How to make your product, product or service in demand? AT modern world any financial expenditure, be it a trip to a supermarket, a visit to a museum or a vacation at a resort, is perceived by people as an investment that must necessarily solve a problem, generate income or have an ultimate goal. And the more attractive from the point of view of the result this or that investment is, the more money willing to spend a person.

What is the target audience?

In order for your product to become a way for someone to achieve a real goal, you need to know how to define it. First, let's look at the essence of this concept.

The target audience is a set of potential consumers, that is, those people whose problem your service or product can solve. For more exact definition the needs of a particular group, the entire set of individuals is usually divided into segments by sex, age, social status and financial status.

When introducing a new product to the market, all manufacturers dream of making it popular and successful. But, unfortunately, few people know how. Determining the target audience of the product means laying the foundation, relying on which it will be possible to slowly and cost-effectively build a reliable advertising campaign.

Limit or generalize?

When determining target audience many experts make a common mistake. Unfortunately, she may Negative consequences. For example, they believe that clearly limiting a certain group of people as a target audience and focusing promotion policy only on them will expose the product to the risk of losing consumers who could make a spontaneous purchase.

But this is a myth. To date, the share of random purchases on the market is extremely small. Its percentage is steadily falling, which is explained by a decrease in the income of the population and, accordingly, more precise planning of costs. That is why it is very important to correctly determine the target audience, and correctly target the promotion specifically to it.

Characteristics of the target audience

Knowing the main characteristics and criteria will help you easily figure out how to determine the target audience. This group of people has the following characteristics:

  • Interest. People should be interested in the product, seek information. It is difficult to sell a car to someone who does not know how to drive and is not going to learn.
  • The ability to acquire. The group targeted by the advertising message must have the means to purchase and have the need to make it.
  • Willingness to change loyalty to the current seller when applying marketing pressure. Fanatic adherents of the brand cannot be interested in even the most iron arguments. In order to respond to your message, the buyer must be ready for dialogue.

The correct definition of the target audience implies its compliance with all three parameters at the same time, since an interested consumer who is ready to move from a competitor to you may simply not have sufficient financial capacity. Or, conversely, have money and need a product, but be a strict adherent of a different brand.

More criteria!

The second, no less common mistake made in the process of identifying target groups is the insufficiency of the criteria used. To correctly identify and take into account the needs of a particular person, it is not enough to know his age, place of residence and gender.

Within one, consumers can meet with diametrically opposed hobbies, different psychological characteristics and way of life. The deeper you dive into the world of potential buyers, the more you will learn about them. And better understand what their problems you can solve.

Ask yourself the right questions

For a clearer idea of ​​how to define your target audience, experienced professionals recommend making a list of questions. By answering them in detail, you will be able to imagine the end consumer in as much detail as possible and find the shortest path to it.

  1. Determine the gender of your consumer, decide for whom you are producing your product. winter shoes can be created for both sexes, but for ladies it will be elegant boots, and for men - practical boots.
  2. Identify the age group of the people you work for. Try not to spray. The clearer the border, the more accurate the direction of the message. Model winter boots with thin stiletto heels are unlikely to suit older women, and teenagers prefer sneakers even in winter.
  3. Where do your customers live? And if they use your products, how? It is much easier to determine the target audience of a product if you understand that leather insulated winter boots are good for the city in middle lane, and high fur boots - for the village of the far north.
  4. What does he do Where and in what position does he work? The level of education and social status of a person directly affects his motivation in the decision-making process. A wealthy executive lady can easily decide to buy a second or even a third pair of winter boots, while a trolley bus driver barely has enough money and imagination to buy one weekend shoe for each season.
  5. What worries your consumer? What are his problems? Does he want to dress warmer in winter? Or maybe become more stylish? Or just feel comfortable and cozy in good shoes in a slushy winter? The answers to these questions are also important.

Create a description

Replying to questions asked, make a description of the consumer. Analyze the lifestyle of your addressee: where does he go, what TV shows do he watch? Drive a car and listen to the radio? Or maybe he reads an advertisement on the rear window of a trolleybus? What restaurants does he take his wife to, what kind of films does he like to watch with his children?

A detailed story about the person for whom you created your product will quickly help you understand: where and what kind of advertising should be placed, in which news blocks to insert a promotional video. And also where to put the booklet: in the mailbox or on the table of the nearest beauty salon. Are you still wondering how to define the target audience? Then we consider special cases.

Definition of the company's audience

Organization of your own business, especially at the initial stage, requires from it not only material, but also intellectual costs. And not in the last place, along with the ability to competently draw up a business plan and develop a development strategy, there is such a need to determine the target audience of the company. That is, to understand who your efforts will be directed to.

