Hello! In this article, we will talk about how to determine the target audience of your product or service.

Today you will learn:

1. What is CA;
2. Why is it so important for any business to determine the target audience;
3. How to write a portrait of your client.

What is the target audience

Target audience (TA) - a specific group of people for which a particular product or service is designed.

The people included in the target audience are united by a certain need, problem or need, which the proposed product intends to solve. To more accurately determine the needs of the group, it is divided into segments by gender, age, financial position, field of activity and so on.

Not everyone can be a client of a company or a buyer of a product. Each product has its own target audience with unique characteristics.

Example. The target audience of a women's fitness club can be formulated as "girls aged 18-30 with a small income, who want to spend a minimum of time on training (living near the club), attending classes in the evening after school or work and on weekends."

Target audience should be:

1. Interested in the product. Auto parts are not needed for those who do not have a car.
2. Able to purchase it. A fashion boutique is out of place near a hostel.
3. Receptive to marketing pressure. Sometimes adherents of one brand cannot be lured to the side of another even by the most effective methods.

Why define the target audience

A clear definition of the target audience of the product is a logical and therefore common requirement of all marketers. Before proceeding with the creation, you need to describe as accurately as possible a portrait of those who should be interested in it.

The narrower the circle of potential customers, the more effective it will be to work with such a target audience in the future.

The importance of target audience is often underestimated, however, this is the starting point of any. Even fishermen choose their tackle and bait depending on the fish they want to catch. So it is in the service and trade sectors - the work strategy depends on the portrait of a potential client.

Knowing your target audience allows you to:

1. Increase loyalty - customers will come back and recommend the product (service) to their friends.
2. Find new customers faster and cheaper. Advertising costs are significantly reduced when the marketer knows where and when to look for buyers.
3. Form proposals that meet the needs of the audience.

Methods for determining the target audience

The definition of the target audience begins with a simple question: “Who needs my product (service)?” The answer to this problem will give only the first push in . Further, the question is concretized, clear features are added to the portrait of the buyer.

Approximate questions when compiling the target audience may be as follows:

• How old are my potential clients;
• What gender are they?
• What are their financial capabilities;
• What are they interested in;
• What are their problems;
• What do they dream about?
• What is their style of thinking and communication.

The target customer is identified after a thorough analysis of the market and its segment in which the product is presented.

At first, you have to be guided by the questions “who and why should buy my product?”, But the greatest accuracy can be achieved by studying your existing customers (or customers of direct competitors). To do this, marketers conduct various audience research, observation and surveys of regular consumers.

In English-speaking countries, the popular theory of target audience segmentation is called 5W, according to the first letters of the questions:

1. What? (What?). What product or service the customer is purchasing.
2. Who? (Who?). What are the characteristics of the consumer, his gender, age, and so on.
3. Why? (Why?). What is his motive. It can be a favorable price, convenient packaging, uniqueness of the product.
4. When? (When?). When the purchase is made and how often.
5. Where? (Where?). The client makes a purchase in a store near the house, in a large hypermarket or via the Internet.

There are a lot of methods for determining the target audience. Most often, polls, questionnaires, interviews, and the collection of statistics on the Internet are used. Experienced marketers sooner or later develop their own algorithms.

Preparatory stage - determination of the purpose of the study

The first stage in determining the target audience is preparatory. To more confidently start identifying a client, you need to figure out which direction to go.

The first step on the way is the goal of finding the target audience:

• Definition of the target audience for the existing offer (dependence on the product);
• The choice of target audience for the introduction of a new product or for expanding activities (dependence on the market).

In the first case, the classical scheme operates. There is a product, there are buyers. It is necessary to draw up a portrait of existing customers in order not to lose them and attract new customers with the same characteristics and needs.

In this case, the order of work will be as follows:

1. Comparative competitive analysis goods.
2. Study of loyal consumers (survey to identify the motivation to buy).
3. Segmentation of regular and potential customers.
4. Drawing up a marketing plan.

In the second option, it is only to be changed or expanded through new proposals. The definition of target audience depends on the market.

Example. An already existing toy store plans to expand its scope of work. To do this, the marketer needs to identify all possible target audiences and choose the most profitable of them: with the largest check, lowest costs, and high frequency of demand. For example, our toy store might decide what to add to its assortment study guides and workbooks for early child development, including wholesale for kindergartens and creative sections.

