Meaning of Targeting the Right Audience

 

Targeting the right audience means better results in your activities, so for marketers, it is one of the crucial steps. If you’re trying to talk to everybody, you’re going to have a difficult time reaching anybody. Vague and generic messages are far less likely to resonate with audiences than specific, direct communication – which is why targeting the right audience is so important.

Let’s start with the definition. What is the target audience? Your potential customers. Group of people to whom you address your products or services. It can be described by behavioural and demographic attributes, such as age, gender, income, education or localisation. If you use audience groups, you focus not on websites where ads will be displayed, but on people who finally will see your marketing messages.

Your target audience might be a niche or broader depending on what you sell. For example, if you were a shoe vendor your target audience would be broad since men, women and children all wear shoes. On the other hand, perhaps you specifically sell high-performance running shoes. Then, your target audience would be more niche – elite athletes between the ages of 20-40 who have expressed an interest in running or have run a marathon. Either way, it is important to define and segment your target audience to determine the creative messaging that will resonate with them, and pinpoint the channels they prefer.

Identifying the Target Audience

It is the process of sub-diving the market based on geographic, demographic, socio-economic, psychographic bases and market conditions. Targeting makes the marketing mix relevant and effective. The product matches the consumer profile. The promotional programmes remain in tune with consumer willingness to receive, assimilate and react positively to communication.

Target groups for different Products

Target Market Vs Target Audience

A target market is the set of consumers that a company plans to sell to or reach with marketing activities. A target audience is a group or segment within that target market that is being served advertisements. This makes the target audience a more specific subset of a target market.

To go back to the running shoe example, your target market is marathon runners, but say you are having a deal at your Boston location. The target audience for an ad promoting the sale would be prospective runners in the Boston Marathon, not all marathon runners.

The target audience can often be used interchangeably with the target market, as it is a specific subset of the largest market group. However, the target market does not always mean the target audience.

Understanding the Roles of Your Target Audience

An important step in understanding your target audience is to go beyond learning their demographic information and understand their role in the purchase path. These roles can often be divided into the following categories:

The Decision Maker: This is the person who ultimately makes the purchase decision. In some cases, the decision-maker is the same as the supporter, but in other cases they are different. For example, the transformation of the Old Spice brand in 2010. The brand wanted to revamp its product to appeal to a younger generation. While researching, the team discovered that while men may ultimately wear their product, women were making the purchases, leading their creative team to focus on this target audience.

The Supporter: The supporter may not have the power to make the decision, but they will heavily influence whether or not an item gets bought. For example, a child may not directly make a purchase, but if they want something, they influence that decision. This is why it is important to develop messaging that speaks to consumers in both of these roles.