4 Target Audience Examples to Make Defining Your Brand's Audience Super Simple
POV: You’re working from home trying to wrap up the week’s task on a hot Friday afternoon. Then there’s the salesman at the door who won’t let you go.
“It goes for $127, but today you can get it for just $100.”
Our fish tank is American-made with high-grade material, self-cleaning functionality, a submersible heater, and unbreakable glass. Your Angelfish will really appreciate it, especially in the winter.
You inhale, frustration gnawing on your face, and put on the best customer support smile you can master, wondering whether closing the door on the salesman’s face is too callous.
“For the 3rd time, I’m not interested in your American-made, unbreakable glass aquarium because I don’t have a pet Angelfish or any fish at all.”
A disappointed look comes across the salesman's face, and he’s about to say one more thing when you close the door on his face. Courtesy be damned!
Like you, most customers are frustrated and want to close the door in someone’s face when they are bombarded with adverts for things they don’t require or use.
Unfortunately, irrelevant marketing and advertising come down to targeting the wrong audience.
So, you’re not only frustrating uninterested consumers, but you’re also losing money—a lot of it.
Now add the fact that consumers today have a love-hate relationship with advertising. For instance, 70-80% of consumers will ignore sponsored search results. In addition, consumers are now embracing ad blockers like never before. According to Hootsuite, 39% of consumers use ad blockers because the advertisements are not relevant to them.
If you’re to hit your marketing and revenue goals, you need to work with the right target audience. Even better, you need to know where they're at in your sales funnel.
Relevant Reading:
TOFU, MOFU, BOFU: What They Are and What They Mean for Your Business
How to Reach Your Target Audience Through Content
What is a Target Audience?
A target audience is a group of people at whom you aim your marketing messages and advertisements. These are the people who make the final purchasing decision or at least have a say in it.
Usually, many people, even marketers, confuse the target audience and the target market. How exactly do these two differ?
Target Market Vs. Target Audience
Your target market consists of people interested in your product. This group is broad, unlike the target audience, which is more specific. In short, a target market is a group of people who will find value in using your product.
Conversely, the target audience is a subset of the target market. The target audience is the group best suited for particular marketing messages.
For instance, the target market for Macdonald’s Happy Hour Meal is children. However, the target audience is the parents and guardians of these kids. Check out our blog on how to find your target audience, for clarity purposes.
In a B2B example, the target market can be real estate agencies in Dallas, Texas. The target audience can be CEOs, CFOs, and other executive stakeholders in Dallas whose companies have revenue above $100,000.
One way to make the distinction is to view the two like this:
“The target market is who you’re selling to. The target audience is who you’re advertising to.”
What about the buyer persona?
The buyer persona is a fictitious personality (character) representing your ideal customer. Usually, marketers derive the buyer persona from the target audience.
For instance, the Dallas Mavericks would be the target audience. The buyer personas, in this case, would be each player in the team.
When creating the buyer persona, we usually use the following:
- Personal information such as the name, age, gender, and geographic region
- Content preferences such as favorite content formats, channels, and frequency of receiving content
- Business information such as the job title, income, and role in buying decision
- Pain points such as challenges, frustration with the current solution, and hurdles to their goals
- Interests such as leisure activities and hobbies
- The main objective or goal
Why Does the Target Audience Matter?
The danger of getting your target customers wrong costs so much more than an irritated consumer. Here’s what else you have to lose by advertising to the wrong target audience;
- Wasted marketing budget: Every piece of content, ad, and campaign you put out costs money. If your marketing efforts don’t give a return on investment(ROI) because consumers are not interested, it’s a loss for your business.
- Bad reputation. Like the salesman, you will cause a lot of frustration to consumers and potential customers. And when consumers are annoyed with irrelevant messaging, they tend to classify a company as spammy and not worthwhile.
- Wasted time and resources. Think of all the time that goes into a single campaign. Now calculate how many resources(marketing tools, personnel) a company puts to waste by targeting the wrong target audience. It’s a lot of waste, right?
Factors that Influence Definition of Your Target Audience
If there were a magic genie to help formulate the target audience, all marketing campaigns would be successful. Unfortunately, we have yet to locate the genie.
On the upside, there are two factors to help make defining the target audience easier. When you look at the target audience examples we’ll share below, you will realize two factors are consistent in all the examples.
These factors are demographics and psychographics.
Demographic factors tell you the top-level information about your target market. Under this category, we have things like age, occupation, education level, geographic location, and gender.
On the other hand, psychographic characteristics give you deeper insights into your target market. Here, you’ll find information about your target audience’s goals, interests, challenges, fears, attitudes, and values.
These two factors are critical road maps to lead you when defining your target audience segments.
How Do You Define Your Target Audience?
Defining your target audience calls for a perfect balance between hard data from customer research, market analysis, marketing plan, competitor research, and your experience thus far in business. With these two aspects, you won’t make the mistake of marketing to the wrong audience.
Here is a 4-step process for defining your target audience to simplify things for you.
1. Analyze Your Existing Customers
Your loyal customers are already gems for supporting your brand. They can also be more valuable to you by helping you define your target audience. Essentially, you want to understand your customers’:
- Ages
- Occupations and income levels
- Hobbies and interests
- Challenges and biggest pain points
- Major goals
- Business background (in B2B cases)
The best way to access this information is a mix of your CRM data, Google analytics reports, remarketing lists, and customer surveys.