The procedure for determining the target audience depending on the market:

1. Complete segmentation and market analysis.
2. Identification of the most profitable segments.
3. Drawing up a detailed portrait of representatives of the selected segment.
4. Formation of a further plan of work with the audience.

To identify the needs and other characteristics of existing customers, they can be offered questionnaires or participation in a survey.

Such interviews must include the following questions:

1. Gender, age, social and financial status, profession.
2. How often are purchases made?
3. Reasons for choosing this particular product.
4. Where did the customer learn about the product or service?
5. Overall rating of the product.

The second stage is the division of customers into consumers and businesses. Not every product has an end user - an individual. You can also sell and provide services to other businesses.

In this regard, CA will have to look in different areas:

• . The most stable segment. It is easier to correctly determine the target audience of the consumer-business, it is less subject to fluctuations in the future. All information about such clients is in the public domain, which means there is no need for time-consuming searches.
• , where the end buyer is a private individual whose interests and needs are not so stable. Fluctuations in the consumer audience can be caused by changes in politics, fashion, innovation. Seasonality and competition also strongly influence demand.

The last third stage of the preparatory stage answers the question: what task needs to be solved? Which of the business parameters needs to be worked out?

• What to sell? It is necessary to identify the needs of the formed target audience and create a profitable offer based on them;
• Where? It is necessary to determine the advertising and promotion channels that will be most effective for the desired target audience;
• When? The phrase “everything has its time” is true for business as well. Advertising for schoolchildren is useless to run on TV during the daytime school hours. Skis are best offered in winter, and sunscreen in summer. Promotions for alcoholic drinks in the restaurant are more in demand on Friday and Saturday evenings.

We found out how to tune in to the study of the target audience, how to identify the tasks that need to be solved. Next, let's proceed directly to the methods of audience segmentation.

Drawing up a client profile

All potential or existing customers should be divided into groups and described in detail. Only after all the portraits are outlined, you can decide which of them is better to work with, who to focus on.

For example, a computer games store might have the following customers:

• Fanatics who devote all their free time to computer games, buying up all the new items and rare editions;
• Schoolchildren and students who do not have their own income, choosing inexpensive but popular games for donated or accumulated money;
• Parents of teenagers who are not versed in the industry, buying games as a gift for their children, focusing on reviews and advertising;
• And so on, there can be a lot of potential target audience.

A complete description of the target audience should contain:

• Socio-demographic characteristics (gender, age, social status);
• Geographical position;
• Psychographic data (for example, the desire to stand out, establish yourself or surround yourself with comfort);
• Hobbies, hobbies and leisure activities;
• Problems and needs.

What to do after determining the target audience

The target audience is defined and narrowed as much as possible. It's time to work on the proposals.

Search for places of interaction with the target audience.

In order to identify the “habitat” of your customers, you must:

1. Describe a typical shopper's day. If necessary, you can make separate plans for weekdays and weekends, holidays. Based on the plan, it becomes clear when the client has free time for impulsive purchases, when he is most susceptible to advertising, when his demand for a particular product is aggravated.
2. Schedule the client's actions after the need arises. For example, the washing machine broke down. A potential client turns on the computer, goes to the Internet and types in the search engine "urgent repair of washing machines in Moscow." In order to "catch the bait" of this potential client, repair companies.
3. Try to anticipate what the customer was doing before the need arose. This is not always possible, but it is very necessary for the timely offer of their services. For example, before a young mother goes to the store for diapers, she will be in the maternity hospital and in the antenatal clinic, which means that you can start offering goods from there.

Proposal formation.

Talk to potential customers in their language. For example, young people are more accustomed to slang, and older people subconsciously reject any neologisms. Men think more concretely, they prefer facts, women tend to react emotionally.

To make a proposal, you must first determine:

1. Needs, "pains", problems of a potential client.
2. The fears of the client, on the basis of which objections are born.
3. Primary and secondary selection criteria.
4. Emotions involved.

They strive to look spectacular, make an impression not only in life, but also in social networks (they actively use Instagram) - we will conduct the main advertising campaign on the Internet.

The choice is based on the popularity and prestige of the brand. The main fear is to acquire a fake or cheap stuff - in the offer we focus on celebrities, certificates and participation in international fashion exhibitions. We put the emphasis on admiration, fame, delight.

