Starting a business is one interesting and profitable task, but it will become boring or unprofitable if you cannot identify the target audience for your business.
As a business owner, it is wrong for you to say your business is created and designed to meet the needs of everybody existing. It’s a lie and trusts me, you might find it difficult to achieve your goals for starting the business in the first place.
If you wonder why some businesses fail a few weeks, months, or even years after inception. Not being able to properly define or identify the target audience is part of the reasons they fail.
Anybody can just sleep and wake up the next morning with a fantastic idea of starting a business, but you see, not everybody has the knowledge or what it takes to start and grow a business.
As a business owner who is not experiencing growth as desired, you could be doing some things wrong:
- You don’t have a specific target audience
- Or you are not targeting your target audience.
Using a scenario of three people who went to the river to fish. Person A got to the river and realized he didn’t go with fishing gear, Person B went with fishing gear, cast the net in the wrong direction, and caught a handful of debris alongside some types of fishes that are unfit for human consumption instead of the right type of fishes he desired and then Person C left the house with fishing gear, knows the right place to fish for the, cast his net in the right direction and got the exact kind of fish desired and also fit for human consumption.
From the illustration I just shared, who do you think has been able to identify a target audience for his business? Person C of course, this person already identified the target audience while planning and preparing and so when he/she got to the river, they knew what they were looking for and how to get it.
The same thing also applies to a regular business, if you can identify your target audience, you will know what strategies to use and how to implement these strategies to achieve your business goals.
As a business owner, while planning or creating a business plan, you should identify your target audience first before any other thing, and if you already have an existing business without a target audience, it is not too late to go back to the drawing board to define and identify the target audience for your business.
This is why in this article, I will be sharing with you
- The definition of a target audience and how it works
- Types of the target audience
- How to do a target audience analysis
- How to identify the target audience
Before we move on, I want you to know that it is not enough that you are learning new concepts and ideas to grow your business, it is also important for you to put your knowledge into practice so you can be able to achieve your goals.
In our 90% practical digital marketing course, you will learn-practice the diverse digital marketing strategies that you can use to grow your business from our well-seasoned coaches. You will also get access to a community of individuals who are passionate about digital marketing when you register.
What is a target audience?
To get profound knowledge about the subject matter, you must get the definition as it would be impossible for you to understand what you don’t know.
[bctt tweet=”A target audience is a group of people that will be interested in your product or the services your business offers. It also refers to a percentage of consumers that businesses can direct their marketing actions and strategies to in a bid to create awareness and also get these people to buy from you.” username=”dmsinstitute”]
A target audience is a group of people that will be interested in your product or the services your business offers. It also refers to a percentage of consumers that businesses can direct their marketing actions and strategies to in a bid to create awareness and also to get these people to buy from you.
Depending on what you sell, your target audience may be niche-based or even broader than that. A niche-based audience is such that has a specific group of needs that can be met by a targeted product.
For example, as an e-commerce store or as a food supply business, your target audience will be broad as your product and services are meant for children and adults.
For a niche-based, probably you sell athletes outfit ad instrument, your target audience will definitely be adults who are interested in athletics.
For either business, it is vital and important to define and identify your target audience so you will be able to plan and determine the kind of creatives that would resonate with them and identify the channels where you can find them.
Your target audience should have similar interests, goals, problems, and even education, so you can be able to design your product to meet their needs.
Source: Instagram
Using this creative as an example, the business owner or the marketing team has been able to identify their target audience and so they can create marketing creatives that will resonate with the people they want to sell to.
The problem with not identifying your target audience is that you will end up selling to the wrong person just like the illustration I gave earlier in this article, but if you will read till the end of this article, I will be sharing how you can identify your target audience.
I’m sure you will want to know the types of a target audience that exist, aside from the niche-based target audience that I talked about, which brings us to the next part of this article.
Types of the target audience
In identifying your target audience, a couple of factors determine the various types of the target audience. And it also has to do with the kind of product and services your business offers.
