The Target Audience (or audience) is a specific group of people to whom an organization, activity, or marketing campaign is directed.
This group is defined on the basis of common characteristics such as interests, needs, behaviors, demographic or psychographic data, which make it more likely to receive and react positively to promotional messages or products/services offered.
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It’s easy to say that your products are aimed at everyone. If you’re trying to talk to everyone you’re not talking to anyone, is one of the golden rules of marketing.
Generic messages are much less likely to empathize with the audience than direct and specific communication.
That is why it is important for your brand marketing to define and identify your target market.
Target Audience: key characteristics
- Segmentation: Target Audience can be divided according to criteria such as age, gender, geographic location, income, personal interests, and behaviors
- Goal: The focus is on people who are most likely to buy or be interested in the proposed products/services
- Personalization: Knowing the Target Audience allows you to create targeted content and strategies relevant to that specific group.
Difference between Target Audience and Target Market
While the Target Market represents a company’s entire potential customer base, the Target Audience is a narrower, more specific subset of that market.
For example, the Target Market could include all sports fans, while the Target Audience could focus on “young people in their 20s and 30s who are interested in soccer.”
Importance of Target Audience
Defining your Target Audience correctly allows you to:
- Optimize economic and strategic resources.
- Increasing the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.
- Improve conversion rate through more relevant and personalized messages
How to identify it
Tools such as:
- Google Analytics: Analysis of web traffic to obtain demographic and behavioral data.
- Social media insights: Information on user preferences and interactions.
- Customer Persona: Creation of ideal customer profiles based on collected data.
Why is the target market important for branding?
The target audience focus is the only strategy that will enable you to maximize your profits and have a winning business.
We use the term “target” generically, but the more correct term would be Buyer Persona.
In fact, by Buyer Persona we mean the “ideal customer.” The one whom we wish to have among our contacts, who is certainly interested in our services, but above all the one who would gladly devote his time to us.
Idealizing a Buyer Persona allows us, more easily, to focus on its characteristics and, consequently, to adopt a strategy that allows us to reach that potential customer. Obviously to then turn him or her into an actual customer.
Focusing on a niche, as Donato Cremonesi, CEO of Factory Communication, says, does not mean selling less, but rather concentrating one’s resources in a narrow market, minimizing investment, and becoming a leader in that niche.
Target Audience and Positioning
Want to ensure a successful future for your company? The key to successful marketing: focus, positioning and differentiation, says Philip Kotler, father of modern marketing.
And that’s right, there are no secrets in marketing. Regardless of your business mission, identifying and winning over your target audience is the only strategy for achieving your business goals.
Careful market analysis will enable you to gather enough data to field a strategy that aims for results.
We will never stop saying this: when it comes to marketing, we cannot sell everything to everyone, we have to decide what to sell and to whom.
The power of your branding depends on your ability to focus and create a marketing message that converts leads into real customers. But what is targeting?
It is a strategy that breaks up a large market into smaller clusters to focus on a specific group of customers.
Stop trying to reach an entire market; you are wasting your time and investment; your branding should use more targeted marketing strategies to focus its energies in connection with a specific, defined group within that market.
Benefits of a focus strategy for branding
We mentioned earlier how important it is to analyze the market and the behavior of our competitors. Now try to answer these questions:
- Who is your target audience?
- Where is your target audience (i.e., what channels do they use)?
- What do they think about your brand and products?
Once you have answered these questions, try to make another effort and describe your audience specifically:
- How old are they?
- What is the gender of your target audience?
- What level of education do they have? What profession do they have?
- What is their economic capacity?
Answering these questions will help you achieve your goals and define your branding relationship with the typical customer. Through a market segmentation strategy, your brand becomes more specific to a particular target audience.
Focusing on a specific niche will bring huge benefits to your business, don’t you think? I’ll try to summarize the main benefits for you in 5 points:
1. You can create targeted messages for your content marketing strategy
Brands that have a large customer market often struggle to create marketing campaigns that speak directly to their audience.
2. More conversions, more quality leads
The beauty of speaking directly to people is that it will benefit your branding tremendously in terms of conversions.
You are more likely to attract the right people, those who are really interested in your brand and products.
Think of Apple and how it has managed, in an exemplary way, to speak to its specific niche.
3. It allows you to be unique
A focus strategy will allow you to be unique and differentiate yourself from competitors in your market segment.
Only then can customers identify with your brand and value proposition, and rest assured that they will choose you over a competitor who is not talking directly to them.
So, remember Kotler’s words: focus, positioning and differentiation. Use your positioning on a specific market segment and make your brand more well-known and unique.
4. More loyalty
The ability to distinguish yourself from your competitors by reaching out to your customers with specific messages creates more lasting relationships. When customers identify with your brand, they become loyal advocates.
5. Improve your products and services
Knowing your customers more intimately also helps you look at your products and services in a new way.
When you have a deep understanding of your target audience, you can put yourself in their shoes and improve your offerings. Also, you can see what features to add to improve your customer care.
So, have we convinced you? Remember (always) the words of Beth Comstock: know thyself. Know the customer. Innovate.
Want to know more about targeting and learn about some case histories? Read our articles:
