Target Audience- Your Simple Guide To Save Marketing Efforts

Do you know the majority of startup fails because companies don’t know the right target audience?

Are you starting your business without identifying who is your target market is?

What do your customers want?

Why do they buy from you?

Do you know as per Marketo engagement gap analysis, 56% of consumers believe businesses need to have a deeper understanding of their needs?

Not everyone is interested in your products/services.

If you target everyone, you’re targeting no one. You can’t sell your products/services to everyone.

Before you develop your business, you should know who you plan to sell to.

Don’t you believe me?

What? Are you talking about Amazon— They target audiences is everyone in the world!”

Let me clear you one thing- The starting four years (i.e., 1994 and 1998) Amazon just sold books. And even then, they did it online only — which, in 1994, was an exceptional niche audience.

Target audience is like your helping hand that tells who the right person for your marketing campaigns is.

By including a target market into your sales & marketing strategy, you’ll be able to focus on more focused patrons while identifying their exact needs and reducing extra spending.

The goal of this ultimate guide is to provide an easy way on how to find your target audience.

By the time you’re done reading, you’ll understand:

What is Target Audience?
Difference between Target Audiences Vs. Target Market
Ways to find a target audience for your business
What is Buyer Persona?
How to persuade people with a buyer persona journey?
What are the stages of the buyer persona?
What are the different types of target audiences?
Target audience example
Case study on how company found their target audience

Target Audience Definition

When a people’s group is being defined by a particular behavior or demography then that group of audience is known as the target audience.

A good example of a target audience can be taken from a business that is into plumbing. The target audience of the business will be the residential or commercial property owner. Similarly, a company making toys will have a target audience who are parents or grandparents having kids.

After coronavirus outbreak, business must focus on getting good ROI by laser focusing on target audience.

Know how Deepika Padukone Chhapak movie found its Target audience.

Target Audience Vs Target Market

A target audience is an individual who is being made aware of the product or the services so that the audience can influence the other individuals in his space.

While, a marketing initiative attempted towards a particular group of the customer intending to bring forward the product is known as a target market. Based on the various preferences a target market is the market where the product has potential chances to be sold.

Buyer Persona Is The Key

The buyer’s persona is a fictional assumption. A buyer persona is an ideal characteristic of the customer based on the research of the existing customers of the brand.

Why Buyer Persona Is Important?

If you understand the buyer’s persona you will have a tremendous insight for your business & customer. If you understand the buyer’s persona you will understand the area where your marketing time & efforts needs to be invested.

Buyer Persona Journey

To understand the journey of a buyer it is important to understand the sales of a product from the perspective of the buyer.

You can follow and persuade your target audience online with buyer persona.

If you are a salesperson then you will have a better perspective of sales while understanding the journey of the buyer’s persona.

With Buyer persona journey, you will understand the fact that a buyer is looking for various information of the product they want to buy.

About The Buyer’s Journey Stages

There are different steps involved in the journey of the buyer. These are phases of awareness, evaluation and purchasing approach of the buyer. Based on the understanding of the buyer’s journey three stages can be categorized:

Stage Of Awareness: This is the stage where the problem is realized by the buyer.
Consideration Stage: This is the stage where the buyer identifies and defines the problem. Once the problem is defined the buyer approaches to solving the problem.

The Stage Of Decision Making: The stage of decision making is the final step in which the buyer decides to make the decision based on the understanding of the problem.

In order to fully understand the AWARENESS STAGE for your buyer, ask yourself:

What is the definition of challenges and goals for a buyer?
What is the process of buyers educating themselves based on the goals and the challenges?
If there is the inaction of the buyer what are the impacts?
Is there any misconception that exists while the buyer addresses the challenges and goals?
What is the approach taken by the buyer to prioritize goals and challenges?

In CONSIDERATION STAGE

What is the category of the solution being investigated by the buyer?
What is the approach taken by the buyer to educate themselves about the different categories?
What is perceived by the buyer while understanding the pros and cons of each category?
What is the way of deciding on the right category of the buyer?

