Everyone is not Your Customer: How to Identify Your Target Audience
We carried out a survey in our business community, asking founders about the challenges they encountered when they first started their businesses. 50% of the respondents stated that they didn’t know how to identify their target audience.
Seeing that this was a major problem, we decided to answer the burning questions about this topic. In this article, we discuss what a target audience is, why it is important to identify your target audience, and a step-by-step approach to identifying your target audience.
Let’s dive in.
What is a Target Audience?
A target audience refers to a group of people who you focus on selling your products/services. They are individuals who fit the description of your ideal customer. While some of them may already be in your customer base, your target audience can also be individuals who you aim to expand your reach to.
Identifying your target audience is one of the first steps to take when launching your business because if you don’t know who you want to sell to, you won’t know how to sell to them. Also, everybody cannot be your target audience, since targeting everyone will equal targeting no one.
For example, if you make dresses and suits for women. Here, women are your target market. However, not all women are your target audience. This is because, while your target market is on a broad spectrum, your target audience is more niche and specific.
In the example above, your target audience could be ladies between ages 20–35, who work in the corporate world and earn at least #150,000 monthly. This description is more specific and increases your chances of reaching the specific group of people who want and can buy your product.
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Why is Identifying Your Target Audience Important?
Identifying your target audience is not just a fancy activity to tick off your business to-do list. It is an important task that will yield positive results for your brand, in terms of growth, sales, etc. when done well.
Here are the reasons identifying your target audience is important:
1. Helps you to tailor your product/service to ease your audience’s pain points
Knowing your specific target audience helps you tailor your product/services to meet their specific needs.
For example, if you sell female dresses for working professionals, and you intend to expand your reach to pregnant working professionals. Then you should bear in mind that comfort is important to pregnant ladies. This knowledge will help you tailor your product to meet that key need.
2. Helps you create the right marketing strategy
Clearly identifying your target audience will also help you create the right marketing strategy that will appeal to and attract them. Different things appeal to different individuals and target groups. So, if you don’t know who your audience is, how then will you know what will appeal to them?
Also, identifying your target audience helps you know the channels to focus your marketing efforts on; the social media platforms to use, whether to make use of email marketing, write blog posts, etc.
3. Helps you craft your messaging appropriately
Having a clear understanding of your target audience helps you craft your messaging appropriately. The way you communicate with a small business owner who sells differs from the way you will sell to the CEO of a conglomerate.
This is because they have differing ways of seeing things. Also, one person makes more weightier business decisions than the other person.
4. Yields targeted leads
Having a clear understanding of your target audience also helps you generate better leads who want your product and can afford to pay for it. While some people may want your product, they may not be able to afford it, showing that they are not your ideal customer.
However, when you have a clear understanding of your target audience, you will be able to target them well, which will help you generate good leads that have a high chance of being converted into paying customers.
Steps to Identifying your Target Audience
Here’s a step-by-step guide to identifying your target audience to get more results from your marketing strategies and achieve business goals.
1. Conduct Market Research
The first step is to research your market and think of the broad category of humans that can benefit from your product/service. Here, you will have a large group of people that fit the description, and that is totally fine.
Afterward, write down the specific pain points that your product solves. This will then help you niche down and identify your target audience.
2. Conduct Competitor Analysis
Conducting competitor analysis can also help you identify your target audience since your competitors will most likely be targeting similar individuals as you.
To do this, examine the kind of content that your competitors create, and the individuals these content are directed at. Also, examine their product/service, and find out the existing gap that they are missing that your product/service can fill.
3. Talk to existing customers
You can also get a lot of information about your target audience by speaking to your current customers. Create a survey form where you ask questions related to what you do, the pain points your product solves for them, etc.
This can give you deeper insight into the set of individuals who need your product that you may not already be targeting. With the information gathered from the survey, you can then expand your reach to those individuals.
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4. Research your customer demographics and psychographics
After defining the kind of customers that will benefit from your product/service and getting more information from existing customers and competitors. It is now time to niche down to a specific group of people that will serve as your target audience or ideal customer.
Here, you will need to research the demographics and psychographics of this group of people, for you to be able to identify them, when you see them.
For demographics, you need information on:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Marital status
- Income bracket
- Educational level, etc.
This information is key to help you niche down, and target people that fit into your ideal customer profile.
For example, if you sell shoes for males, your niche audience can be men between the age of 25–50, who earn at least #200,000 per month. Thus, they can afford a pair of shoes which costs #30,000.
After knowing the demographics of your target audience, you should also consider their psychographics. This will help you know how they think and what influences their buying decisions.
Here, you will need information about their:
- Fears
- Values
- Interests
- Aspirations
- Personality
- Social status
- Where they spend the most time online, etc.
5. Create a buyer Persona
Creating a buyer persona from the information obtained from the previous steps is the next step to take.
For example, if you bake cakes, your buyer persona can be stated thus:
Female, Evelyn, age 35, married, lives in Abuja, mother of two children under 10 years old. Earns #250,000 per month, has a sweet tooth, and loves to throw birthday parties for her children every year.
In this description, you already have important information that will help you craft your marketing message well. This will help you attract “Evelyn” to purchase cakes from you, for her children’s birthday or to satisfy her cravings.
Identifying your Targeting Audience for Business Growth
Identifying your target audience has a lot of impact on how you run your business. This starts from the marketing strategies you employ, the social media platforms you advertise on, the pictures you use on your graphics, other marketing channels you use for advertisement, the tone of communication, etc.
To succeed in your business, you need to clearly define who you want to serve and analyze the information you have about them. Also, in defining your target audience, you should also be able to define who your target audience is not. This will help you stay focused on who you really want to serve, without trying to serve everyone.
At Triift Africa, we are passionate about helping small businesses in Africa reach their target audience, increase sales, and grow from hustle to portfolio.
So, need to speak to an expert on how to identify your target audience, to increase sales? Then send a message to us at hello@triiftafrica.com or visit our website
If we answered your questions or cleared your confusion on identifying your target audience, then tell us what stood out for you in the comments below. Also, share this with a business owner you want to see grow.
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