Understanding Your Target Audience: 8 Questions for SMBs

Creating a presence for your company is a necessary strategy for making people aware of your products and eventually drawing in customers and creating sales. Be sure to comprehend who you want your promotional campaigns to reach. Knowing who your intended clients are can assist in improving your marketing investment since it allows you to present your marketing to the individuals who are more prone to become customers. By using this tool, you are able to devise messages, content, offers, and promotions that suit your target audience and make them take action.

Figuring out your target audience involves a multitude of elements. You must go beyond merely looking at population numbers and instead gain an in-depth knowledge of the traits of your existing customers in order to identify other target audiences you want to promote your products or services to. You should also be aware of the actions they take that lead to a purchase, as well as the considerations that come into play when they are making their decision.

What Is a Target Audience?

The people most likely to purchase your products or services are your target audience. This is the group you should concentrate your promotions on getting to view.

Consumers are characterized by their behaviors and their particular demographics, such as out-of-shape males aged 30 to 50.

It is imperative to identify a specific group of people to target in order to determine how to efficiently allocate advertising and sales efforts. This aids you in grasping who your ideal buyer is and what is important to them. This can include:

Where do they hang out on and offline?
How do they like to communicate?
What is their demographic information (ex: age range, expertise, location, job title, hobbies, etc.)
What are their psychographic information (i.e., behaviors, attitudes, lifestyle preferences, personality types, etc.)
What pain points your product or service solves?

For example, if you have a SaaS product that helps IT professionals manage file-sharing across mobile devices, your target audience might look something like this:

IT Directors with 10+ years of experience working in IT at enterprise firms
$100k+ salary
Most likely men who are married with 2+ kids
Spends downtime on Reddit and Twitter
The biggest pain point – how manual and time-intensive the current file-sharing processes are

It is significant to keep in mind that the people you want to reach might belong to a particular group or may be a larger crowd, depending on what type of product you are offering. Vendors who offer everyday jackets will attract a wider audience, as they are worn by people of all ages and genders.

Conversely, if the firm is offering goose (warm) jackets, it can narrow down its potential clients to those dwelling in the chilliest parts of the planet and those employed outdoors in harsh climates.

It is critical for nearly all elements of your marketing strategy to define your intended audience.

The results of the recent survey revealed that the target audience research had the most influence on the content marketing, social media marketing, and SEO attempts of the study’s participants.

What are the steps you can take to begin grasping your intended market?

Who?

1) Who are your current customers? What information do you possess concerning your current customers? Begin by constructing a clear representation of the consumers who already purchase from your firm in order to build buyer identities that will support you in aiming your promotional efforts. A quick and simple method to complete this task is to create a survey on the internet and distribute it by email to your current clients, and generate a paper version to give to your existing and new customers when you speak with them.

You can use questions related to age, education, work, residence, leisure pursuits, pay scale, family composition, purchasing behaviors, preferred gadgets, and other factors to identify the people who have already bought from you and make up your target market.

What other people would you like to purchase your goods or services? Once you have a general idea of who your existing customers are, ask yourself if there are any customer types you think your product is missing. As an example, if a clinic specializes in seniors and young families but is situated near a university, they might want to include college students in their target audience if they match the profile of their current customers. By including a fresh demographic in your promotional tactics, you could discover several novel marketing techniques and modes of communication – and consequently amplify your sales.

What?

3) What do your customers buy? Which goods and services do you typically sell the most to your existing clients? Promoting your top products to your intended customers is an essential expansion tactic for any organization. It’s significant to contemplate what commodities and services you are not distributing much of. It is critical to examine the sort of buyers that are mulling over and buying the merchandise or administrations you are hoping to quicken deals for. Is there overlap with your current target audience? Are you neglecting to target the standard consumers of these items in your current campaigns?

What factors do your customers take into account when making a purchase? When opting to buy something from a local business, people generally base their decision on multiple criteria including stock accessibility, cost, worth and advantages, customer support, assessments and ratings, and where it is situated. It is essential to comprehend the criterion by which your existing customers consider multiple aspects in order to make a purchase, including, but not limited to, the points mentioned above.

Gaining an understanding of the important components that influence a customer’s purchase decision allows you to focus your promotional activities and communications to those elements. For instance, a lot of native organizations discover that customer evaluations on the internet are becoming more and more essential for local customers, so they are allotting more energy into this element of publicizing. Businesses that have customers who are conscious of pricing may opt to create an impressive discounts and promotions campaign to attract new customers and referrals.

