business. Make sure to follow the above steps to best identify your target audience, if you need any help, please feel free to reach out…We’re happy to help!
Danielle Foley, President
Foley Marketing Advisors
dfoley@foleymarketingadvisors.com