How to Understand a Target Audience
Whether you are pitching a new product or trying to build a solid foundation for your business, it is important to identify and understand your target audience. Understanding your customers, employees or company investors allow you to tailor your marketing pitch to their specific interests and needs. Before developing effective marketing strategies that will resonate with your target audience, it is important to determine who your target audience is. With this knowledge, you will reap the benefits of effective marketing research, including customer loyalty and increased sales.
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Instructions
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Conduct a market analysis for your business. A market analysis determines if you have a viable audience for your product. Consider the current and future market size, as well as the market's growth rate, profitability and trends. Examine similar products and businesses and analyze their company's growth and sales. Pinpoint where you differ from your competition and use this uniqueness to your marketing advantage. Analyze industry research reports, such as Consumer Reports, which can be found online, in periodicals or at the library.
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Identify the basic demographics of your target audience. Consider age, gender, marital status, educational attainment, occupation, household income, ethnic background and geographic location. The more specific the group, the easier it is for you to identify their collective needs. For instance, are you targeting mothers in their 40s? Specifying a group doesn't necessarily exclude those who do not fit within the demographics; rather, it focuses your marketing approach to target the needs of the people who are more likely to be interested in your business.
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Assess your audience's cultural or psychological attitudes as well. For instance, do they consider money important? Are they spendthrifts? Are they risk takers? Conducting a survey can help gather information about these attitudes. You can conduct a survey on a volunteer basis or offer incentives, such as discounts, for aiding market research. Create an online survey using programs such as Surveymonkey.com or include a paper-copy survey with your product. When creating a survey to assess your audience's demographics, attitudes and needs, keep it simple. Open-ended questions can be time-consuming to complete and analyze. Offer your audience "yes" or "no" answers or answers from a scale of 1 to 5. Make your survey anonymous, as this encourages more honest answers.
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Organize and facilitate a focus group once you have a consumer profile. Strategically organized focus groups provide a helpful and often accurate approach to understanding your target market. Focus groups also allow you to safely test out new ideas and products before you apply it to a real, public audience. Advertise on Craigslist and local newspapers for participants. Offer incentives for your participants, which can include payment, gifts or refreshments. Note the duration of the focus group (typically 30-60 minutes) and be specific about your demographic needs. Your should create a focus group of 8-10 people that fall within your projected audience's demographics. Choose a facilitator who is unbiased, friendly and a clear communicator.
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Follow up with your target audience by conducting further primary and secondary research. Since your audience may change over time, following up with their needs is crucial to the long-term success of your business. Visit blogs frequented by your target group, attend social functions in the community, or offer an online forum for your audience to voice their opinions. In addition, chart your audience's buying patterns by analyzing current sales. Create a graph of these sales to give you a perspective on what is working and what needs more marketing emphasis.
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References
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