Target audience. Definition, who they are, and how to find them in digital

One of the most important aspects of a business is to determine its focus. No business can survive without knowing who it is aimed at. What is the target? When we talk about Target we refer to a segment of the audience to whom our product or service is of interest. This group of people can be larger or smaller depending on the type of product. It is essential for a company to know where and how it will focus its communication and marketing strategy. A mistake here can lead to problems in our business and we don't want that! 

That is why in today's article we're going to tell you what the Target is and how to define it correctly.

Before the target, let's define our product

One of the most practical ways to determine our Target is to ask ourselves a series of questions to define the group of people who will buy our product. To do so, we have to clearly define the characteristics of our product:

• What is our product for?

• What are its characteristics?

• Can it be used alone or does it need a complement?

• What is its useful life?

• Is any previous technical knowledge required to use it or is it suitable for anyone?

• What is the age at which it can be used?

After asking yourself these questions about your product, you are ready to start going into deeper questions that will help you define your exact and specific audience.

Features of our client or Target

It's necessary to know which audience we are targeting. Our advertising campaigns will be much more effective and useful if we focus on our Target. This will achieve a connection between the product or service and the customer, since they will be speaking specifically to them, in their own language. 

That's why it's necessary to determine the specific features that best define this group of people. If we've already defined our product well, we must expand our questions to the characteristics of our ideal customer such as age, gender, location, socioeconomic level, as well as their customs, beliefs, aspirations, and so on.

Identifying these attributes is a practical and consistent approach to marketing. This gives us a better chance of finding ideal customers within the Target.

How to define our Target?

Now it's time to apply this information to define our Target. Here are some recommendations:

Analyze your current customers

We will start by taking advantage of the existing customer base, identifying the behaviors that interest us. To do this, we recommend making an inventory of your customers with the appropriate information. 

For example, buying behaviors: how often do they buy? What are the best-selling products? 

With those questions answered, we now need to think about, how we can continue to engage our customers with our brand after a sale?

How can we get them to buy from us again?

Of course we need to know where to find our customers:

What social networks do they use?

How do they shop? In physical stores? In online stores? In both?

Don't worry if you haven't started your business yet. This information will be very useful from the beginning. A solid customer base is the best way for a business to grow from the start. 

Study the competition

Probably, our Target is very similar to that of our competitors, that is why it's very important to know them well. Learning about our competitors will help us understand our own business and our audience. 

This will give us new ideas for the content of our campaigns. We may find things that work for us and things that don't, it's important to evaluate what is best for our project. Studying the competition is a great opportunity for us to find ways to differentiate ourselves.

Use Google Analytics

We all use Google to search for what we are interested in, why wouldn't your potential customers use it? 

Google Analytics is a free website tracking tool and platform. This tool collects data on how users interact with our website. What information will Google Analytics give us to find our Target? Very valuable information that we will have to constantly review if we want to take off as a business. Information such as: the number of people who visit our website or the time they spend on each page, which are the most visited, etc. 

The marketing strategy will improve knowing and using the information provided by Google Analytics. We will start attracting more traffic to our website, and if that traffic corresponds to our Target, even better.

Different target for each product?

In most cases, businesses offer more than one product. Does each product have its own target? Well, it depends, it's possible for products to be different but for them to share the same target. In that case, the communication strategy can be the same or very similar, for example, a company that advertises wallets or handbags for women. Despite being different products, they need to target the same type of audience.

But if the advertising strategy is not the same, since it is aimed at different audiences, the Target will be different. Think, for example, of companies that sell products for different sexes or for adults and children. 

Revise your strategies

One of the dangers of defining our target is to fix it permanently. We may believe that the job is done, but we may be leaving out future customers that our communication is not reaching.

That is why it is essential to review and renew our Target. The recommendations we gave you propose a search that can be broadened and deepened. By asking basic questions about our potential customers, we will be creating a profile of an audience tailored to our needs. Don't forget that if you already have a project and you have not yet asked yourself any of these questions, it's not too late to start. 

So much for today's article, what other strategies do you think might work?

We'll read you in the comments!