Target audiences come up a lot in marketing. Experts will always tell you to “speak to your target audience” or “advertise through channels your target audience prefers,” but who exactly is this mysterious audience, and why should you target them?
As it turns out, every brand has a target audience, and it’s very important to your marketing efforts. Finding the target audience for your brand will help you optimize your marketing campaigns to get the best return on your investment. Use this step-by-step guide to determine your brand’s target audience.
What is a target audience?
Your target audience is the group of people you’re trying to reach with your marketing campaigns. These customers are the ones who are most likely to buy your brand’s products or services. Typically, they have several characteristics in common. These characteristics may include:
- Demographics like age and gender
- Location
- Education level
- Occupation and income
- Interests
- Purchasing habits
- Online activity
Don’t worry if it seems like your target audience is still quite varied across these categories. Brands often appeal to a wide variety of customers for different reasons, but those customers still generally have at least one thing in common. Your mission is to find the characteristics that make consumers more likely to be interested in your products, so they will turn from a lead to a customer. That’s the real target audience definition.
How does finding your target audience benefit your business?
Finding your target audience is essential to tailoring your marketing campaigns. Think of it this way: how would you market your best product to everyone in the world? Even if it’s the perfect product, there are probably lots of people who don’t need or want it. No matter what you say, you’re not going to change their minds.
Trying to market your brand without understanding your target audience is like casting a huge net into the ocean, except the net has holes large enough to let almost every single fish through. You’d waste a lot of time, effort, and money to get minimal results.
When you market to your target audience instead, you cast a much smaller net, but you’re also a lot more likely to get meaningful results. Campaigns tailored to your target audience will be more cost-effective since you’re marketing to people you’ve already identified as more likely to be interested in your brand. You’re not wasting money advertising to people who were never going to convert anyway.
More personalized campaigns
You can take what you know about your target audience and use that information to create highly personalized marketing campaigns. This will allow you to craft marketing messages that directly connect with your target audience’s preferences, needs, and wants. It will make your campaigns as relevant as possible to these target customers.
When you market to them directly, customers are much more likely to engage and convert.
Smoother customer acquisition
Before you find your target audience, it can be challenging to pick the best marketing channels for your campaigns. Should you use targeted email marketing, social media, paid search, or something else entirely? Understanding your target audience clears that right up. You simply choose the channels where your target audience is most active.
For example, people 18 to 29 are more likely to use social media, especially platforms like TikTok and Snapchat, than older customers. If your target audience is on the younger side, social media marketing might be the right choice for your brand.
Using channels where your target audience is most active gives you a better shot at getting them to see and engage with your marketing efforts.
Improved customer loyalty
When customers feel an emotional connection to your brand, they’re more likely to stick around and keep buying your products or services. Understanding your target audiences helps you address their specific needs in your marketing campaigns, strengthening that emotional connection.
You’ll build trust with your target customers when they see that you consistently deliver relevant content to them. Your marketing campaigns will show you that you really understand them and persuade them to stick with your brand.
How to find your target audience
So, you’re ready to start reaping the benefits of understanding your target audience. What’s first? Follow these steps to find your brand’s target audience.
Ask yourself what your target customer’s goal is
Customers buy products and services because they have a need, want, or goal. So, why do customers come to your brand? What makes them take an interest in your product or service? You need to understand the shared goal that drives your customers to your brand.
For example, with the iPhone, Apple targets tech-savvy customers interested in the status symbol of an Apple product. Their goal is to find a smartphone with a seamless design that works well with other Apple technology.
Your target audience’s goal will be completely different. For a plumber, the audience’s goal could be finding someone trustworthy to come into their home and fix the pipes. It could be anything. You just have to know what motivates your customers.
If you’re not sure where to start, try surveying your existing customers. They may be willing to share what drew them to your products or services.
Dig deeper into your current customers
Looking at your current customers will help you develop a better idea of your target audience. Try to find things they have in common.
You can find this data from sources you already have, such as:
- Sign-up forms: When someone signs up for your email list, you typically collect their name and email address. If you also have them provide other information like their age, physical address, or gender, you can use that information to help determine your target audience.