A feature of determining the target audience of a company is the choice between an individual buyer and a business as a consumer. The analysis of the first group is more complicated. The market to which it is oriented is subject to significant fluctuations, and, therefore, is characterized by low stability. The choice of the second segment as the target audience is less volatile, but requires significant development costs.

Target audience for the site

The specifics of determining the target audience of an Internet resource lies in a clear understanding of who and for what purpose this or that content may be interested in. When developing a site, it is important to take into account not only the gender, age and income level of potential users of the resource, but also the operating system and browser they use. And such a factor as place of residence, on the contrary, will not be of paramount importance.

Features of the promotion of Internet resources dictate the need for a more thorough study of the interests of the audience. But, on the other hand, they provide an opportunity to attract so-called casual consumers. For example, by promoting on the request “self-repair of a car”, you will attract to your site not only representatives of your target audience, but also users who entered “car repair” or “self-repair” as a query.

Another method that will help you quickly navigate how to determine the target audience of the site will be the use of key phrases with low and medium frequency and competitiveness when planning promotion. In order to be as specific as possible to your group, do not use an all-encompassing "window". Choose, for example, "wooden windows with double-glazed windows".

How to determine the target audience of the service?

Determining the target audience is a laborious process that requires special education and significant experience. The success of an advertising campaign directly depends on how competently and accurately potential consumers are identified and how their needs are identified and taken into account in detail. And the return on investment in promotion.

In addition, knowing how to identify the target audience and analyze the behavioral characteristics of the group will make it possible to create a service that the best way problem solving consumers and outperform competitors. In addition, it will be possible to predict changes in consumer preferences. As well as the behavioral characteristics of the target audience. Based on this, the manufacturer will adjust the features of the promotion in time. He will have the opportunity to identify and apply the most effective motivation that allows him to influence the addressee's decision to purchase.

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The target audience is existing and potential buyers of products or services, united according to some criteria. The content on the site is focused on such users.

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Imagine that you are selling camping equipment. Most likely, you will not hand out flyers on the first street that comes across, but place them where you are most likely to attract the attention of amateurs. active rest. After all, they are interested in such a product. The same principle applies to the Internet. Before placing ads or filling the site, you need to find out the characteristics of the people for whom you will do this.

What is the target audience for?

Analysis and identification of the target audience is one of the main factors affecting the success of a business. Knowing the habits, needs and other characteristics of potential customers, you can easily create an effective advertising strategy:

  • Smart USP. You will know the target audience problem and formulate its best solution.
  • Pick up psychological tricks, motivating to buy and a way to communicate with people.

Rational budget allocation is another advantage. You will be able to place only on those sites where there are potential customers.

How to define the target audience

Determining the target audience of a website is not as easy as it seems. For example, if you think that your clients are solvent men and women aged 30-45, then you are not quite right. The portrait should be more detailed. There are several types of target audience in marketing:

  • main and indirect. The first makes a decision to purchase and initiates it, the second only participates in the selection process (for example, buys).
  • Wide and narrow. For example, people interested in traveling and those who are considering tours only to Asian countries.
  • B2B and B2C. Business consumers and individuals.

How to determine the target audience of the site: selection criteria

Make a rough idea of ​​a potential customer according to the following characteristics:

  • Gender, age, nationality, marital status, location.
  • Occupation, education, income level.
  • Social networks, resources, communities in which the buyer spends time.
  • Lifestyle: values, habits, speed of decision making.
  • What problems does your product or service solve for the target audience?
  • Emotions that a person experiences from the acquisition.
  • Associations evoked by the product.
  • Reasons to buy from you: service, price, status confirmation.

How to choose a target audience: segmentation

Segmentation is the division of real and potential customers into groups with similar characteristics. It can be done using the 5W method. It consists in the fact that you consistently answer five questions related to the business.

After filling out the table, you will have portraits of those buyers who are interested in your offer. Based on them, you can create personalized advertising for different target audience segments.

What tools exist to identify the target audience

To get more detailed data, conduct small surveys, interviews on your website or on survey sites. Attract as much as possible more people. And also study the behavior of potential customers in social networks, in communities and on related forums. From the comments and created posts, you can find out what worries the target audience, how they react to a particular topic.

In addition to the above methods, use statistical programs and services:

  • Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics. Useful information about visitors can be found in the "Reports" tab.
  • Yandex.Audience. Forms segments for targeting based on a list of regular customers.
  • Survey Monkey. Paid survey platform. There is a free temporary registration.
  • Google Forms. Creation of questionnaires.
  • Simpoll. Poll constructor.

