A company’s target audience is the demographic of people who are most likely to purchase a product or service from that company. Members of a target audience may have similar characteristics in gender, age, residential location, income level, and other demographic traits. Your target market may be the group interested in your product, the group actually purchasing your product, or both. For example, if your business makes games for school-aged children, you will want to market to both the child and the parent. Here are some of the reasons why it is important to identify your target audience.
To Assist With Advertising
It is easier and more efficient to advertise to a specific group of people than to a broad range of people. Once you have narrowed down who your audience is, you can begin to use marketing tools such as emails and social media campaigns to target that demographic only. For example, if your target audience is people in their late teens, you might want to explore social media platforms popular with this age group for your online advertising campaigns. Having a target audience makes it easier and less costly to get your company’s message out to those who are likely to be interested in and purchase what you are selling.
To Help Develop Products and Services
Once you have developed your target audience, you can make adjustments to your products and services to cater to that group even further. For example, if your company makes clothing, you can follow the trends of certain age groups before designing the clothes. If you sell clothing online, knowing which region of the country most of your customers come from allows you to make adjustments regarding what times of year to sell seasonal clothing such as winter coats or swimsuits.
Identifying Your Target Audience
It is important to identify your target market, but how do you go about doing this? There are several ways, including:
- Using Google Analytics, as well as social media analytics, to view demographics of website and social media visitors
- Creating polls and surveys on your social media platforms to help gauge the age, location, and hobbies of your readers
- Engaging with your audience via social media
How specific you set your target market to be will depend on many factors, one being the products or services that you are selling.
It is wise for a business owner to have a target audience to help them advertise more efficiently and better design items for sale.