Who Is Your Target Audience?
Before you start marketing your business, you have to get your message right. Getting your message just right takes a lot of consideration: What’s the benefit of your product or service, what problems does it address for your customer, why is your business such an important and necessary addition to today’s market?
Your Target Audience
And to answer any of these questions — and in turn, to create a successful marketing campaign — you need to have a strong idea of who your target audience is. Without an understanding of your target audience, all of these questions are just generic assumptions and vague concepts you’re working on.
If your business has been around for a long time, this is probably an easy question for you. After all, you’ve been successfully serving customers for years or decades. You know who your audience is!
But if you’re a new business, or a business getting ready to launch, this could be a little bit of a tougher question.
This question might also be tough for a business owner who just hasn’t put much thought into observing their customers — as long as the sales keep happening, why waste time worrying about who’s buying? But now it’s time to try to expand or reach more people.
Figuring out the person that your product or service is targeting always requires thought and planning, but this is a part of your marketing plan that will pay off in the long run.
Helpful Tips For Understanding Your Target Market
Here’s what you should keep in mind when you’re figuring out your target audience:
If it helps, create an avatar of your ideal customer. Ask yourself how old they are, what their interests are, and what they spend their free time doing. It’s also important to consider what their income is and how they like to spend their money. Finally, consider their values and priorities, and what attracts them to a brand.
Your message needs to be tailored if it’s going to attract your target customer. The language you use, the images you use, the values you portray, and the benefits you promote will all be based on this target. Remember that a 20-something with limited discretionary spending is going to respond to something that’s different from what an 80-something retiree with a lot of extra money responds to.
Don’t worry about appealing to mass crowds. Yes, you want to appeal to as many people as you can, and you don’t want to limit yourself in terms of the people you’re serving. But bear in mind that if you’re trying to appeal too broadly, you’re going to miss everyone. Think about the last time you picked out a restaurant — did you go with a place that said, “This is a restaurant for everyone who enjoys any kind of food.” Or did you look for a place that met your needs — a laid back vs. formal atmosphere, a simple menu vs. a more adventurous menu, and so on and so forth? No, the restaurant didn’t exclude anyone, but it did make it clear what kind of brand you were getting when you chose them.
Some businesses have two different types of audiences they need to reach. If you offer something for children, you need to appeal to both the kid and the parent who is going to be spending the money. This goes for things like toys or snacks, where a child is going to get excited and have to convince the parent; it also goes for things like tutoring services and enrichment programs, where the parents might want it and then have to convince their child. Be careful with appealing to different audiences, however — making a joke that a person needs a spouse’s permission to make a purchase, for example, is offensive and could turn people off of your brand.
Bear in mind that the target audience you envision right away might turn out to be different from your actual target audience. You might think you’re going to resonate really well with young moms, but it’s actually the dads that appreciate your business more. Or maybe you think that you have something people on a tight budget will like the most, but it’s actually people with plenty of discretionary income who just like the fact that they don’t have to spend a lot on what you have to offer. Remember to pay attention to your customers and talk to them so you can get a better understanding of them.
Reading reviews and looking at interaction on your Facebook page will give you a good idea of who your customers are (and what they expect from you). What kinds of people respond best to what you have to offer? What were they expecting from you, and in what ways did you deliver and in what ways did you fall short? What are some problems people have that don’t seem to be addressed?