Understanding Your Target Audience

How much do you know about your target audience?

The world we live in is market-friendly and open-minded, meaning you can pretty much chance your arm at anything. We are fully immersed in the generation of buyers who are willing to invest in almost anything they can form an emotional or physical connection with, so how can you utilise this when figuring out your own target audience.

We buy at work; we buy on the toilet, we even buy whilst eating, and we will occasionally buy whilst doing all three. You get the point. But the key to customers’ buying is how involved and engaged they feel with a particular product or service.

It goes without saying that most products aren’t for everyone, but the power is in the hands of the brand, if they know who their audience is.

You’ve probably heard the word ‘demographic’ a million times before, and you’ll probably hear it a good handful more times in this blog. But the truth is; the demographic is just one slice of your target audience, yet so often, the two get mistaken as interchangeable.

What is a target audience?

Your target audience is the group of people who will be interested in your product or service. They are the group of consumers who should see your ads, talk about your brand and buy what you’re selling. Every year, companies who spend their time and money marketing to the wrong people waste tens of billions of pounds. We will break it down a little more, so you’re not one of those businesses.

Within your target audience, there are three different segments.

Demographic (here’s that word again)

The demographic of your audience is dictated by hard data such as gender, profession, location, income, etc. Knowing your demographic is incredibly important, but it isn’t the end of the story.

Psychographic

Here’s one you might not have heard; you’ve probably heard psychographic traits bundled in with demographic. They include a person’s attitudes, activities, personality and values. If you like dogs, it’s because of your personality, if you like Manchester-based cafes, it’s likely because you live there.

Behavioural

It’s essential not to mix up a person’s behaviour with their personality when understanding your target audience. Yes, of course, they overlap, most of the target audience features do in one way or another, but they are different. Think of behavioural factors as things a client does because of necessity, like how much of a product a client uses and their behavioural patterns of buying other products too.

Once you understand these factors, you will have gained a greater understanding of your target audience and why they might purchase from your business.

However, it’s also crucial that you know, the size of your audience can be niche or large based on your offerings. For example, a company selling children’s shoes will be able to target children of all ages and their parents. In contrast, a brand selling boxing shoes will be targeting boxers which is a much smaller, more niche audience.

Digital Marketing at Create8

At Create8, we have a team of expert marketers ready to help your business find and monopolise your target audience. Our team’s knowledge spans all digital marketing platforms, meaning we can offer your brand the most complete service possible.

How do you find your target audience?

When it comes to truly knowing your target audience, there is no easy route. As a business owner, you will have to analyse customer-related data before strategising a long-term approach. So, we guess the question is, how do you get the data?

Analyse your customer base

If you are already operating as a business, it makes life a little easier. You will already have lots of raw data that you will be able to use to your advantage. Whether that data involves people who have purchased from you or have shown an interest, everything you can gather is vital.

Conduct market research

Market research is a broad term, with good reason. You can assess the sector you are operating in or looking to enter – find a niche that your business can serve. For market research, you can also get out into the world and harness people’s opinions of your brand. Speak to people on the street or create some online surveys; the choice is yours.

Just make sure you’re asking the right questions.

Identify who your audience isn’t

So here’s an opportunity to get clever. In business, no matter how much we want our product to cater to everyone, 99% of the time, it won’t. Understanding those who don’t need your products will help you learn about those who do. As you cross each potential segment off your list, ask yourself, ‘why would they not need us?’ You may be shocked to find that sometimes they actually do need you and don’t know it, figure out their pain points and target those.

If they definitely aren’t in your target market, accept this and move away from trying to sell to dead ends.

Analyse your competition

If you are going directly head-to-head with another brand, knowing who their target audience is will help you to understand your own. Seeing how they market and sell their products, as well as the way they choose to interact with their potential clients, will all benefit your business. By thoroughly analysing the competition, you will also be able to leverage their flaws and the mistakes they make.

Using analytics to help you

Every platform that your business is active on will be able to provide analytics and feedback about your target audience. Google Analytics is by far the most in-depth – you can learn an incredible amount from the interface. If you don’t know how to use Google Analytics, we suggest looking for a beginner’s guide – you simply can’t afford to miss out.

You can gather breakdowns on all sorts of things, including demographic, psychographic and even the behaviour of your website visitors.

The benefits of understanding your target audience

Now know what a target audience is and how to find it, we should explain the value of your target audience to your business.

Marketing your business without understanding the target audience is like closing your eyes and throwing money into the wind. Of course, some will land with people interested in your business, but the majority will be picked up and pocketed in a stranger’s pocket.

At the end of the day, your marketing needs to show some sort of ROI for it to be successful. For this, you’ll need to know who wants to see your advert and why they are the right people to see it for you to show a return.

Moving away from money, your business can never truly be relatable if you don’t know who you are trying to communicate with. Communication is an essential tool in modern business as it helps brands leverage their personality to build brand awareness, relationships with customers and hopefully make sales.

For example, if your creatives and tone of voice resonate with a young sports enthusiast, but you’re selling cakes, you’re probably getting something wrong somewhere along the line.

Understanding your target audience will also help with the design elements of your brand. Everything from colour schemes to graphics, packaging design to website, it’s all governed by the end-user. So, how are you planning on getting all that critical stuff right if you don’t know what the end-user looks like or who they are? You’re probably not.

Give us a disadvantage, please?

OK… if we must. The only real disadvantage to knowing your target audience inside and out is that it can create a hint of shortsightedness. If you start to believe that only your target audience cares about your product, you can potentially alienate other consumers.

The key is to understand your core target audience and any secondary audiences that may exist. Keep the others warm, and they may convert, but don’t let your main customers go cold.

At Create8, we specialise in providing a service that challenges the norm. We aim to think outside the box and help your business to become something more than you previously imagined. Our brilliantly talented team of marketing experts are driven by the Create8 ethos of providing the very best service to fit the specific needs of each client.

If you’re looking for a specialist agency to help to take your brand to the next level, then look no further. By following the link below, you can visit our website, have a look at some of our most recent projects and see some of the nice things our customers have had to say about us.

If you want to reach out, follow the contact us heading, leave us a message, or give us a call. We can’t wait to hear about your project.

Take a look at some more of our blogs for helpful tips, tricks and advice:

• Staying on Top of Your Marketing
• The Benefits of Targeted Marketing Campaigns
• How Retargeting Ads Are Changing