Blog- Target Audience

Hello & Welcome to this weeks blog about Target Audiences.

If you are reading this then I am so excited for you because it probably means that you are about to start your marketing journey for your business! Target market research is the most important step in marketing, because how can you know what to say if you don’t know who you are saying it to?

As someone who has a degree in brand strategy I can tell you that there are so many things to take into consideration when getting to know your target audience and you can really never know enough. This is why you should think of target market research as a journey and not a once off excerice. As your business evolves, so will your target market. Keep an open mind in this process and try to throw any preconceptions out the window.

There are a few key considerations to take into account before you start mapping out your ideal target audience. Firstly; you many have more than one target market for your product. Let’s say you’re a mechanic, it might be easy to assume that your target audience is middle aged men but maybe your mechanic shop is near a university and you can see that there is a high demand for your services with the young women who go to university here and don’t know how to take care of their cars. When understanding your target audience, try not to be blinded by the obvious choice because you may missout on some golden opportunities.

Another consideration to be made is who is your actual target audience, maybe you own a small studio that teaches high school graduates how to bake, is your target audience those high school students or their parents (the ones who are going to pay) maybe your target audience is both. Be sure the separate and specify your target audiences as best you can because a marketing campaign that will work for a high school graduate will possibly not work for a middle aged mom.

When breaking your target audience down into small groups, we refer to these small groups as buyer personas and there are six separate camps of information to help you define your buyer- Personal information, Behavioural information, Values and fears, Goals and challenges, How to reach them, and Negative attributes.

Lets take a closer look at each of these groups of information and what questions to ask.

Personal Information-

This genrally covers demographic information and is the information that you will use when formulating a social media campaign. Questions to ask to find out your personas personal information is –

How old are they?
What gender are they?
Where are they located?
What form of education do they have?
Are they married?
Do they have children?
What job do they have?
What income bracet do they fall under?

I would like to pause here quickly, you may be thinking to yourself that you don’t know what job your target market has… that’s okay, this is just a representation of a target audience you can just make an educated generalized guess here, or if it is completely irrelevant to your business then you are welcome to leave it blank. Only you can know what information is and is not important to you when understanding your target audience, these are just guidelines.

Behavioral information-

Is more personal to a persona. It gives you a deeper look into why your product or service may be of value to this group of people. Questions to ask to find out your personas behavioural information is –

What hobbies do they have?
What do they care about?
Who’s opinion matters to them?
What do they spend most of their money on?
Where do they enjoy spending their time?
What motivates them?
What are they missing in their lives?
Why is my business relevant to them?

Values And Fears-

This one is pretty self explanatory. Questions to ask to find out your personas values and fears are –

What is their cultural background?
What is their religious background?
How connected are they to their family?
What are their fears?
What is important to them when considering a product like yours?

Goals And Challenges-

Where do they want to go and what is stopping them? Questions to ask to find out your personas goals and challenges are –

What are their personal and or proffessional goals?
What is getting in the way of them achieving success?
How can your business solve a problem in their lives?
What questions do they ask while trying to overcome their challenges?

How To Reach Them-

This section looks at which communication channels would be most relevant to this persona. Questions to ask to find out how to reach your persona –

How do they get information?
How do they communicate?
What types of media do they consume?
Do they belong to any groups?
What social media platforms do they use?
Do they attend events of any kind?
Where do they spend their days?

Negative Attributes-

This may seem like a strange question to ask but is this group of people really worth targeting? Let me give you a relevant example; Absa bank was thriving among the middle aged and older white communities, the only problem with this is that older people die and their target audience was slowly but surely dissapearing. So what did they do? They went back to the drawing board and figured out how to target a much larger and much younger target audience, young black working proffessionals; with their Africanasity campaign… and it worked! This is why is it important to understand the negatives of a target audience, to ensure that you are spending your time and money on the right kinds of people. Questions to ask to find out your personas negative information-

Who are the customers you don’t want?
Which customers are too difficult for your business to handle?
Which customers are too expensive to service?

After asking and answering each of these questions and maybe more, you will have a better understanding of who you are talking to, where you can reach them and what you should say to them in order to convert them from an audience member to a customer.

If you have any questions for me after reading this blog post please feel free to pop me an email and I’d love to chat to you about your business and target audiences.