Defining your target audience lets you direct your marketing resources and brand messaging to the specific demographic that is most likely to buy your product or service, and this will prevent you from investing all your time, effort, and resources in all the wrong places. Once you define your target audience, you can research the best ways to reach those people most effectively and measure their level of response and interest in your offerings, as well.
Let’s do a deeper dive into defining your target audience so you can develop the most effective marketing strategies for your business:
THE DAY-TO-DAY
Break down underlying demographics to see who it is that has a need for what you are offering. The basic data listed below will give you an idea of who your customers are and what their day-to-day tasks and activities might be. This will allow you to gain a better understanding of them and how you can best impact their purchasing decisions:
- Occupation
- Income
- Age
- Gender
- Education
- Income
- Culture/Ethnicity
BEHAVIORS AND INTERESTS
Observing your core clientele and their interests can help you gain insights about why they make decisions to purchase an item or service; this knowledge will in turn help you create a brand message that will appeal to them. You will observe trends and patterns in the practices and behaviors of your audience and this will, in turn, inform your marketing efforts that seek to better motivate your buyers into taking action and proceeding through the sales cycle.
Some of the factors to look for and consider here are:
- Behaviors
- Personality
- Attitudes
- Values
- Interests/hobbies
- Lifestyle
WHAT YOU KNOW NOW
Extend customer satisfaction surveys to your current clientele to gather information about their experiences with you. This will serve as a way to understand your current audience and to determine what you are doing correctly (as well as what isn’t going so well.) Your team is also a great source for developing and expanding customer data, so be sure to get their input. Another good resource would be your sales representatives; these people are very familiar with any common questions or concerns that customers will have and have a good idea of the type of clientele that your business attracts most often.
THE COMPETITION
Researching your competitors is another great way to get an idea of any areas that are overlooked in your market. You can learn a lot about what to do and what not to do by observing how others do business, too. This practice will help to motivate and inspire you to find fresh new ways to make your enterprise stand out and to move to fill gaps in areas of demand.
Here at Piccolo, we offer the services and client care of an experienced marketing department that is customized to your current projects and budgets. If you know you need marketing help, such as defining your target audience, but hiring a full-time marketer or employing an entire marketing department just isn’t the right solution for you, call us!