How to attract the target audience

Attracting the target audience to the site is work to increase the popularity of the brand, the number of orders and customer loyalty. To get additional traffic, you can use many methods. We will list some of them.

  • Do more blog posts. The influx of visitors primarily grows due to content. The more often you post articles useful for the target audience, the faster it will grow.
  • Register social media accounts. Choose one or more depending on where your potential buyers live. Develop each of them and do not forget about the main resource.

If you understand the pains of your customers and in the flow of information you can draw their attention and interest them, you can sell everything on the Internet - even houses for several million rubles.

This table crystallizes the advantages and disadvantages of your business compared to your competitors. You clearly see how to build up, what is worth focusing on, and what is better not to mention. This information will help you present your product or service more profitable for the consumer than competitors.

With a comparison table, it is easier to form several USPs for different campaigns and understand how to write texts. In the West, this is called a SWOT analysis.

SWOT analysis - short for

S : strengths, strengths;

W : weaknesses, weaknesses;

O : opportunities, possibilities and

T : threats, threats.

SWOT helps to analyze the external and internal factors of a business - its own and competitive - and, based on the data obtained, make strategic decisions.

secret agents

Then the fun begins - you turn into secret agents and try on the personalities of the buyer. For example, one of the clients of our fitness club is a stylish girl of 25-30 years old who dreams of relief press and healthy beautiful body. She goes to the club on an annual subscription - in the morning or in the evening after work. Now you have to become this girl and go under her mask all the way - from calling and buying a card to the first lesson.

Such a "game" will help you to fully immerse yourself in the business. It is not enough to draw detailed portraits of representatives of all segments of the target audience and conduct online surveys, it is necessary to “go out in public” to see how the audience behaves, what language they speak and what they want.

On the spot you can easily notice additional benefits and feed on new ideas - even the most detailed comparative table will not help you with this.

We prescribe brand avatars

Another useful technique for working with the target audience is the creation of brand avatars. An avatar is an average image of the target audience.

For example, for our agency, this is the owner of a medium-sized business from Moscow, let's call him Andrey Sergeevich. 40 years old, owns a chain of high-end restaurants, has two children and a wife who does accounting in these restaurants. Andrey Sergeevich loves gadgets, cars, expensive clothes and travel and invests in real estate. Things are going well, but now the businessman is looking for new promotion channels and wants to tidy up the pages of restaurants in social networks.

In fact, the target audience can have many segments, but if you need to focus on one person or give a collective image, the avatar comes in handy. As, for example, in a course on personal advancement Digital Bandito Eva and Pavel presented three characters: copywriter Petya, confectioner Masha and event organizer Vasya. The course is not designed only for representatives of these professions, but it is clearer and easier for students to identify themselves with one of them.

When you come up with brand avatars, you create real people. Specific Sasha, Katya and Nastya who need your product. You think about how these people live, what problems they have, and what solution they will come to you for. You are referring to avatars in advertising texts show how to solve their problems. And this is what distinguishes you from competitors who offer a product or service without being tied to the world of the target audience. You can sell an abstract smartphone, or you can sell belonging to a culture successful people who think differently than Apple does.

Target specific people - this is how you improve your advertising campaigns and increase sales.

Building audience maps

The next step is segmentation and creating an audience map. Let's analyze it again using the example of a fitness club.

The visitor chooses the service, the time of visit and the type of subscription that suits him. For example, many businessmen and office workers can only study in the evenings; and it is more convenient for young mothers to come in the morning. Different segments of the fitness club audience have different motivations. Let's take women: someone is losing weight, someone is energized, and someone likes to dance and move in rhythm. The same applies to men - each has his own motive to visit a fitness club.

Segmentation will help you accurately calculate the needs of each subgroup of the target audience and select the closest advertising message.

Target audience for context, SMM and SEO

The target audience within one business or project will be the same for contextual advertising, SMM, and SEO. But how you will target the selected segment depends on the specific tool. Correct Methods targeting will help you understand customer behavior in each environment ( social media and search engines) and build advertising campaigns that will make people highlight your product among the digital garbage and pay attention to it.

Targeting methods for SEO

The principle of targeting in SEO is the division of target audience segments. Develop a separate landing page for each search query - then the search engine will index your pages well and take the user to the right place.

Targeting methods for contextual advertising

In contextual advertising, we play in search engines and networks, and here the user will go to the one whose ad seems more attractive. But seduce a potential client carefully - people do not like obtrusiveness.

