Target Audience

What does Target Audience mean?

Your target audience is who you want to sell your products and services to. This is different to your Markets, as these are who you could sell to. You can have many target audiences, Coke for example have a female target audience (Diet Coke) and a male target audience (Coke Zero). These are similar products (officially a different base flavour) but marketed in a different way to meet the needs of the two audiences – in this case to avoid the association with drinking diet coke if you’re a man!

To ensure you’re found and are clear in your message, you need to understand who your target audiences are and how they think i.e. What are their likes and dislikes? What makes them tick? How do your products and services appeal to them? How do they search and surf the net? What radio stations do they listen to? Etc.

This sort of market research is fundamental to the success of your marketing campaigns as it ensures understanding and therefore a higher chance of your campaign achieving its objectives. To help you understand, you can conduct primary and secondary research; Primary research is analysing and understanding your current sales and processes as well as what your competitors are up to. This can be done by conducting interviews, surveys, questionnaires and focus groups. You’re looking to find out:

- What sorts of things your audiences consider when purchasing your products and services
- What do your audience like or dislike about your current products or services?
- What would they like improved?
- What is an appropriate price point?

Secondary research is analysing and understanding data which is already available to you and may have been conducted by a third party. You can try to answer the same questions as well as understanding more about your competitors and identify more target markets.

Working example

You have just started a funky t-shirt design and printing business, so who are your target audiences? what do they like? how much would they pay for one of your t-shirts? You decide to form a focus group and conduct some street surveys throughout the UK for audiences ranging from 12 to 40, male and female; this gives you some great ideas about product design and price.

How does your Target Audience fit into Digital Marketing?

Understanding your target audience is the foundation to your Digital Marketing strategy and arguably the most important element to Marketing as a whole. Without thorough research into each audience you probably won’t be found and if you are your messaging could be way off, which in turn will mean you won’t be memorable for the right reasons.

Take the time to understand who you are communicating with and what they are looking for – this will set the foundation for your success in marketing.

Related Articles