Target audience, what it is and how can you identify it

Defining your brand's target audience is essential to create effective marketing strategies and achieve your goals.

The fact of segmenting the market and being able to concentrate all your efforts on satisfying a group of people, is a great opportunity for your brand since you will be able to invest the entire marketing budget in a market sector that you know is interested in consuming your product or service. Therefore, the message and the strategy you use will be much more effective.

It’s very important to know how to define your brand's target audience and how you are going to address them to transmit the message correctly and achieve the goals of your brand.

What is the target audience of your eCommerce?

The target audience is the group of people to whom your brand and products are aimed at, usually all marketing actions will also be focused on this target audience. It helps you to segment the target of your business according to their characteristics; different languages, prices, messages, and channels. In other words, targeting children between 9 and 16 years of age is not the same as targeting adults between 25 and 40 years of age.

For this reason, it is so important to know how to identify them correctly and for this, you will need to know a set of criteria, for example:

Sociodemographic aspects:

· Age

· Gender

· Location

· Educational background

· Marital status

· Nationality

Socioeconomic aspects:

· Profession

· Purchasing power

Psychographic aspects:

· Consumer behavior

· Purchasing habits

· Political ideology

· Language

· Values

· Religion

· Interests

· Consumer character

· Personal hobbies

What tools can you use to find information about your target audience?

Here are some of the tools you can use to find information about your brand's target audience. It's important to note that there are market research companies that can do it for you. You will have to pay for them, but it's an option in case the company doesn't have the capabilities or the resources to do it.

Online surveys: design surveys with the necessary data to obtain the information you are interested in and pass it on to users and customers. Sometimes it's difficult to get them to do these surveys, so you can offer them something in return to encourage them to do it, such as a one-time-use promotional code, a gift on their next purchase, etc.

Studies and reports: there are already studies and reports that analyze the profile of different target audiences that your business could have. You can perform an intensive search to find valuable and current information for your brand and use it to define your target audience without using other tools.

Interviews: in this case, you can choose a group of people who you think can offer you useful information and interview them. That will help you to define your target audience much more precisely. In this case, you can also offer some "present" to those interviewed.

Activity history: you can review the movements of your customers over a while to know their buying habits; what products they buy the most, how often they buy them, what are the dates when they buy the most, etc. So, you will know what your customers' behavior is and this will also help you to obtain certain beneficial information.

What are the benefits of defining your target audience?

Knowing your brand's target audience will help you achieve the expected results and will be an essential concept to be successful in your marketing campaigns. Being able to detect it correctly will be relevant to:

Knowing what language to use to communicate with them (tone and style).

The way you communicate with your target audience is very important, as it says a lot about you as a brand. Depending on the profile of your target audience, you will address them in one way or another; the tone, the style, and the language.

Knowing which channels to use to reach them

Knowing your target audience will also provide you with information about which channels they use the most (social networks and email) so that you can reach them through these channels. So, you won't waste time developing strategies for each of the existing communication channels since you will simply have to focus on those that are most used by your target audience to increase visibility and brand awareness.

Capture the attention of future customers

It will be easier to capture the attention of future customers who are part of your target audience if you know them and know how to reach them.

Designing an attractive and effective communication strategy

Designing a communication strategy is very important since it's how your brand is going to create brand awareness and reach your current and future consumers. But, the most important thing is to create an effective and attractive communication strategy. This way, if you know your target audience, you will be able to put all your effort and dedication into creating a communication campaign that is effective and attractive to achieve the expected results and be a great success.

Finding new market niches

Analyzing your target audience will be very important to know which sector you should focus on. The analysis can also help to detect sectors that you had not considered before but that could be interesting for your brand.

Initiate long-lasting business relationships

Knowing your target audience will allow you to establish long-lasting relationships with them. If the consumer is happy with your service, the products you offer, and your treatment, they will most likely choose you over your competitors and, therefore, they will become loyal to your brand.

Establish an effective link with the consumer

If you know your target audience, you can establish an effective bond with them. It's very important for the consumer to feel that the brand is not only focused on selling the product. In the end, they are the engine of your business. Knowing how to listen to them, solve their problems, answer their questions, as well as offering new products is vital to establish a strong bond between the customer and brand.

Know what their needs are and cover them against the competition

Knowing your customers' needs, will make it easier for you to offer them exactly what they are looking for. The consumer should find everything they need in your brand.

Reduce unnecessary costs

Focusing on the right target audience will be very useful to optimize the campaign budget since you will only have to focus on a specific audience and everything will revolve around them.

Time optimization

Analyzing the target audience can take a lot of time, however, it will also help you to optimize time in other aspects which will enable you to offer better solutions and to obtain the results you are looking for more effectively.

Conclusion

As we have seen, knowing your brand's target will be of vital importance to create effective communication campaigns. Also, knowing how, when, and where to communicate with them will empower you to create stable and lasting relationships with your customers.

It is necessary to segment the target audience of a business to satisfy the needs of each group, and at the same time, to know which group of people you are most interested in.

The market must adapt to the needs of consumers to satisfy them, so marketing and sales strategies must be oriented towards a correct and previously delimited target audience. It's practically impossible to satisfy all segments of the market, so it's more effective to divide it into groups with similar characteristics and needs.