Common Mistakes

In order to avoid annoying mistakes, you need to know about them and avoid these rakes.

When determining the target audience, beginners often make the following mistakes:

1. Too wide TA. You can't please everyone, you can't sell to everyone. Women from 20 to 50 years old is too wide for the working target audience. It is a mistake to believe that by limiting the target audience, the seller will lose some of the potential buyers. Random purchases in our time are increasingly receding into the background, so it is not very advisable to rely on them. A large gathering of random people will never give a seller as many buyers as a specialized fair that brings together only interested citizens.
2. One-time selection of target audience. Depending on the area of ​​business, its customers can be a relatively stable group or, conversely, changeable. In any case, studies of the target audience and its needs are recommended to be carried out once every 1-2 years. People themselves change, fashion changes, new competitors appear - and the portrait of a buyer of the same product can change from year to year.

Many people today operate with such a concept as the target audience, although they do not realize the full depth and complexity of this term. What is meant by it? Such a phrase in the advertising or marketing field of activity denotes a group of people who have some General characteristics, properties, interests, and therefore, with a high degree of probability, will pay attention to specific goods or services offered, respond to marketing offers or slogans exactly as their product creators expect.

The main property of the target audience is its needs and inclination to certain topics, thanks to which this target audience can be effectively (the result for an entrepreneur is successful sale) to offer any goods or services. Here are just some typical examples:

1. Men aged 20-35 who play sports will be the target audience for sports nutrition creators;
2. Women with a child under the age of 2-3 years are the target audience for manufacturers of goods for babies;
3. Pensioners suffering from high blood pressure will buy blood pressure monitors more often than other members of society, etc.

The task of how to determine the target audience is a key one for every entrepreneur or manufacturer who wants to get the maximum benefit from their activities.

Interesting fact! Accurate identification of your potential client is the key to running almost any business.

What are the types of target audience

Each field of activity has its own rules for choosing a target audience. The types of the target audience depend on many factors, for example, on the solvency of potential customers, their wishes and all sorts of preferences, the desire to follow popular trends, etc. Each researcher of the issue has the right to carry out his own classification, but today Central Asia is divided by specialists into two main and large-scale camps:

• The main part or the main target audience. This includes those people who directly decide which brand of goods to buy and which services to order. Representatives of the main part themselves act as the initiator of the future investigation, they are the owners of the money;
• indirect part. The characteristics of this target audience may vary, but the common thing is that its representatives play a passive role in a future purchase or order. They can't initiate a deal, don't have money, or at all, or enough money to buy something.

This division is now the most used and widespread in the West and in Russia. The study of the target audience of both types is important for marketers, as it allows you to develop the most working solutions for the implementation of your assumptions.

How to identify the target audience and analyze it

A huge number of marketers are involved in determining the target audience, who strive to guess the wishes of potential customers as much as possible and make sure that their partners are sold out as intensively as possible. The values ​​of each target audience can differ significantly, so it is important to define your target audience very clearly. For example, you can try to form the target audience of gadget lovers, but if you specify how many of them love smart watches or smartphones, it turns out that there are very few who belong to the former. Therefore, the seller of smart watches cannot count on such an audience.

To determine your group of buyers, for whom certain things will then be offered, you can use simple sources, for example,. Today, almost everyone uses it, so there is no problem in knowing the mood of the people and their disposition to buy this or that thing at a certain price. It is important not only to create a base of interests of your potential buyers, but also to periodically refresh and optimize it with updated data. Periodic surveys are suitable for this, for example. Analytical services Wordstat, Google Trands will help you understand the overall picture of demand on the Internet for a product or service at a specific time in the desired region. With the help of these services, you can find out in which region which queries are most popular. For example, you can see how the demand of the target audience (the number of requests on the Internet) for the purchase of scooters in any city in Russia grows or falls over time. This tool is useful for doing analytics.

To determine your potential customers, you must first of all draw up a portrait of a typical client. This is necessary in order to clearly understand with whom you will have to interact and what rules you should follow.

