Why bother defining a target audience? Isn’t it better just to lump everyone together? If my brand reaches out to everyone and their mom, someone is bound to like us, right? NO. NOT RIGHT (CAPS STRESS URGENCY). You NEED to define a target audience for your brand. Why? Because we said so. But also, because without a target audience your brand’s content is going to have little to no impact. Time is money and without a defined audience in place you might as well shred your Benjamins, weave them into a basket, light that basket on fire, and pack up all of your belongs to find a cozy nook between 42nd and 43rd street. In that order.
Defining your target audience is crucial when it comes to marketing. Whatever service you are providing needs to be relevant to the people you are reaching out to and should be treated as such. The only way to truly achieve your marketing goals is to know your target audience inside and out. This way you will be able to convert prospects to customers a lot easier, uh hello, BETTER ROI. Hopefully, at this point you are convinced it is necessary to define your targeted audience. If we lost you…have fun in between 42nd and 43rd street. Now onto the good stuff, how do you even begin to assess the right audience for your brand?
NUMBER ONE: MARKET ANALYSIS
Market Analysis is muy importante! There are many ways to begin. We suggest reading news articles related to your industry niche to see what the common trends there are in regards to demographic and interests. When trying to conduct market analysis it is best to put your Nancy Drew skills to test and question everything! These questions can be broken up into demographics and psychographics.
NUMBER TWO: THE INVESTIGATION BEGINS
Start by tackling one side of the equation, demographics. Easiest way to get the engine going? List questions, for example:
1) What is the age of your targeted audience? Are they tiny tots? Tweens? Elderly?
2) What is their gender? Male, Female, both?
3) How much dinero are they pulling in annually?
4) Married? Kids? Single and ready to mingle? What is their family situation like?
5) What do they do for a living?
6) What is their ethnic background?
7) Are they educated?
8) Where are they located?
By answering these type of inquiries you will be able to assess who your client is, demographically speaking.
NUMBER THREE: THE INVESTIGATION CONTINUES
Next part in the line-up, figuring out your targeted audiences’ psychographics. Again, the easiest way to determine these characteristics is to, you guessed it, make a list of questions!
1) What do they value?
2) What type of lifestyle do they have?
3) What are their interests?
4) Are they maniac impulsive shoppers? Or super savers?
5) What type of attitude do they have?
6) What special features would they find appealing?
7) What are their thoughts about your industry?
8) How do they behave?
Once you have taken all of this into account you will have a better understanding of how your potential customers think.
NUMBER FOUR: DEFINE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE
After you have finished bombarding yourself with questions (remember, the more specific the better), gather all of your data and make a statement about your target audience combining demographic and psychographic information to create a mental profile. Think about ultimates. What ultimately is your demographic? What ultimately is your psychographic?
Once you have your defined target audience in hand, use their characteristics to have a one on one conversation with them when marketing. Perfecto! By assessing who you are speaking to you will undoubtedly be able to boost your company’s success in many different verticals.
Leave a Reply