Targeting methods for SMM

SEO and PPC specialists work with a hot audience that knows what they want and are actively looking for it. But in the target audience is cold - people "walk" on social networks and are not going to buy anything. Here you have no time for flirting and warming up - the text and picture should hit the target from the first sentence. Your job: to find the pain of each segment of your target audience and give such a cool solution that a person who didn’t know about your product a minute ago becomes interested and clicks on the link, or at least thinks about buying and remembers you.

Working with insiders from negative comments

Love negative reviews - they will give you insights for new visits, help you see and work out the fears and objections of customers and improve the product. How to respond to negativity:

  • Separate trolls and haters from adequate people. Send the first to the ban, take the comments of the second to work.
  • From constructive criticism, highlight objections and work them out in detail. Don't just respond to a negative review correctly, but fix the problem itself. For example, your courier delivered a purchase two hours late. Consider: How can you optimize the process so that this doesn't happen again?
  • Show people what solution you found. Write a post about it so they don't have any doubts.

Eva Katz , managing partner of 5 o'click agency:

“It is always better to listen not to the comments of satisfied customers, but to those who did not buy or for some reason had a negative experience - they give much more insight than laudatory reviews. That's why we always try to get feedback from those people who did not become buyers. Those who didn’t buy help to see doubts and objections in order to further work them out in the content and comments.

From the practice of the agency, I will cite Donskoy as an example. It is new, trees are being planted there, but our photos on social networks were not enough for subscribers to understand that there is a lot of greenery in the village. In the comments they wrote that the streets were bare and there were no trees, so we came to the client and asked to take photos that would show the greenery of the village. After that, they released a series of materials, where they talked about the work on landscaping the village, showed the streets and courtyards of people and got a client to view.

It turned out that the man was very doubtful, but the new posts worked out his doubts. As a result, after viewing, he bought a house. And there are many such examples. We are very careful about the negative experience of the audience, we work with it and derive our benefit.”

Negative customer experience is the fuel for new ideas and content and service improvements at all stages of the sales cycle. Unless, of course, this is adequate criticism with specific and justified claims. Satisfied buyers are much more impressed by the competent handling of objections in the comments and the development of the brand than the removal of constructive comments and bans of “undesirables”.

Interview customers who have not become buyers

People do not become buyers for many reasons: someone can’t afford it, someone is dissatisfied with the service, product or service, someone’s purchase is not included in the short-term plans. Instead of guessing and throwing resources at improving everything at once, conduct a survey of customers who did not become buyers. People love it when brands ask for their opinion. The answers will give you new insights, reveal negativity and previously unnoticed fears, objections, pains and desires of the target audience. You will be able to improve advertising campaigns and increase conversions.

We generate ideas: brainstorms, live conversations in a cafe and an idea cloud

In American TV series about doctors and policemen, a large white board often appears, where the characters write down diagnoses or, accordingly, unsolved cases. We also have one - we “upload” a cloud of ideas or a cloud of tags to it. It looks rather strange - we sit in a room and throw incoherent words, voicing everything that comes to mind. But then cool ideas emerge from this, which can be developed further.

Arrange team brainstorming. When you switch and step out of the box, new ideas immediately pop up. Sometimes completely delusional, but among them there will certainly be a few worthwhile ones. Creativity dies during hours of intense work on one task - at such moments the eye is blurred, and the brain, tired of monotonous work, does not see new ways.

But ideas don't just come from brainstorms and tag clouds. Sometimes it can be a conversation with an old school friend or a casual evening out with friends. In a relaxed state, you are able to look at the task from a different angle. And a person not from your professional environment can suggest an interesting non-standard solution. Collecting people's stories and impressions of the world around them is a useful practice for a marketer. How can one not remember about storytelling, which captured social networks and the hearts of users.

Testing New Ideas with Heidi Cycles

Heidi cycles help you test new ideas. Determine the objective of the test, the desired results, the time period and decide how you will interpret the data.

Heidi cycles are an ideal tool for testing hypotheses. What is their essence: almost every action affects one of the metrics. If you formulate certain hypotheses, plan changes and calculate approximate totals, then you can control the process. With the help of heidi cycles, you will understand how actions affect the result, and quickly test all ideas. Discard non-working hypotheses and leave valuable ones.

In each test, follow the algorithm: hypothesis → action → analytics → conclusions. For example, what happens if instead of rational texts in advertising campaigns on social networks, emphasis is placed on emotional and figurative ones?

Hypothesis (hypothesis)

So, our hypothesis is: “emotional texts in a Facebook ad campaign will increase conversions.” Here you can substitute any key indicator of the project that needs to be changed or improved. And put forward a hypothesis according to the principle “if I change this, then I will get such and such a result at the output.”