Drawing up a portrait of a client should take into account the following critical points:

• The selection of the target audience begins with determining the age;
• The gender of a person plays a very important role, since women and men in most cases are aimed at completely different objects for purchase;
• Income level. Key moment, under which the manufacturer or seller of goods or services must adapt. If people do not have the kind of money you expect from them, then no matter how good your proposal is, it will not receive a response;
• Marital status, level of education and cultural development, field of activity are no less important points that you should always remember.

The description of the target audience should be as complete as possible, especially when it comes to really important things. This is the only way to expect maximum response from the consumer. The benefit of drawing up an adequate portrait of the average customer is that the entrepreneur will be able to take extremely reasonable steps and minimize the likelihood that there will be no buyers for his product (see).

Segmentation of the target audience using the 5W method

Target audience segmentation is the process of dividing potential buyers into separate groups that will set similar requirements for a product or service. The more competently segmentation is carried out, the more accurately it is possible to determine the group of people interested in the product. People are not original and they always have some general views on the product, requirements for it, wishes regarding delivery features, etc. Segments of the target audience, even regarding the same market position, can be so different that they do not agree with each other on the main issues. For example, take washing powder. One lady needs a washing powder, another for washing at any water temperature, a third will need a powder with a strong deodorant effect. All of them are in different interest groups.

There are many segmentation methods, but the most famous and popular among them is the 5W method. This is the 5 questions method, which is to answer the following:

• What- what kind of product or service do you offer, how do they differ from others;
• Who- here segmentation takes place according to the buyer: for whom your offer is intended, who can buy it;
• why- a motivational component that explains why people will want to buy this particular thing;
• When- This is a division in relation to when the consumer will need to buy the offered product;
• Where- Where a person can come across the idea that he should get his hands on the thing you offer.

This is the segmentation of the target audience according to the 5W rule. It is quite specific and allows you to quickly determine the portrait of your future consumer. Having a portrait of the target audience, compiled according to the 5W method, you can take on product development much more boldly.

Definition of the target audience: how to correctly describe the target audience

There are many characteristics that can be used to describe CA. Most often, the division occurs according to the following key parameters:

• Geolocation. It is very important to understand where your future client is located, where he lives, works, what he does in his free time, where he will use the thing that you are trying to sell him;
• demographic data. This includes age, gender, marital status, the presence or absence of children, other such things. They make up the keys of interest for a competent marketer, as they allow you to very accurately determine a person’s hobbies;
• Socio-economic characteristics. How much money your potential visitor has, how much of it he is willing to spend on what you offer him, what status and place he occupies in society, what he does in his business life. The portrait of the target audience, an example of which was given above, will be incomplete without such information;
• Psychographic segmentation. Enough difficult task which aims to take into account the mental characteristics of the consumer. But studying them is difficult, so the picture here will always be incomplete;
• behavioral factor. The most important point, which, with proper implementation, can replace all the others. For example, if you are going to sell fish tackle, then you don’t need to know the age, place of residence and the peculiarities of the psyche of each fisherman. It is enough to know that they love spinning rods and large bright floats.

Given these points, you can create a very clear portrait of the future consumer and guess his aspirations.

Interesting fact! If there are too many selection criteria, it gets in the way. It is important to highlight the most important among them.

Characteristics of the target audience and features of working with it

There is no need to stay on the decision to work with the target audience for a long time - it is necessary to move on to studying it and using the information received. The process in general terms is as follows:

• Creation of a unique selling proposition (USP). When you understand who you want to focus your proposal on, you need to concretize it and bring it to a completed form. Any target audience, examples of which are shown above, longs for something new, more accessible, interesting and profitable. You have to give it to her, taking into account all the features of the average client. The product may be typical, but its design options, some features and features advertising campaign must be tailored to the information collected;
• Active use of the matching index, Affinity Index. This concept denotes how much more actively the target audience interacted with the object of its interest compared to other people. If the index is high, then the definition of the target audience was correct, if not, the analysis of the target audience was carried out with errors and needs to be corrected;
• The use of many channels for interaction with the target audience. Many advertising agencies in this regard, they are conservative and use 3-4 channels at the most. But the more there are, the better, so there is no point in saving here. You can use search engine optimization, contextual and targeted advertising, email newsletters, message boards and forms, as well as a lot of tools.

All these tools and a competent choice of the target audience together will definitely give the desired effect and allow you to bypass competitors in the development and popularity of your business.