- Purchasing forms: Customers who buy something online provide their addresses, payment information, and possibly other personal information. They’re also sharing their product interests. Incorporate these details into your picture of your target audience. Shipping details might help you determine the geographical location of your target audience, for example.
Analyze data from other channels
You can also look at data from other channels, like your website or social media profiles. Use analytics tools to see who’s engaging with your brand on these platforms.
Social media analytics, for instance, can give you even more details about your customers and potential customers. They have demographic data and information about your customers’ interests from the accounts they follow and the posts they like.
Your email reporting may also shed light on the topics or products that interest your customers the most. By examining open rates, click-through rates, and conversions on your email campaigns, you can learn what best speaks to your customers.
Social listening is another approach that can help you understand your target audience. With social listening, you monitor what consumers are saying online about your brand, products, and industry. Even if they’re not directly contacting you, analyzing these public online conversations offers insights into how customers think.
Learn what customers value and how they view the customer experience. Then, incorporate those insights into your target audience profile.
Put everything together
By now, you have enough information to describe your target audience. In your description, include the answers to these questions in as much detail as possible:
- Is your target market mostly women, men, nonbinary persons, or evenly balanced?
- How old is your target customer, and what generation are they in?
- What family status does your target customer have? Are they married or single? Do they have children?
- What is the highest level of education your target customer received?
- What income bracket are your target customers in?
- What hobbies and interests do your target customers have?
- What types of media do your target customers engage with online?
Don’t worry if you don’t have an answer to every question. Just focus on consolidating all the commonalities between your customers and interested potential customers. The more details you have about your target audience, the better.
Craft personas
Once you have the details of whom your target market is, you can convert that into a customer persona.
For example, a sneaker company might have a target audience of men and women aged 20 to 40 athletes. They might be fitness enthusiasts, tend to have household incomes above $80,000 per year, and read about maintaining an active, healthy lifestyle. These target customers are intermediate to advanced athletes, not entry-level fitness hobbyists.
The sneaker company could take that target audience and create two customer personas:
- John is a 36-year-old computer engineer who runs competitive 10Ks. He subscribes to Runner’s World digital magazine and shops at Whole Foods. He is training to run his first half marathon.
- Carly is a 25-year-old marketing manager. As a college student, she was a sprinter on the track team at Berkeley. She follows health and fitness influencers on Instagram and still runs five times a week.
Crafting customer personas helps you humanize your target audience and understand the different types of people included. You can start tailoring your marketing efforts even further based on these more specific personas.
Monitor your competitors
Keep a close eye on the types of customers your competitors are targeting, too. Understanding who they are speaking to can help you fine-tune your own marketing efforts. Look to your competitor’s social media. You’ll find out more about design, copy, engagement practices like responding to comments, and user-generated and influencer content. Gather data about who’s looking at their brand and make adjustments for your own brand as you see fit.
Marketing to your target audience
Once you have found your target audience, it’s time to put that information into action in your marketing campaigns.
Choose ad copy and designs with your target audience in mind
The design and copy of your marketing campaigns should speak directly to your target audience’s goals. Use what you know about them to put yourself in their shoes. Then, write your ads like you’re speaking right to these customers.
Segment your email list
If your target audience naturally breaks up into several groups with shared characteristics, try segmenting your email list. Then, you can create different email marketing campaigns to address each group’s preferences and needs.
Try an email marketing software tool like Constant Contact to streamline your email campaigns. With our SMS and email automation, you can automatically send relevant texts and emails to the right customers at the right times.
Start with a pre-built, plug-and-play automation template and personalize the message path for your customers. Then, you can focus on running your business and let the software do the rest. Sign up for free to start building your email automation.
Create different landing pages
The landing page is where customers arrive after clicking on your social media posts or ads. Use what you know about your target customers to create different landing pages for each campaign. Keep your messaging consistent, address topics or concerns that matter to them, and position your brand as the solution they need.
Everything comes back to your target audience
From start to finish, all your marketing campaigns should center on your target audience. Look at data from sources like your social media pages and customer relationship management (CRM) tools to fill out the profiles of your target customers. Always keep in mind who they are, what they want, and how your brand meets their needs.
And don’t assume your target audience will never change. It’s important to check in every so often to gauge whether your target audience has shifted and whether you should adjust your marketing efforts.
Next, download our landing page guide.