Once you have this information, you’ll be equipped to derive a target audience founded on the needs, challenges, and interests you discover in your customer research.
2. Market Research and Industry Benchmarks
Look at your industry.
What types of audiences and markets are your competitors targeting?
These insights into your competitors' target audience will help you draw out similarities in the type of audience you want to target. It might also reveal gaps and opportunities for new markets to target.
That said, you don’t want to be a direct copycat. To prevent a copycat situation, be sure to compare competitor audiences against your marketing plan, business goals, and your products’ capabilities.
3. Rule Out Who isn’t Your Target Audience
Who would you think fits your target audience but isn’t an accurate description from your market segments?
For example, is your audience men between 25 and 50, or men between 25 and 50 years interested in personal fitness and health.
The best way to rule out bad target audience fits in your market segments is to understand two things:
- Who will find your product most useful(including the demographic and psychographic traits of these people)
- What problem your product solves
4. Know the Roles of Your Ideal Target Audience
The groups within your target audience have varying roles in the decision-making process.
Some are supporters, while others are executioners.
We have the executioner who makes the final buying decision. In cases of B2C, the executioner is influenced by others in their household, site reviews, and recommendations from friends and family.
In B2B, the executioner is influenced by more forces scattered across departments and different job positions. Online reviews and testimonials also influence the decision of B2B executioners.
On the other end, we have the supporters. This group may not make the final buying decision, but the executioner highly regards their input.
If you’ve got a kid, or a little sibling, then you definitely have come across the supporter when buying toys or food.
Now that you know how to define your target audience let's look at examples of a target audience profile.
4 Target Audience Examples in B2B and B2C
B2C Target Audience Profile Examples
#Luxury Fashion Retailer
Demographic characteristics
- Age: 21-60 years
- Location: USA and Canada
- Gender: 100% female
- Occupation: well-paying jobs, entrepreneurs
Psychographic factors
- Values quality, high-grade materials
- Particular about image and social class
- Keen about eco-friendly fashion
- Not cost-conscious but keen about value for their money
Key challenges
- Finding eco-friendly fashion apparel
- Finding fashion apparel that’s both comfortable and quality
Preferred content channels
- Blogs
- Youtube
- Social channels (Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook)
Preferred content types
- Blog posts for fashion tips and news
- Customer reviews
- Youtube videos for fashion tips
- Social media posts on fashion and latest releases
#Online Home Decor Retailer
Demographic characteristics
- Age: 21-39 years
- Location: USA
- Gender: 70% female, 30% male
Psychographic factors
- Minimalistic
- Particular about aesthetics
- Loves variety in home decor products
- Eco-conscious
Key challenges
- Finding eco-friendly and minimalistic home decor products
- Finding a retailer that delivers products fast(in 1-3 days)
Preferred content channels
- Blogs
- Social channels (Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, Tiktok)
Preferred content types
- Blog posts for decor tips and news
- Customer reviews
- Youtube and Tik Tok videos for decor hauls and tips
- Social media posts for deco expert tips
B2B Target Audience Examples
#Content Agency
Demographic characteristics
- Age: 29-45 years
- Location: California
- Gender: 60% female, 40% males
- Common job titles: CMOs, CCOs
Psychographic factors
- Values technology-inclined products
- Nifty about optimizing processes
- Hates drawn-out negotiations
- Data-centric during buying process
Major goals
- Produce quality content in the shortest time
- Hit SEO goals in under one year
Key challenges
- Finding a reliable content agency (in terms of turnaround and quality)
- Producing needed content within the stipulated budget
- Not enough content experts in their team
Preferred content channels
- Blogs
- Emails
- Social channels (Linkedin and Twitter)
Preferred content types
- Blog posts for tips and industry news
- Thought leadership posts on social networks such as Linkedin and Twitter
- Data-backed case studies
#CRM SaaS Company
Demographic characteristics
- Age: 35-55 years
- Location: US
- Gender: 45% female, 55% males
- Common job titles: CMOs, CROs, CEOs, CSOs
Psychographic factors
- Analytical when making buying decisions
- Particular about company culture alignment
Major goals
- Improve customer retention with better customer insights
- Reduce the cost of customer acquisition
- Enhance collaboration with customer support teams
- Hit designated end-of-year revenue targets
Key challenges
- The current CRM tool lacks extensive analytical and reporting features
- The current solution hinders the scalability of their growing business
Preferred content channels
- Genuine review sites to discover alternatives
- Emails for first contact with vendors
- Sales call to understand a vendor’s offering
- Social channels like Linkedin and Twitter for industry news
Preferred content types
- Blog posts for tips and industry news
- Data-backed white papers
- Case studies
- Breaking industry news on social networks
Over to You
You now have enough target audience examples to start defining your own. And once you make an accurate target audience definition, you can expect your campaigns to do better and more sales to stream in.
But, for that to happen, you need a content creation partner to create appealing and action-driving marketing content.
Reach out to Zoey Writers to find out how our content writing services can fit into your marketing campaign.
Image by Gameria Agencia from Pixabay. Thanks, Gameria :)