What does the question of stereotypes mean for the target audience

The concept of the target audience, the methods of its definition, and other difficulties create the impression of talking about something too far away. But do not forget that the target audience is, first of all, ordinary people. And they are fully subject to a huge number of stereotypes - patterns of behavior and thinking accepted by the majority of society. Stereotypes can be of various kinds, but they leave a very strong imprint on every person and make him act with an eye on them. And in the same way, it will act when buying a product or service.

Consider an example. If you plan to sell razors and you will be with the help of a frail kid, the public will not understand. And even if he understands, he will still disdain to buy goods. If in advertising you use a brutal man who shaves the 3rd time the day before important event, then it will be a game on stereotypes and success here is unambiguous. That is why it is important to know not only how to correctly describe the target audience, but also how to skillfully play on the current strong stereotypes that most of the people around us are subject to.

The general characteristics of the target audience should always imply the effect of stereotypes on society, even if in a somewhat crude and generalized form.

Using the portrait and characteristics of the target audience: what tools to work with

If you already have the criteria for selecting the target audience, a portrait of the target audience has been drawn up, then it remains only to put the data into practice. This can be done using a huge number of different programs. Here are just a small part of the services and applications for searching for the target audience present on the network:

• Service "Target Cerebro";
• similar web;
• Plarin;
• SocFishing;
• Free Hiconversion service;
• Allsocial and many others.

Now you have figured out what the target audience means and you can safely use the knowledge in your business. Only a competent and balanced approach will allow you to get the most out of your business and avoid potential troubles.

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Proper definition is one of the important aspects of successful marketing of any website. Therefore, before starting work on the site, I advise you to carefully study the tastes of those for whom it is intended. And only then proceed to create the resource of their dreams.

The target audience is a certain group of people who are interested and in need of a particular product (service).

Why study the target audience?

As a rule, the sites offer a certain product or service, which, unfortunately, is not needed by everyone, but only by a specific group of people. It is these visitors that are of interest to us, as they may become our customers in the future. Knowing the end users of our product or service, their needs, social status, interests, etc., you can build with them effective interaction through content on the site. To do this, you need to create a portrait of the target audience.

How to create a portrait of the target audience?

To do this, you need to ask yourself a few questions:

What age and gender are my potential clients?

Who do they work, what positions do they hold?

How much do they earn?

What education do they have?

What is their marital status?

What are they interested in?

Where do they live (geographical location)?

How often do they use the Internet?

What fears are they experiencing?

How do they make purchases: deliberately or spontaneously?

And most importantly, how can my product/service help them meet their needs.

Let's create a portrait of the target audience for a rock school website that offers guitar lessons in groups.

Age from 15 to 25, schoolchildren or students, no permanent income, want to learn the guitar (mainly electric or bass), play in a band and perform on stage.We can offer this audience inexpensive group classes at a convenient time, the opportunity to communicate with like-minded people and regularly rehearse on the school grounds.

Or, for example, let's define the audience of an elite website together cottage village in outskirts of Moscow.

Age from 25 to 45 years old, have a constant high income, occupy high positions, are interested in purchasing luxury suburban housing with a plot away from the bustle of the city, perhaps they want to emphasize their status. Live in Moscow or the Moscow region.

Thus, you can get an idea about the target audience of the site and identify some of its main characteristics. Now we know who we are dealing with and can take this into account, for example, when designing a website. If we have a website of a serious company, then you should not make it in pink colors with flowers.

This information is also useful when communicating with the audience. For example, for teenagers it would be advisable to use youth slang, for a female audience it is permissible to use excessive emotionality, but it is preferable for a male audience to provide specific facts.

For a more detailed study of the audience, you can use the following methods

• Small polls. Insert small surveys on the site regarding the age of visitors, gender, interests, etc. You can do surveys in email newsletters if you have your own subscriber base.

• The study of user behavior in social networks. To do this, you need to find groups on the desired topics and analyze the behavior of their members. Look at which posts have the most comments, for which they put likes more often. Try to understand why these topics interested users the most.

• Analysis of the target audience of the site in Yandex Metrica. A lot of useful information about site visitors can be found in the Reports>Standard Reports>Visitors tab. Here you can see various data about your site visitors: geography, age, gender, activity and much more.

For example, these screenshots show that women aged 25 to 34 who live in Russia are most interested in this site.

