As an entrepreneur, you should be aware that launching a new business, a product, or a service comes with significant risk. This is the reason why you should prepare everything ahead of time. And the initial preparation means that you need to understand your market landscape. Through this, you will be able to minimize the risk. In addition, it will let you focus your marketing efforts in the best and most cost-effective way possible. Facebook is one tool that can really help.
Moreover, identifying the right audience for your brand is among the most important steps of a marketing strategy. One thing worth noting is that strategies that are already broad at the beginning are less successful most of the time. Instead, highly niche and targeted market segments have high success rates.
For this reason, you first need to define your target audience before starting with your marketing efforts.
A target audience can be defined as a particular group that a business can expect to buy their products or services. Note that a target audience is a little different from your target market. The reason is that your target market is composed of anyone who might be interested in what your brand has to offer.
To help you understand it more, below is an explanation of what a target audience really is:
Target Audience: The Definition
A target audience is defined as the group of individuals who you want to reach using your marketing message. These people are the ones who are more likely to take action as a result of seeing your marketing efforts.
People in your target audience will share particular characteristics in common.
Demographics
Your target audience may have the same gender, age range, occupation, household income, education, and location. With them sharing these similar characteristics, it will be easier for you to convince them to purchase what your brand is offering.
Behaviors
Your audience may also have the same or similar behaviors. They may read the same news publication, visit the same websites on the internet, or share the same hobbies and sports.
Interests
Since you are targeting a specific group of audience, it is understandable that they have the same interests in products, activities, or topics. In Facebook ads, this aspect can be easily altered.
Types of Audiences
It is important to note that your business can have more than one target audience. In fact, there are three different types of target audiences that businesses can have.
Primary Audience – Buying Facebook Followers
Typically, your primary target audience will get most of your attention. The reason is that you expect them to be the most valuable group of customers for your business. This is the group that most businesses spend the most on in regards to buying Facebook followers.
Secondary Target Audience
Your secondary target audience is the groups of people who have chances to be interested in your service or products. However, they are unlikely to become the most valuable customers for your business. Still, this type of target audience can help you in structuring your marketing efforts. This is especially true if you are selling more than one product or service. A secondary target audience can also be beneficial if you feel like your products or services may appeal to distinctly different groups of people.
Now that you already know the basics about target audiences, it is time to learn the right way of identifying your brand’s target audience.
Four Ways to Identify Your Target Audience
Once you already know your target audience, as well as their pain points, you will be able to create content more effectively. You will also be able to focus your advertisements on the right marketing message for those audiences. It is important to note that not all messages resonate the same way with different groups of people. This is why personalization is important in advancing customer relationships. On the other hand, not knowing the value of personalization in reaching your target audience is a waste of time and money.
Below are the four different ways of identifying the right target audience for your brand:
Conduct Market Research to Find Out Audience Demographics
When identifying your target audience, the first thing you should do is to conduct market research. You can do this by performing a SWOT analysis. The said method will allow you to identify your business’s strengths and weaknesses, your opportunities, and your threats.
Conducting market research will help you identify the demographics of your target audience. Knowing the factors that contribute to your market and research path is an important step that will allow you to find out who the right target audience is.
Learn the Purchase Paths and Pain Points of Your Target Audience
One significant thing that you should do is to pay attention to defining your target audience. However, it is equally important to know their different considerations in terms of a purchase path and pain points.
One way to do such is to think like the customers. You can also ask pertinent questions like– “How can I provide a solution to an issue?” or “What are the goals that may target audience want to achieve?” Doing this will let you create personas. In addition, you will be able to craft content that addresses your audience’s problems that are centered around the buying cycle.
Notably, personas are fictional characters created based on research. These personals will help you represent the various user types who might purchase and use your product or service in a comparable way.
Learn More About Your Existing Customers
One of the best and most effective methods of identifying your target audience is to learn about your existing customers. Find more about their demographics and preferences. This way, you will be able to identify who the next audience that you will target should be.
Use Multi-segment Marketing
The aim of multi-segment marketing is to gain customers from various segments. These customers from different segments should possess an interest in buying the same product for the same uses. It could be varying decisions along the sales funnel who would receive different messaging, but will overall contribute to the sale or purchase.