Action (action)

Data (data collection)

After the completion of the advertising campaign, we collect all the data and count the leads. At this stage, you should have analytical tools that will help you control the process from beginning to end and clearly track the stages of the “action → result” chain.

Insights (conclusions)

Based on the data obtained, we conduct a detailed analysis and draw conclusions about whether our hypothesis worked. Did emotional texts really bring us more leads? How much more compared to the previous advertising campaign? Compared to all ad campaigns running before the experiment? Then we either refute or confirm the hypothesis, and start a new cycle.

Psychological triggers: we put pressure on explicit and implicit motives

Each person has their own motives for buying a product or service. Our task is to play them in advertising campaigns.

Implicit motives

Imagine an advertisement for an SUV. In the video, the car drives off-road, effectively passing difficult sections, and the voice-over talks about the huge engine power, all-wheel drive, stylish design and the fact that the car is suitable for any type of road. And now a potential client already imagines how he goes on a hike with friends or in the mountains on the weekends, and on weekdays he flaunts in the city. There is not a word about this in advertising, but the human brain thinks everything out on its own, reading the subtext.

Psychological trick: our subconscious mind clearly sees these encrypted messages and perceives them positively, without requiring substantiation and evidence. After all, in fact, we ourselves think everything out, which means we don’t analyze it.

Implicit information is suppliedimplicatures- ambiguous meanings (the author of the theory is the English philosopher and linguist Herbert Paul Grice). You give the target audience subtext, flavored with literal information, and create the illusion of independent decision-making.

Explicit motives

Explicit information is specific and direct - it does not need to be thought out, disclosed and interpreted depending on life experience, character and preferences. It could be a call to action, a promotion, or a free product sample.

Specificity reinforces implicit information. With its help, we deceive the brain - it sees a clear message and thinks that it makes a rational decision.

Mix explicit and implicit motifs in the right proportions

Then the client's brain will do everything for you - it will see the literal message and unconsciously consider it hidden. Put the most important information into this hidden message: put pressure on emotions and pains, add triggers - the subconscious mind will believe in the image you need and will not require proof. A person will “get hooked” on new sensations without buying anything yet, and the brain will begin to produce dopamine from the anticipation of pleasure. Under the influence of this hormone, the client will make a purchase decision. Rational criteria again lost out to emotions.

A good example is Nike's powerful campaigns, which never encourage girls to play sports, but appeal to their desire to be strong, beautiful and independent. Nike woman is a confident woman who knows her worth, does not depend on a man and lives the way she wants. This image resonates with many girls.

The same video “What are our girls made of”, which received a huge response:

Sell ​​not a product or service, but a dream

Knowing the dreams, desires, values ​​and inner motives of your target audience, you influence it with the right images. Indeed, in fact, we do not need a perfume, but a feeling of being beautiful and sexy; not a car, but status, comfort and mobility.

By launching an advertising campaign, you are selling customers the fulfillment of their dreams. And how to fulfill a person's dream, not knowing what he wants, how he lives and what kind of lifestyle he strives for? So full analysis TA goes far beyond the soulless “woman, 25-40 years old, married, two children, average income, Moscow". These are mannequins, and we focus on living people. Don't be afraid to spend a few days creating avatars, custom scenarios and segmentation and try on the role of covert agents. It will pay off, the client will definitely choose you.

And finally: a checklist for launching successful advertising campaigns from 5 o'click

We have combined all the information from the article into a small extract. Use this checklist and launch successful advertising campaigns that will increase your sales!

  1. Collect data about your target audience using surveys and analytical services for websites and social networks.
  2. Turn your data set into real people: create brand avatars and customer personas.
  3. Analyze your competitors and your business and enter all data into a comparison table.
  4. Write user scenarios and follow the path of customers from the first interaction to the purchase.
  5. Divide a wide target audience into narrow segments and make a mental map of the target audience. AT mental map you must have the motives, pains and desires of potential customers that you will use in advertising creatives.
  6. Determine the behavior of your audience in social networks and search engines and create several different ads for contextual and targeted advertising.
  7. Brainstorm regularly, generate new ideas and test them with Heidi Cycles.
  8. Work with insights from negative comments and surveys of customers who did not become buyers.
  9. Strengthen your advertising campaigns with triggers, implicit and explicit information.

What is the target audience? And why is your specific target audience so important? That is what we will talk about today.

When you have a business, you serve a specific segment of the population. Many entrepreneurs believe that everyone is their target audience, although in reality this is almost never the case. To be successful in business, you must work with a narrow group of people who want and can afford your product or service.

For example, if a consumer lives outside of your delivery area, he/she is not in your target audience. The same can be said about consumers who do not have the funds for your products.