At what stage should the target audience be defined?

Ideally, you need to carefully study your future audience even before developing an Internet project. This will help to set the right course for the development of the site and attract interested visitors from the very beginning. Of course, in the future we will have to constantly pay attention to this issue. certain time, since people's preferences change over time, the nature of your products and services may change, so audience analysis is a regular work on the site.

Polls and tests are simple and affordable methods for researching the target audience. Their serious disadvantage is that users know they are being watched. According to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, this fact affects the behavior of the subjects and the results.

In this article - 5 tricky ways to study customers without their knowledge, but legally.

Trick One: Analyze Chat Logs

Support calls, recordings or live chat logs are the unbiased opinions of users who have encountered a problem, are trying out a service, or want to buy a product.

People communicate openly when they are impersonal. With surveys, you will not achieve such frankness - customers will always keep themselves within the limits.

And the crown of this splendor is that you don’t even need to lure people to get valuable insights.

The main conditions: a person is sitting on the other side, the chat is available at least in work time. Like we have:

What to look for when analyzing chat logs?

• Look for repetition: words, phrases, questions, expressions, suggestions.
• Look for common ground to understand what topics matter.
• Define categories and count the frequency of requests.

Voila! You have on your hands the top problems that most concern visitors. This information will save you a lot of effort and money. For example, this way you will understand what to blog about or how to write a FAQ to remove friction.

Trick two: look for useful information in reviews and reviews

A common business mistake is to limit feedback to ratings and ratings, without further ado. Most often these are useless stars, they do not convince anyone. You will get a bunch of units - they will beware of coming to you. But why it happened, you will never know, because no one wrote anything. And if you have been given high marks, you will not learn anything either - why you like it, what is special about your business, etc.

There are several options for the correct format of reviews. For example, like this:

Or like this:

You will learn what to improve, what to work on, and what you can be proud of anyway)

Keep in mind that a person will be too lazy to leave a quality review just like that, without the promise of something pleasant in return. Offer a discount, coupon, or something similar. Such a system is easy to implement, and it will not hit your pocket hard.

You can offer intangible benefits. For example, the title of the best commentator or some kind of insignia for activity. The user's ambitions will do the rest for you. This system works great on Amazon. The best reviews (most commented) get into the Top:

The third option is to offer access to premium site features or services. This is more often true for SaaS companies, but stores can also choose this option. Like Zappos does, for example. Whoever writes more quality reviews gets access to the VIP level with super fast delivery.

You can tell users a couple of rules, like Decathlon:

Trick Three: Talk to Customers

There are many things you can ask in an interview. They can be done in person or over the phone. Remote ones will cost less, but a personal conversation will allow you to monitor body language, facial expressions and read other non-verbal signs.

Meetings are time-consuming and can be expensive, especially if you have an online business and an audience in different parts of the world.

An alternative is a call to Skype or another messenger. Prepare: Make a plan, come up with questions. Respondents choose from among current or potential customers. They have already interacted with you, which means they like what you offer. Be natural so that the interlocutors feel at ease.

Ask how they use the products, what worries and motivates them, what they think of you. You can also ask about competitors. It is necessary not only to find out the answers, but also to establish a trusting relationship.

Analyze conversations in the same way as logs - comb through for repetitive phrases.

Trick Four: “Eavesdrop” on Social Media

Your clients love social media. They listen to music, read the news and communicate. Including sharing impressions about goods and services. Note that users do this by own will and in most cases unbiased. They use living language, apt words and express a valuable opinion. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you monitor mentions of you in social networks and blogs. Special tools will help.

One of them is the Babkee system:

On a free plan, you can monitor two objects and receive up to 3,000 messages for each.

We set the monitoring object, enter keywords, add negative keywords - and we get a list of links to sources with mentions.

Another example is the Cerebro service, which allows you to parse the VKontakte audience. You find communities by keyword and analyze discussions in each of them:

Pay attention to the topics with the words "Reviews" and "Questions". Upload all links to discussions or text of posts in an excel file and manually copy them into an SEO analyzer to evaluate the frequency of mention.

Trick Five: Explore Blogs and Forums

Forums and blogs are the second level of immersion after social networks. That's where tons of criticism and revelations. Especially this source is suitable for a niche product.