By Kayla Carmicheal

Recently, I noticed that every time I Google a product or service I want to buy — let’s say, available apartments for rent — I start getting ads on Instagram and Facebook from several companies offering this service.

I’m sure you can relate, too! This happens because we are those companies’ target audience.

Every product and service has a target audience, no matter how niche. And the only way a company can sell its product is if it caters its marketing strategy to its target audience.

Understanding target audiences is key to the success of any marketing campaign because consumers will feel as if they connect with your brand.

If you‘re unsure how to find your target audience, here’s what you need to know.

Table of Contents

• What is a target audience?
• Target Market vs. Target Audience
• Types of Target Audience
• How to Find Your Target Audience
• Target Audience Examples

They are also used to define the buyer persona of a business, as well.

Buyer personas are a representative overview of a business’s ideal customer drawn from data that makes up a target audience.

Some of these demographics and behavior areas are:

• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Employment
• Income

This information helps understand customers and how they make purchase decisions. Targeting a specific audience will help your campaigns reach the people who will relate most to your company’s message and products.

Always make sure to understand the difference between target audience and target market. While similar, their difference is critical for marketers.

Essentially, you can describe your target market by finding your target audience. If a target market were “marketers aged 25-35,” the target audience would be “marketers living in Boston, Massachusetts aged 25-35.”

Types of Target Audience

When we talk about types of target audiences, we‘re talking about more ways to define who you’re creating a campaign for. You can segment your audience into groups or define them further using categories such as:

Demographics

Demographic segmentation divides a market into smaller categories based on variable characteristics such as age, race, gender, marital status, income, education, and nationality.

This method is one of the most common ways to define a target audience because it’s easy to acquire the data you need through censuses, market surveys, and analytical tools.

Each demographic factor can significantly influence consumer behavior and product preferences. For example:

• Age. Product preferences can vary significantly between different age groups. A digital app might be more popular among Gen Zers, while luxury cruises would likely appeal more to older retirees.
• Gender. Marketing strategies might differ when targeting men or women, as they may have different preferences in areas such as fashion, beauty, or health products.
• Income. Economic status influences buying power, which affects what kinds of products or services consumers can …read more

  Source:: HubSpot Blog

        

  

  Author: Aaron