How to find your target audience?
How to identify your target audience? This is a question that professional web developers, web designers, UI/UX designers and SEOs ask business owners very often.
Why do they ask about your target audience?
Your target audience (TA) represent your potential buyers and the starting point of any website development project, web app development project, search engine optimization project. If your audience is correctly identified, you can quickly develop your web presence to market a business and to increase sales in cost-effective way.
In other words, when you invest a little money in the reaserch of a target audinece, you save a lot of money to promote your products or services.
Who is the target audience?
Your target audience represents a group of customers who are likely to respond to your promotions and services in a positive way. They can be characterised by the following points:
- Interest in the product. That is, those who practice ballet will most likely want to buy shoes for this. Those who have a car will willingly pay for parts for it, and so on;
- Opportunity to make a purchase. VIP tours abroad are not offered to students, boutiques are not opened near the hostels;
- Susceptibility to the impact of marketers. People loyal to one brand, it is difficult to lure to the side of a competitor.
Any target audience has a core – a group of active buyers who bring the most profit (If it is easier to make purchases, they constantly return).
Types of Target Audience
There are:
- The direct Target Audience – These are people who make a purchase decision, so they need to be interested in the first place.
- Indirect Target Audience – Although they are involved in the process, they rarely decide to buy something themselves. These are the people who mainly seek someone else’s opinion before they buy.
There is an audience that is determined by the type of target group:
- B2B (Business to Business). This segment is more stable. Here, the business is done between businesses. The supplier and the retailer. Therefore, a big cosmetic company will have beauty salons, private offices as customers.
- B2C (Business for the consumer). The segment is volatile (new technologies, trends appear), so you need to monitor the market at least once every 30 days in order to adjust to the target audience. A company that produces cosmetics may target both men and women. However important factors like political or economic instability may prevent them from buying.
The target audience for a business website can be divided into two categories of people:
- Those who are interested in the content – come in to read about the products;
- Those who are looking to buy the product – come in to make a purchase.
The main mistake that business owners who have no marketers make is to allocate a wide target audience. They believe that everybody needs their goods, so often waste a huge budget in advertisements which do not pay off.
How to know your target audience
F5 Studio provides the research of target audience during every web project. Our project managers, UI/UX designers, SEOs and digital marketers trained to provide the research for different purposes. They combine the common marketing methods and the Value Proposition Canvas approach to produce accurate results for our clients. But it is a very specific way is hard to master in short time.
Here you find common methods to identify your target audience. Few years ago F5 Studio’s project managers used these methods to build corporate websites Some of them you can see on agency’s portfolio So, these marketing methods work and you can use it successfuly for many cases.
To determine the target audience of the business, marketers carry out segmentation. This division of potential buyers into groups according to the description or needs in order to create a unique sales offer for them.
The easiest way to segment is to use the method of M. Sherrington “5W”. At its core – 5 questions:
- What – what is this product;
- Who – who is it meant for;
- Why – why should they buy it;
- When – when not to do without it ;
- Where – where to sell it (all sales channels are described).
By honestly answering these questions, you can easily recognize your target audience If we analyze the competitors’ target audience in this way, it is easy to cover the entire market.
In addition, consumers can be segmented according to the following criteria:
- geographical – in which country or region live;
- demographic — age, gender, family;
- socio-economic – education, income, solvency are analyzed;
- psychographic – in this case, researchers are interested in the way of life. activities, personality and values.
To collect the necessary data, specialists use metrics systems. They watch where visitors go and which sites are ignored. They also analyze social networks: where the user is registered, in which communities he is, etc.
What is a Pen Portrait of Your target audience
Business owners should be concerned not only about how to determine the target audience of the site but also about how to make its portrait. It allows you to visualize the data in order to better understand the end user and to make an effective selling points (or facts as it was determined Ogilvy).
Here are some important questions that help better understand the target audience:
- Who is the potential buyer, their gender, age, income, marital status, speciality;
- Where do they spend time? what forums and websites do they visite?
- How a product or service can help him. Here it is important to think about the client’s problems and solutions using the company’s proposal;
- Which will give him a product? It can be status, health, relaxation, beauty;
- Why it is important to purchase this particular product and not an analogue. Its advantages and benefits to the client are important.
If all the above questions are answered, you will be able to:
- develop effective marketing campaigns (think over commercials, commercial offers, content);
- come up with successful offers (ways to solve consumer problems);
- create an effective unique selling proposition;
- determine the triggers of influence and motivation;
- identify the most profitable channels for promotion on the Internet.
Analyzing and collecting data takes time and money, but such costs are justified. Their result allows you to better understand your potential clients and make an offer they cannot refuse.
Methods of analysis of target audience
In order to study your consumer well, marketers most often:
- conduct surveys and surveys with representatives of the selected segment;
- interview;
- interview focus groups by phone or email;
- watch them at points of sale.
When analyzing the target audience of the site, they are mainly guided by the results of online tools. Among them:
- the study of profiles of people from open data;
- processing search queries.
In addition, when analyzing the target audience, special services like Google Analytics, Simply Measured, Hotjar, WebVizor, can be used to track visitors’ actions.
Profile Analysis
The most informative user profiles are on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Looking through individual pages, marketers write out:
- date of birth;
- education;
- the city in which the person actually lives;
- position, place of work;
- status – family or not.
Moreover, the groups and pages to which customers are subscribed can tell about their interests, problems, sensitive issues. Studying the information, It is also desirable to analyze the activity of a person: view publications liked posts, left comments.
All this information will help to identify the pain points of the consumer, then to put pressure on them when drawing up the USP.
Additional questions
To better understand the customer, you need to ask yourself:
- What are their experiences?
- What are their fears?
- What or who annoys them?
- What 3 questions do not allow him to live in peace every day?
- What trends occur or will occur in their life?
- What are they eager for?
On what basis do they make decisions (for example, an accountant is guided by calculations so numbers are important to him)
In addition, it is recommended to find out who else was trying to sell a similar product to the consumer and why they did not succeed.
Structuring
The collected data is recorded in a special file or table and then analyzed to specify the important and weed out the unnecessary.
As a result, a portrait appears, where are displayed:
- name;
- age of the potential client;
- field of activity;
- income level;
- position in society;
- hobbies;
- Problems;
- fears;
- dreams and so on
The more information you get, the more accurate the picture, and the higher the chance to make a unique offer to your target audience.
How to analyze the needs and fears of consumers
When drawing up a portrait of your target audience, it is advisable to analyze also:
- Communities of competing firms in social networks or their pages where they actively communicate with their customers. From the questions, one can understand what exactly potential customers are interested in when choosing a product.
- Sections “Question-Answer” of competitors. The information there helps to analyze the purchasing behaviour of your target audience.
- Tips in Google search results. With their help, one can understand how a potential consumer thinks and how he forms a request.
In addition, it is advisable to talk with opinion leaders, experts in the chosen field. They often lead websites, post videos on Youtube, hold conferences and webinars, and also communicate with their subscribers, thereby collecting feedback. You can learn a lot from them. For example, what buyers want or what exactly does not suit them in their analogues.
What else should be remembered when analyzing your target audience
While drawing a portrait of your target audience:
- Don’t generalize and be guided by stereotypes – women are not always more emotional than men, and older people are inactive.
- Remember that every 7 years, people change priorities – at 21 a person usually gets up on his feet, likes to relax in discos, at 28 he builds a career, improves living conditions, brings up children, etc.
In order to increase your sales and be successful in a very competitive market, you need to constantly study your target audience and then warm up their interest. If you can’t do it yourself, it’s better to turn to professionals.