What are the typical purchasing behaviours of the individuals currently buying your products or services, and those in your industry? The behavior of shoppers in general has changed, primarily in specific areas. Studies indicate that an increasing amount of people who shop in physical retail stores utilize their phones to look up prices. A lot of people who own a smartphone base their buying decisions on what they read and find out on their device concerning local businesses. It is important to stay informed about what changes are occurring in your business sector and to include demographic data when creating solid personas for the customers being targeted by your company.

Where?

6) Where are your consumers spending time online? It is essential to comprehend which digital platforms your desired buyers frequent in the present disjointed digital environment. This question has many facets which are significant.

First, the type of device they are using as a primary source of online activity can help inform your marketing efforts. For example, a growing number of local consumers are mobile-first, meaning that their mobile device is the primary device they go to when researching local products and businesses online. Ask you customer based what types of devices they use so you can build better targeting and marketing plans.
Second, the places people are spending their time online can be a useful insight in understanding your target audience. Do your ideal customers surf and browse content across the web? Are they searching in web browsers? Do they spend a lot of time in smartphone apps? Are they spending a large chunk of time on social media sites like Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram? Understanding the places where your target audience are spending their time is a critical insight that can help you tailor your marketing efforts and tactics to best reach them online.

7) Where are customers discovering you online? This may be connected to the query previously mentioned, but it is a crucial difference which can assist you in judging how efficient your current online marketing initiatives are at achieving your anticipated audience. Here are some methods by which you can obtain this data. Establish a thorough monitoring system for all your marketing activities.

This will assist you in gauging their effectiveness. Inquire of recently acquired patrons where they gained knowledge of your organization. This may give you added knowledge into how consumers search for products. These findings can be used to modify and develop your targeting efforts.

8) Where do your customers live? Having an awareness of the geographical areas in which your patrons live is essential for learning about your intended audience, particularly for businesses in one particular area. You have the capacity to apply certain components of your internet marketing methods specifically toward individuals residing in a designated geographical locale.

You can focus on search engine ads or smartphone ads that are specific to an area geographically. You can also utilize geographical data to design appropriate keywords for your search ads, like region-related phrases, to make sure your campaign is focused on individuals more likely to purchase from you.

The Benefits of Knowing Your Target Audience

It is often said that it is difficult to successfully market a product or service to everyone, and while there may be some exceptions, this statement is usually accurate.

What approach would you take to persuade a man in his 50s to purchase a basketball, considering that he has not made a 3-point shot yet in his life?

Even if it were possible, why would it be worth the effort?

The most successful marketing pros realize it isn’t necessary to persuade everybody to purchase the item – the focus should be on people already requiring it. These are the individuals you should consider to be your intended audience.

It is essential to determine and comprehend your target market, and it forms the basis of every marketing plan and strategy that follows.

For instance, you may speculate broadcasting your advertisement during the Super Bowl is a wonderful notion due to the vast amount of viewers.

Considering the amount it will cost to produce the advertisement and that likely only one-fourth of the audience will be interested in what you are selling, it is not a sound investment, right?

Target Audience Types

Have you seen the TV program “Criminal Minds” which follows FBI staff who apprehend criminals by using profiling strategies?

Profiling involves figuring out the traits of the killers based on the offenses that they have done.

It has been suggested that constructing a target market or an image of the perfect customer is a kind of art. Just, you know, instead of murders, you’re profiling customers.

We have to comprehend the various kinds of target audiences we’ll be engaging with prior to performing this.

Purchase Intent

This group comprises potential customers who are on the hunt for a certain item and desire to gather extra details prior to making a purchase.

It could be any item imaginable, ranging from cars, laptops, to shoes, TVs and pans.

Groups which show a strong desire to buy a certain item are worthwhile targeting, as they already have a clear goal of buying the product; your mission is to encourage them to make the purchase from your business.

Interest

This data allows you to explore what people are interested in, their activities, and the types of entertainment they like.

Once you figure out what your target audience finds interesting, it will be much simpler to relate to them.

By way of example, individuals who enjoy tennis are inclined to buy items of equipment (tennis racquets, bags, footwear, and so on) when the weather gets milder and the community courts are ready for customers.

No matter what catches the curiosity of your potential customers, as long as you are aware of it, you can customize your advertising efforts and make your brand visible to them as a viable option to think about.