I could never exhaust this argument: defining your Target Audience is the N.1 Step before any other Marketing action.
Whether you are using Content and SEO, paid ads such as Facebook Ads or Google Ads or you want to invest in offline marketing, defining your target audience is the first step to ensure your marketing campaigns are successful.
Defining your target audience is fundamental to understand many important factors that determine how effective is your marketing:
- What are your potential buyers looking for
- How do potential buyers find information to solve their problems
- How to grab potential buyers’ attention through effective communication
- What are the best ways to reach your potential buyers
A very common misconception often drives business owners to think that the target audience can be only one. In many cases, this is way far from the truth and naturally it can affect results negatively.
Here is a practical example that I often share with potential clients:
Let’s imaging that you have a 3 rooms property to sell and you have 2 different couples that could be potentially interested in buying it.
Couple A.
The first is a couple on their 60s. They are looking for a comfortable place to retire with enough rooms to host their children and grandchildren when visiting. They are looking for an house not too far from medical services such as private clinics or hospitals. The husband is also a keen fisherman with a lot of equipment and therefore he needs enough room for storage.
Couple B.
The second couple is younger and just had their second child. They need a bigger house. Their first child is almost 6 so they are looking for a new home near to good schools. They also have a vehicle each so the new place must have enough parking space.
If the property was near good schools and healthcare facilities it would seem to be ideal for both. At the same time if the house had a nice and spacious car box it would solve both problems of having to park cars and store fishing equipment.
Same Product, different Target Audience
In this case the product is the same but each couple’s needs are different and therefore two distinct target audiences:
- Couple #1 is looking for healthcare facilities and room to store fishing equipment.
- Couple #2 is looking for looking for schools and a car box to park their vehicles.
Now forget for a minute that we are talking about online marketing. If you were to propose this house face to face, you would want to highlight features that solve your potential buyer’s problems.
In Online Marketing the same applies. You want to highlight the benefits that your potential buyer could take advantage of. If you want to target the first couple, your ads should mention about the healthcare facilities, while if you want to target the second couple, your ads should mention about the schools around.
Defining different target audiences helps exactly to learn what are your potential buyers’ problems and match them with the solutions you could offer.
If you know that you can solve their problems your sale will be easier and your customers will be happy to buy, while if you were promoting the property to someone that does not have the same needs your chances to close the deal would certainly be lower.
Reach easily your Target Audience
Another important aspect of defining your target audience is that you are able to identify with more accuracy where your buyers are finding information through their behavior.
The older couple may spend time regularly at a social club for retired people or the husband would probably read fishing magazines, both online and offline.
The younger couple may use more social networks such as Facebook or Instagram and the wife would probably spend a lot of time reading blogs or websites dedicated to childcare or education.
By defining your target audience not only you will able to understand the needs of your potential buyers and use this knowledge to communicate better the benefits of your products or services but you will also be able to identify the best channels to reach them while using more efficiently your marketing budget.
Once you have established your target audience behavior and needs, building your marketing content and reach your target audience through the right channel will become much more easier and efficient.
For example you could create advertisement flyers highlighting the proximity of good hospitals and clinics near the house and distribute it at the retired socia club to reach the older couple.
Or you could publish online ads on education specialized websites while highlighting all the good schools near the property.
In conclusion, understanding your target audience will allow you to reach people that are more likely to buy from you in a more efficient way while keeping control your budget.
Questions? Leave a comment below.
English 
Italiano