Questions You Should Ask Yourself To Define The DECISION STAGE Are:

What are the criteria being considered by the buyer to evaluate available offerings?
What do the buyers like about the offering of your company in comparison to the offering of the competitors? What are the associated concerns with the offering of your company?
Who is required to be involved in decision making? While a person is involved in how the perception differs?
When an offering is presented by your company does the buyer want to try it first and then buy it?
Are additional planning needed outside of purchasing?

Try to answer these questions to get a robust idea for your buyer’s journey.

Types Of Target Audience

Let’s know the different types of the target audience which entrepreneurs need to know in their marketing and sales strategy-

Everyone

These types of company are generally involved essentials companies which are required by everyone. They market their products to everyone for conveying a positive and happy feeling.

Example- Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Kraft Heinz Company

Locations based audience

It is also called as- LBM- Location-based marketing or geo-marketing. Location-based marketing includes online and offline strategies intended to help businesses plan and execute marketing activities following consumers’ geographic location.

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Example- All Brick-And-Mortar Businesses

Demography based audience

The demographic target audience is market segmentation as per age, race, religion, gender, family size, ethnicity, income, and education.

Example- Automobile Industries, TV, News industry.

Needs based audience

This type of target audience generally deals with human needs, wants, dreams, and hopes. Some of the smartest brands how their products/service meets consumer’s needs and instead not to focus on what they have to sell.

Twitter founder EV Williams made the point at the recent XOXO conference:

“Those who lose sight of basic human needs — who want to give people the next great idea — will have problems.”

Example- Cab Industry, Online food delivery

Opinions based audience

It relates to the people’s emotions on a particular product, service, or topic.

Example- Charity, NGO, Magazine

Lifestyle based audience

This type is based on the lifestyle consumer you carry. If you are addicted to some branded products or if you have a high standard of lifestyle then you are likely to buy branded products over other products. It generally includes the brand value of the product you use.

Example- iPhone, Rolex, Mercedez, Marlboro

Use The Pitch Deck Template By Ratan Tata.

Step-By-Step Process To Find Target Audience (Or Buyer Persona)

1st Step- Research On Your Target Audience

The buyer’s persona needs to be created with the help of research, survey, interview and understanding the target audience. This is an approach to understand the product that people are willing to buy.

You can collect information’s as per below:

Gender
Age
Location
Spoken languages
Income
Interest in activities
Life stage (new parent, retired, etc.)
Level of education
Type of work
Role or title at their company

Also, try to collect information as per their buying behavior:

How they spend their day
Who they look up to?
What are their challenges at work?
What are their career goals?
How they define success in the workplace.
What are your audience’s most common objections?
How tech-savvy are they, and what social networks do they prefer?
Do they have an ideal method of communication (e.g., text, call, email)?

Useful tools to use: Social media insights, surveys, Google analytics, and interviews.

Step 2- Find Customer Pain Points

To provide a helping hand to the customer you need to understand the pain point of the customer. You need to understand the factors that are holding the customers back. You also need to understand the barriers that are keeping the customer in trouble.

How You Should Know Pain Points?

To understand the pain point of the customer it is important that the right question is being asked to the customer. The question needs to be based on the problems the customer is attempting to solve.

Conversation with your sales team: You can ask your sales team to provide you with a written note on their observation on the sales.
Online reviews: Online review is a great way to understand the pain point of the customer. This is the place where you get to know what the customer is telling about the product.
Evaluating competitors: Evaluating the website of the competitor is one of the ways through which you can have a better understating of the pain point.

Step 3- Get Customer Goals

Understanding the positive aspect of the customer’s goal is an important factor that needs to be considered. Understating the goals and aspirations of the customer and keeping a note of the same is helpful.

Step 4- Analyse How Your Brand Can Help?

Once the goal is identified it is important to understand the ways the brand can help in achieving the goal.

Step 5- Convert Your Research To Buyer Persona

Once you are aware of all the essential details of the buyer you can come to a solution and create an imaginary buyer persona.

Note:-

Remember, a list of characteristics does not equal a persona. A persona is realistic description of a person who represents one segment of your customer base.

Download Templates here.

Target Audience Example

Let’s demonstrate a buyer persona and their journey with the help of an example. How to find a target clients and how you can improve their buyer’s personas journey.

Let’s know with the help of example on how to find a target audience and how you can improve their buyer’s journey.

