How to Define Your Target Audience in Three Steps
Targeting Everyone is Targeting No One
Bottom Line: Targeting everyone in marketing leads to ineffective messaging and high costs with low returns. Instead, businesses should focus on specific target segments to create clear and resonant marketing strategies. Using these three steps will start you on the road to digital marketing success.
When I talk to my clients about their marketing strategy, I often hear comments like “Everyone can benefit from my product”. While that may be true, good marketing plans focus on specific segments to craft clear, resonant messaging that produces measurable results. Marketing to a broad audience carries the risk of diluting your message and missing the mark with potential customers. By trying to talk to everyone, businesses often end up talking to no one.
A generic approach may result in high marketing costs without a corresponding return on investment. Imagine spending fifty cents per click on a Pay Per Click ad campaign being displayed globally versus investing the same fifty cents per click on a campaign that is hyper-focused on a smaller segment. You will spend more targeting the entire universe and only reach a small percentage of the population without targeting in place.
You may believe that everyone needs your product. But if you were to offer your product to everyone (literally everyone), would they all really be willing and able to buy it?
Everyone will not see its value.
Everyone will not be able to pay full price.
Everyone may not be in a location that you can even service.
Step 1: Define the potential customer’s characteristics
Get specific. It is ok to guess at first. You can get incredibly detailed as you craft your customer profile. These are some ideas to get you started.
Gender: Do you think both men will be as interested in your product or service?
Age: Which age groups are most likely to buy your products?
Occupation: Are specific professions more likely to like your products?
Income:
How much money do they make?
How much money do you think a person needs to earn for them to be comfortable spending money on your premium products?
Location: Where is your customer located?
Where does your customer live?
How far away can ship your products?
Is international or out-of-state shipping feasible for your small business?
Interests
What kind of things does your customer do for fun?
What are their favorite brands?
Step 2: Conduct Market Research
Next conduct some market research to refine your assumptions. Great sources for market research include:
Your existing customer data: If you have started selling, take a look at your existing customer data and search for patterns and trends. Do they all live in a certain region, work in a certain profession or belong to the same age range? Note: If you want to expand your customer base, this data will help you understand your base, but it won’t tell you who your NEW customers are.
Free reports: A quick Google search will turn up tons of free and downloadable content about major industries.
Larger competitors: The great thing about big companies is that they are covered widely in the news. If you sell a product that competes with a large company, news articles about their strategy, customers, and financial outlook can provide insight into who they are targeting and why. As a smaller company, the customers they can’t reach or don’t want present a great opportunity for your growth.
Social media: You can quickly poll your existing customers and the public to gain a quick pulse on their interests and needs.
Step 3: Test, learn, and adapt.
One thing that I learned consulting for massive companies is that they rarely put all of their financial “eggs” in one basket. If a team has a hunch about a new target audience or service offering, they start small, test out their ideas in the market, observe, and then learn from what fails and what works. Repetitious tests quickly reveal the winning ideas while protecting the company from wasting millions on the losers.
As a smaller company, you can do the same thing on a smaller scale. Test out campaigns or approaches based on who you “think” your audience is and what you think they want. Watch and see if your approach is validated or disproven by the results you observe.