We'll look at this point in more detail a little later, but for now, you need to understand that the target audience is the group of people who are targeted by your marketing and advertising initiatives. These are the ones who can really convert into customers.

What is the difference between target market and target audience?

People often confuse the target market with the target audience, although these are different marketing concepts.

Refers to anyone who may be interested in your products and services. A target audience is a group of people that you target with certain marketing actions or ads.

In other words, these are the people who can respond to your marketing asset through a conversion. An asset can be a post on VK, a letter written for a specific segment, or a general email newsletter.

Your target audience covers part of your target market. For reference effective marketing you need to segment it in order to send the right messages to the right consumers at the right time.

Imagine for a second that you are developing a Facebook Ad campaign. You don't want "everyone" to see your ads. You want to make money, not waste your entire budget, so they need to be shown only to target users.

Facebook allows you to narrow down your audience based on demographics and other criteria. You can set an income range, target men or women, exclude people who don't have children, etc., depending on your marketing program.

At the same time, you know that different segments of your target audience may be interested in your product or service.

Let's say you sell sporting goods. Part of your audience may include teenagers involved in sports. The second segment could include professional athletes, and the third could include middle-aged men and women who want to get back in shape.

Thanks to segmentation, you can create (buyer persona). Each of them represents a different part of your target audience, so you should serve them with different marketing and advertising assets.

Why does it play such an important role?

Imagine that you have visited a car dealership. You communicate with the seller, but he does not ask anything about your needs and desires. For the next hour, he shows you sports cars and sedans, ranting about fine leather seats and great seat belts.

Finally, you tell him irritably, “I am the father of four children. I need a minivan that my kids can't destroy."

From this example, you can see how important it is to define your target audience. Trying to sell a two-seater sports car to a father of four is unlikely to get you anywhere.

When a consumer visits your landing page, you need to create an instant connection with them. Images, headline, texts and CTA elements should appeal to what this particular user wants. Otherwise, it will simply close the tab.

How to define your target audience in 5 steps?

Ann Handley of Marketing Profs once said, "Even when you're promoting something to your entire audience or client base, you're still only talking to one person at any given time."

This is great advice for any entrepreneur who wants to understand the concepts of target audience and market.

Handley focuses on narrowing the audience as much as possible. If you're just talking to one person—the user on the other side of your computer screen—you need to know as much as you can about them.

What are hers or his? Fears? Doubts? Objections? Based on this information, you can create a message that will not only resonate with the consumer, but also sound convincing.

Step 1. Survey your current customer base

Surveys are seriously underestimated, although when used with effective questions, they can give you tons of data to determine your target audience.

According to research from SurveyMonkey, the average market research survey has 13 questions, while surveys in general have between 4 and 14 questions. Keep these statistics in mind and remember that your customers lead their lives. If you ask them to complete a survey that takes too long, they won't complete it.

For starters, you could ask people something like this:

  • What frustrates you the most when it comes to [your niche]?
  • How much are you willing to pay for a [product] with [feature list]?
  • What social media do you spend the most time on?
  • Do you have any pressing questions related to [niche]?

Use survey responses to think through your buyer personas and then emails and other marketing assets. For example, last question can give you some ideas for writing posts with catchy CTAs at the end.

Step 2. Engage with your audience

Content marketing has great value for every entrepreneur for a reason. With it, you not only bring traffic to the site, but also open topics for conversation.

Say you reply to comments on your blog?

Pay attention to questions, criticism and jokes. They can give you a better idea of ​​what your target audience wants and needs.

Step 3: Turn Frustration into Motivation

Now that you've interviewed consumers and started participating in discussions, focus on pain points and . Find out what problems your current customers and subscribers are facing.

Let's say you work in the SaaS industry and promote your CRM system. You'll find out that your leads aren't impressed with being able to connect with customers across multiple channels. It's frustrating.

Turn your frustration into motivation. If your SaaS product has a great cross-channel customer service solution, use it as a selling point when communicating with your target audience. You understand what the problem is, so you change the equation and give people a useful alternative.

Create a list of your most significant frustrations and motivations. This way you can always return to them as your business grows.

Step 4: Research Your Competitors

You should never copy your competitors in the market - this can end badly. However, if you keep an eye on your direct competitors, you can target your target audience even better.

Study their main pages, landing pages, lead magnets, and product descriptions. See what your competitors aren't doing and give your users a new experience.

Step 5. Know who your target audience is not

By now, you have a better understanding of how to define your target audience, but you also need to know who to exclude. This is very handy when you are advertising through search or social media in particular.

Weed out leads that don't match your target user's description. Find out who doesn't deserve your time and attention.