Suppose if you operate a business of Handicraft products.

So who’s your target customer?

Who is going to buy your craft, regardless of what it is?

First, let’s give a fictional name to your target patron.

Buyer Persona Name– Rita

Basic Details:

She is a female
Home makers
Lives in a city
Married woman
Devoted mother and caring wife.
Loves to decorate her homes.

Age of Rita:

24-55

Her challenges:

She always gets costly and bad quality of arts & handicrafts.

Her Preference:

She likes bright range of colors in arts like Leather, Jute, Woodwork, Saris and Silk.

Her Objective:

She wants to understand how handicraft made and how she can find those handicrafts at the comfort of her home.
Rita is fed-up of browsing Google to find answers to problems she’s looking to solve. So she wants a right and perfect answer for it.

Above is the Buyer persona of Rita. Now you know your target customer.

Now, let’s take a look at what her buyer’s journey might look like in more detail.

Taking Rita In Awareness Stage

To start, now you know that Rita wants to know how handicraft made and what’s best for her craft. Now what you think about an AWARENESS STAGE? Let’s offer an eBook which provides a list of problems facing by consumers while exploring handicraft of poor quality? This is something that certainly brings value to Rita’s search.

Taking Rita In Consideration Stage

Now Rita is educated on handicraft problems to avoid; now, she is looking for more related content. Now she’s in the CONSIDERATION STAGE. Now raise the questionnaire regarding her needs to understand better what and how exactly she can find the solution. The questionnaire outlines both the requirements of the craftsmanship, as well as the consumer.

Taking Rita In Decision Stage

However, Rita needs a little bit more information to get into DECISION STAGE. Now she wants to look at how craftsmanship prepares the handicraft.

There you go, you can give a free workshop which inspires her to visit your factory so that she can see the whole process. That would do the trick.

With a solution to her problems. Now she is ready to make a final decision. Now you can offer Rita with your factory address where you can show her the whole process of handicrafts. That could be a helpful service to provide Rita.

That’s an example of a complete buyer’s journey. It’s vital to note that a buyer’s journey is ever-evolving. The more you learn about your buyer personas, the more you’ll be able to hone and grow their buyer’s journey resources over a while.

Who Should Use This Buyer Persona?

In general, you should designate this work to one set of the person. To make the most of your efforts, buyer personas should be used by the marketing team, or sales team, and customer support team.

You can use the above methods to find your :

Target audience for startup
Target audience for website
Target audience for blog
Target audience for Facebook
Target audience for Instagram
Target audience for business

Case Study: How Company Found Their Target Audience

EXAMPLE 1:

Coca Cola- Share A Coke Campaign.

Company- Coca Cola
Campaign- Share A Coke

Let’s assume their Buyer persona- ABC (For example)

Basic details of ABC:

They are young generation
Age- 18-26

Customer Pain Point of ABC:

Enable the customer to share good and happy feelings with others.

Objective Of The Campaign:

The first and primary objective was to sales growth as it was the summer period in Australia.
The 2nd objective was engaging with its customers to have fun, who likes communicating, who has a great social life.

So this is how Coca-Cola discovered its target audience.

If you want to learn more about how ENSETT can help you in your marketing efforts, contact us. We’d love to talk data or give you a demo of our platform.

EXAMPLE 2:

NetProspex Used Target Audience

About NetProspex – Below are the result resulted in the company when they added the buyer persona to their marketing and sales strategy.

900% increase in visit duration
100% increase in the number of pages visited
111% increase in open email rate
171% increase in marketing-generated revenue
46% increase in conversions

Stop Wasting Your Marketing Spend Today!

Buyer personas are a great tool, and when they’re built with proper research and executed correctly, they lead to a cost-effective return. ENSETT includes the highly accurate, actionable, and well-researched target audience in their digital marketing services like SEO, Social media, Content Marketing. We have wide-ranging experience in researching and documenting buyer personas. We know they are the source of all of our inbound marketing strategy.

If you still need any assistance, then reach out to best digital marketing company in Patna, and we’ll see how we can work together.

Bonus Video

Learn how to find your target audience in Facebook Ads, by an Expert Deepak Singh.