1. Demographic
This is the grouping of individuals according to socio-economic information gotten from statistics. Depending on factors like age, race, sex, birth rate, death rate, etc.
Your product can be meant for a particular age group who will have similar interests and problems that your business intends to solve or prefer solutions.
Like this product in the image above, it’s obvious that their target audience is children within the age range that are not able to control their bowel movement yet. And so, the product will be designed to meet their needs and offer comfort at the same time.
2. Geographical
This set of the target audiences is defined based on their geographical locations. Different geographical locations define the kind of people you can target your campaign at. For example, if the product you want to develop has to do with cultures and traditions, it has a possibility of growing and thriving in a location where culture is highly recognized.
You can also group a target audience based on their behavioral pattern, interest, purchasing powers, hobbies, and lifestyle.
If you can recognize and have knowledge about your target audience, you will be able to relate with them and this will in turn foster a relationship between you and your customers.
Having described the types of target audience that exist, I’m sure you want to know how to be able to identify your target audience. I want to share one part of a target audience that I did not tell you I will be sharing. You can take this as a bonus from me.
It’s called target audience analysis.
Target audience analysis
This is the insight a business needs to be able to successfully craft out and design its marketing strategies to get results. It can be said to be the process of identifying the group you want to sell to through statistics gathered about them.
If you can use this analysis then you will be saving your time, money, and resources as you would know the people who will likely convert to buying customers and those that won’t.
Target audience analysis has several benefits attached to it, they include:
- You will be able to find and target only the audience that would be interested in your business
- You will know how to create personalized contents that will resonate with the people you want to buy from you.
- You will also be able to increase the number of your customers through an increase in your conversion rate. And this will off course, bring more sales for your business.
[bctt tweet=”Target audience analysis is also a method that allows and helps businesses to make sure their content is seen by the right people and also at the right time.” username=”dmsinstitute”]
Target audience analysis is also a method that allows and helps businesses to make sure their content is seen by the right people and also at the right time. You can be sure that marketers will get value from the marketing campaigns they implement.
We can now move on to defining and identifying the target audience for your business.
How to define and identify a target audience
From all that has been said from the beginning of this article, you would have seen and recognized the importance of having a target audience while planning your business, and also even after launching your business, you can still go back to the drawing board to structure and identify your target audience.
Identifying your target audience also helps you to solidify a brand voice that resonates with your audience. You don’t want to have a business tailored for adults and yet your strategy is targeted to teenagers in colleges.
You can identify your target audience through the following ways:
1. Identify your existing customers or those you intend to sell to
Look at those who have bought your product or paid for the services you offer, what do they all have in common? What is their age range? Where do they stay? What is their interest?
You can discover this using customer surveys. Ask your customers these questions and if you don’t have an existing customer base, you might want to take a survey from your friends, your followers on social media platforms and see the set of people who will be interested in buying from you.
You can carry out a survey on social media using a poll like in the image above to identify the target audience for your business or a new product.
2. Recognize the problem your product or services will be solving
For every business that exists, there is a problem that it wants to solve. To get the best for your business through your target audience, you should recognize the solution you are bringing or you want to bring to existence.
Remember, you already know who you want to sell to, you should also recognize and plan what you want to sell to them. Will it meets their needs or you are just interested in making profits for yourself.
One thing with humans that you should take into consideration is that they can see through your strategies if you are only interested in their money or you are also interested in preferring solutions to their problems.
A quick question you want to ask yourself as a business owner is, what problem is my business designed to solve?
If you are not solving any problem then there is a possibility that no one will buy from you if they can’t see reasons to buy and also you will not be able to implement campaigns that will resonate with your target audience.
Conclusion
In this article, I have been able to share with you the definition of a target audience, types, how to define and identify as well as examples.
To grow a business, you must have good knowledge of what you have to do to achieve success and also achieve your business goals.
In our 90% practical digital marketing course, you will learn and implement the digital marketing strategies that you will be taught. I will also like to add that, learning is good but it is also important that you practice what you learn with supervision from digital marketing experts as we have at Digital Marketing Skill Institute,
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