For example, you can only sell to women. This immediately eliminates half the audience. Well, or things are less dramatic.

Whatever the case, if you're not targeting consumers over the age of 50, you need to be aware of this.

Understanding the target audience: 2 real examples

Now let's see how knowing the target audience has helped real companies in terms of brand development and customer interaction.

1. Huggies

Outbrain posted a case study on Huggies, a brand of baby care products. According to Outbrain, Huggies wanted to expose their content to new people while still targeting their core audience.

Outbrain used native content so that Huggies could get more attention from their target audience through featured posts.

As a result, the campaign brought in 20 times more visitors than the brand received from search.

When it comes to paid or native content, you need to know your audience. What kind of articles can reach people who have never encountered your brand before?

Fun and Function, a website that sells products for children with special needs, had to decide whether to expand into the school segment. The project would require the creation of an entirely new catalog dedicated to the educational market - or at least a different catalog cover.

According to Inc. magazine, Fun and Function appreciated every aspect of the expansion, but in the end they realized that the game was not worth the candle. This is a great example of how a company relies on its target audience to make difficult decisions.

Fun and Function studied their target market and knew that their products could be useful for students. But they still had to curtail the project - even if only temporarily - due to high costs.

When preparing for such an expansion, you need to understand whether the potential increase in traffic and sales will be enough for you to compensate for the costs of implementing your plan.

High conversions for you!

According to materials:

Today, advertising is all around us. Wherever we go, everywhere we will see advertising banners, some product characteristics, information on how to purchase a particular product or service. All these are advertising materials with which we live in our usual life.

The basis of an advertising campaign is the definition of the target audience. What this means, we will try to describe in detail in this article. In the meantime, let's consider a model of how any advertising functions and how marketing technology is built.

How is advertising arranged?

So, we all know how goods and services that are involved in marketing are sold. Simply put, sellers do everything so that as many buyers as possible learn about the product, its advantages, want to buy it and tell their friends about it. To achieve this goal, there is advertising.

It works as a means of notification, conveying information from the manufacturer to a simple person who makes a purchase. And it is clear that the target audience of advertising comes into play here. It allows you to determine exactly who needs to show the material; who might be interested in the product, information about it, and who would even want to buy it. That's what it is the main task the one who is engaged in compiling and defining the target audience, that is, identifying the people who should see ads and show sponsored materials. This approach will allow you to convey information about the product to those who can buy it. At the same time, the advertising budget can not be spent on other members of society. This is a savings that can become quite substantial, even if the company's budget is not saved.

What is the target audience?

Thus, under these words lies a simple definition of a certain number of people, a certain group that has something in common. It is due to this unifying factor (that very “common”) that this segment of the audience is of interest to the advertiser and marketers.

And the word "target" means, first of all, the focus on a particular group of people in terms of sales. After all, it is they who need to offer a product or service, they will be interested in making a purchase.

Determining who your target audience is is one of the initial tasks of someone who is promoting a product. It is on whether the group of interested (target) buyers is correctly identified that determines the further success of the campaign.

Main features

In the science of marketing, there are a lot of approaches to what basic features and characteristics an audience of buyers should have. However, the most simple and generally accessible point of view is to single out two features that the target audience is endowed with. We are now talking, firstly, about the interest of people who are part of the target audience in a product or service. This is important, since it is this feature that guarantees the inclusion of certain social strata in the list of potential buyers. For example, this is the understanding that the target audience of a company selling insurance policies CASCO are car buyers or drivers.

The second feature should be called some kind of connecting element. In a situation with CASCO, it may be the presence of a car and the need to insure it. This factor allows you to clearly unite a group of people related to the target audience.

Characteristics of persons

Anything can be a unifying factor. The presence of a car, a house in a certain area, a child, and much more are signs by which a marketer must make the correct description of what the target audience of a product looks like. There are no restrictions in this search, the main thing is to find what will interest your buyer and make him contact your company to purchase a product or service.

Such characteristics can be the presence / absence of something, the age of people (as a result, the characteristics of their behavior), occupation, the core of habits, preferences, material condition, hobbies, origin, native language, and so on. The more accurately all these and other factors are taken into account, the more qualitatively the types of the target audience will be formed.

Definition of the target audience

To find out who is interested in your product, you need to follow the simplest logical chain from product features to problems and needs that it can solve and satisfy. A vivid example of this, if you sell drugs to combat obesity, your product will be of interest to obese people who would like to lose extra pounds. You can find such people, for example, among women aged 20-40 who periodically visit the gym. Therefore, the target area for such advertising can be found in the women's fitness room. However, here it should also be remembered that the person who came to the gym deliberately abandoned the pills in favor of a healthy way to lose weight through classes. Your task is to convince him that by combining your product and sport, he can achieve a better result.

