What is a target audience?
A target audience is a group of people who can benefit from your product, service or solution. They will typically have similar demographics, characteristics, and hobbies, which help you to understand their behaviours, what motivates them, and most importantly, the pain they're experiencing that you’re solving.
Benefits of knowing your target audience
You can build more informed products, services or solutions that specifically address their pain, giving them something they need to help them overcome this. In essence, it’s your way of doubling down on what you’re creating to build something better based on the specific use case.
You can connect to your audience on a deeper level, so they feel seen and understood — which sounds very ethereal, but, people buy from people. If you try to go after a broader audience, you end up being more generic which dilutes your message.
You can tailor your marketing so it resonates with your audience better, be it the way you talk or the imagery you use. The more you understand your audience, the easier it is to draw them and keep them interested.
3 steps to identify your target audience
1. Do a deep-dive into your product, service or solution
What problem are you solving? Who is most likely to benefit from your product, service or solution? What is your unique selling point?
Having a clear answer to these three questions will help you shape your initial thoughts on who to target.
Let’s use Good Yolk as an example:
- We’re helping startups to become known, understood, and chosen, so they can grow and become successful.
- Founders and their early-stage teams are most likely to benefit from our services — anybody who's mission-led and solving a real-world problem.
- Our USP is that we work directly with founders to give them the marketing support they actually need for growth, adapting our approach, operating quickly, and communicating effectively to do so.
2. Take a look at the competition
Who are your competitors? Who are they targeting? How are you different from them?
Understanding the lay of the land is incredibly beneficial, so you know who to go after and who not to. If your competition is well established and is targeting a specific demographic, it’s going to be an uphill climb for you to take market share away from them, but not impossible! However, you could consider going after a different niche where your chances are more favourable — think about what sets you apart and why that’s important.
3. Create a buyer persona
This bit sounds fluffy, but it’s super important. You’ll often hear people talking about ideal customer profiles (ICPs) or buyer personas. These are just key bits of information you can collect to build out a profile of your audience, including:
- Demographics
- Age
- Occupation
- Location
- Education
- Income
- Marital status
- Goals and motivations
- Pain points
- Hobbies (including media consumption)
- Habits.
These profiles can be as simple or complex as you want them to be. Let’s start with complex:
“Bob is 35, he likes to go on long dog walks, drive a VW Polo, and holidays in the south of France every summer.”
If you’re a startup, you don’t need this level of detail right away — how useful is it to know what brand of car they drive, unless you’re trying to sell them one?
Keep it simple. Go back to the pain that your customers have and how you’re solving it. What characteristics are important for you to understand that will help you to target these people? For example, if you’re creating an app for women’s health, knowing age, gender, hobbies, and the places this group spend their time online, would be a great start.
Putting your audience first is a priority
By clearly defining who you’re trying to reach, you can build products, services or solutions that solve real-world problems, communicate in a way that resonates and drives interest, and ultimately create stronger connections with the people you want to become your customers. And that’s what it’s all about, right?
