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What is the target audience and methods of determining it

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David Hardin
What is the target audience and methods of determining it

Any project starts with defining the target audience (TA), because no business can exist without understanding its consumers, their problems and interests. It is important to study customers in order to understand what kind of news to share, whose needs to consider, who to target. In order not to be torn in different directions, it is necessary to understand what TA is and how to define it correctly.

How do you define the target audience?

The target audience or target group is a group of people who might be interested in the company's offer and who will order a specific service or product in the future. It can become a potential consumer, so it is on the target audience that all advertising efforts and communications should be directed. The marketer should create an advertising campaign taking into account the features and tastes of the target audience, which will greatly increase its effectiveness.

The heart of the target audience is the nucleus, which includes the most active buyers who bring most of the profit. There are different types of target audience:

  • Primary - the key audience, the initiator of the purchase, who can be influenced
  • Secondary - participants in the buying process, for example, they can pay for it. Secondary target audience - opinion leaders who influence the primary audience.                                           
  • Tertiary - includes organized groups that influence the first two types. 

In addition, the target group can be broad or narrow. For example, broad - coffee consumers, and narrow - latte buyers. Also, the group may be designed for the B2B (business to business) or B2C (consumer business) market. In the B2B sector, fluctuations in demand are not as noticeable, and it is easy to assess the market capacity and the target audience itself.Defining of the target group gives an opportunity to find out socio-demographic characteristics, type, segments of the audience, coverage of interested persons, factors, which influence purchase decision. How to determine the target audience? The algorithm of actions will depend on the specifics of each product or service. 

How to segment the target audience?Segmentation is the division into smaller groups based on different attributes. These include:

  • Geographic - region, city, nationality, country.
  • Socio-demographic - family status, age, gender, occupation, education.
  • Economic - financial literacy, income, ability to pay. Here we also take into account what segment of the goods the customer prefers (premium or economy), what brands, where they buy most often and at what time.
  • Social and psychological - include outlook, values, hobbies, as well as habits and lifestyle.
  • Motivation and list of needs - it is important to answer what kind of needs can be satisfied by this or that service. 

There are different methods of TA segmentation. The simplest scheme will include such components: the division of the target audience into categories (potential customers, at the stage of purchase and current customers, who may have made a purchase at least once), finding out the motivation and the process of purchase, category analysis in terms of advertising costs and preparation of an offer, advertising on specific groups. 

Tools for gathering  TA
Gathering tools - methods and techniques to help identify the target audience. A description of your target audience will help you analyze your customer's needs . To do this, you need to buy iOS downloads,study incoming calls by answering questions such as: what are the most frequent problems that customers come in with, ways of solution that have been used, objections, resentments,.The most effective methods for determining the target audience:

  • researching data from public sources;
  • conducting surveys;
  • drawing a portrait of the audience;
  • interview method;

Another good tool is to collect feedback by calling or mailing lists. Analysis of groups in social networkshttps://app-promotion.net/buy-android-installs/ can also help. You can get a complete set of information, which will help to make mind-maps on all the characters. In other words, there will be direct "access to the goals" of customers.

Major targeting mistakes include:

  • Not considering the entire buying chain. Before creating content and advertising, it's important to understand the product buying process.
  • Overestimating the target audience. This is a common mistake for VIP businesses. Instead of taking a sober look at their target audience, marketers begin to idealize it.
  • Lack of segmentation. If you divide customers, you can modernize the product or service for different categories of buyers.
  • More important key parameters for defining the target group are its habits and hobbies. The product or service must solve the buyer's problem. He has a need that needs to be satisfied, you have something that contributes to it. The task of the company is to become part of such a formula: when I need, I remember the brand.
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David Hardin
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