Defining a target audience is crucial for effective marketing. Companies consider demographics, lifestyle, income, and other factors to create relevant ads and products. Connecting with the audience’s concerns and goals is key to earning their trust and loyalty.
When a company begins to brainstorm marketing strategies for a new product or service, they first take time to consider who will benefit the most from what they are offering. For example, an ad for a toy meant for toddlers could be created with parents in mind. A toy for eight to ten year olds, however, would have advertisements intended to engage children of that age group in the product.
The demographic, or group of people, that an advertising campaign is trying to sell to is called its target audience. By designating a target audience before you start marketing a product, it’s easier to create relevant advertisements. The target audience is taken into consideration when developing new products. Companies brainstorm what those specific consumers could use to make their lives easier, and then try to develop that product.
A target audience is determined by several characteristics. Depending on the product, marketing teams will consider the age and gender who will be most interested in making a purchase. Companies will also take into consideration the income bracket of their prospective buyers, as well as their position in life. For example, a bachelor fresh out of college has different needs than a successful entrepreneur with three kids and a wife. Other considerations for determining a target audience include lifestyle, career, location (including urban or suburban), education, and hobbies, among others.
When defining a target audience, it’s important to be as specific as possible. “Single women” will not be as useful as “single single women, college educated in early 30s, living in a metropolitan area and having significant disposable income.” The second description provides a much clearer picture of who an advertising campaign is meant to connect with.
Once you’ve defined a target audience, the next logical step is to learn how to connect with that audience. What are their concerns? What are their goals? There must be a concrete answer as to how the product or service offered can answer these questions. Maybe the product is meant to fill a need this demographic didn’t know they had. In that case, the marketing campaign must not only introduce the problem but also the solution.
Introducing both a problem and a solution in an ad is a very popular marketing method. An example of this would be an ad for an all natural body wash. The ad would begin by listing the chemicals in other body washes and how they are absorbed into the skin. This creates the problem: consumers don’t want to be exposed to potentially dangerous chemicals. The solution is the all-natural body wash, which solves the consumer’s problem and earns the company sales. The target audience in this case would be encouraged by this ad to stop buying their regular body wash and start buying the new product, if the ad is effective.
Target Audience was developed to give companies a population to market products to. It is important for companies to not only market to a target audience but also earn their trust and loyalty. This makes it easier to get the same audience to buy future products and services, because there’s already a relationship that the business needs to work with.
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