The analysis of the target audience needs to be carried out even further in order to take into account as many points and factors as possible. This is the task of a marketer, who is an approximate target audience.

Calculation and verification

For every advertising campaign, it is important to different types target audience. This is done in order to reach as many people as possible who are potentially interested in buying a product. The more criteria are used to “screen out” such buyers, the better the final target audience is obtained. At the same time, the more people who enter it, the better for marketing in the end, because it will be easier and cheaper to “get” such potentially interested people.

So, given that we are creating several target audience models at once, a natural step would be to further test each of them in order to identify the most successful and easily accessible. This will help practical testing of the target audience.

It can be done different ways. Some companies attract agencies that conduct social surveys and sampling from statistics. Others are testing the product locally in a limited environment. There are a lot of ways to do this, but all of them are to find out how working this or that audience model can be considered.

How to apply the data?

After the target audience is established, with which it is more profitable to work within the framework of a particular project, you can proceed to the next stage - application in practice. This is a direct function of advertising agencies that connect certain methods of advertising in order to "reach out" to the right audience.

Let's take an example. If you have a store that is located on A Street and sells goods at low prices, your target audience will be people walking by. In order to interest them, you can hold an event dedicated to the opening of your store; or simply occupy advertising space on the same street, focusing on low prices and benefit to the buyer.

Target Audience Example: Age

It is quite easy to analyze what age people contact you most often. Here you need to proceed from the specifics of the product. After all, it is obvious that sporting goods are of interest to young people, electronics - similarly; but a phone with large buttons will be more useful for older people, as well as a hearing aid.

Any thing can be confidently attributed to a particular age group as a whole. True, some products are universal, so they need to be presented correctly in order to attract as many interested people as possible.

Target Audience Example: Occupation

Another generally accepted criterion that is paid attention to when compiling a group of the target audience is the occupation of a person. First, it is important because they determine the material security of a potential buyer. Second, occupation can sometimes serve as a link between a person's interest and need and your product. For example, entrepreneurs may be interested in accounting services or legal assistance; drivers - new program buying a car or an inexpensive parts store. It should be based on what is useful to a person doing a particular job. That is why, when the target audience is compiled, a person’s employment plays a big role.

Target Audience Example: Interests

Another indicator is interests. This is a very strong factor, since it allows you to tie to the characteristics of the buyer one or another possible need that the product is able to satisfy. Simply put, if you know that a person likes to climb mountains, you can impose a whole range of sports equipment on him, as well as a subscription to a training room; and for someone who loves to read, you can offer participation in the club program for the purchase of certain books. Hobbies are our weakness, so when definition is coming target audience, marketers take into account a person’s increased interest in his hobbies and the ability to “impose” more on him.

Error in audience search

And, of course, when working with the target audience, it is impossible to do without mistakes. There are shortcomings in any definition model, due to which a part of the society is covered, which is not interested in your product and product at all. These are the mistakes that form the wrong target audience. Examples of how this is done are: advertise a school near another school in the hope that parents will see it and transfer their child to another educational institution. Yes, such a result is not excluded, but it should be understood that in order to entice a client, something more is needed than just informing him, and even near the school where he already takes his child.

Mistakes are the easiest to fix empirically. And to reveal them, in fact, it is possible only practically. After all, every situation is unique. Even in the school example, advertising can work well if parents are dissatisfied with the quality of education at the institution they are already sending their child to.

It should also be remembered that any target audience, examples of which can be cited in large quantities- this is a "vinaigrette" from different people. If someone is interested in your product, then there will definitely be those who will categorically oppose it. This should also be kept in mind when creating an advertising campaign. If you try to attract a buyer with more aggressive and intrusive methods, there will be even more such “dissatisfied” ones.

Practical skills

In general, in order to know how to search for and determine the target audience, it is necessary practical experience. Let's take ordinary mobile operators. These are companies with billions of dollars of turnover and years of experience, which, while making up the target audience of communications, also often resort to experiments and promotions to test certain ideas. The specialists in them understand what kind of audience they need and how to influence it, but nevertheless, even with this knowledge, experiments are needed to prove the idea in practice.

Therefore, if you want to identify the target audience for your product, do it! But then check the result in practice. It may differ from what was originally intended. So, in fact, do the major advertising agencies involved in preparing for the campaign. They also do not know what to do, but they have a rough idea of ​​what results this or that advertising move will lead to. And then it's up to the statistics, which will give the final answer.