Audience, target audience, target,… We have many names to refer to that person we want to reach. No matter what marketing strategy you want to pursue, in each and every one of them, the target is the cornerstone. In this article, we tell you everything you need to know: from what a target audience is to the questions you must ask to get to know your audience in detail.
There are many ways to define what the target audience is. Leon G. Schiffman, for example, defined it as follows in his book «Consumer Behavior«: The procedure of dividing the market into different subsets of consumers who have common needs or characteristics.
Or, in other words, they are a group of consumers who have certain common characteristics (such as age, gender, socioeconomic level, etc.). They also usually share the same consumption trends and have similar needs.
And how can knowing the trends and needs of your target audience benefit you?
As we mentioned earlier, the customer is at the center of all marketing strategies (especially in digital ones).
In the end, the more we know about our customer, the better we can sell to them. In other words, if we know their needs, we have the opportunity to tailor our product to them (making it more attractive).
For example, if we want to run an online advertising campaign, we can make our ads appear only to people interested in our product. This way, we only invest resources in people we are interested in, instead of spending resources on reaching a lot more people (but who have no interest at all).
Firing cannonballs at flies doesn’t make much sense, don’t you think?
Now you know how important it is to know your customers. But how can you get to know them? You can conduct a market research study, as it is a very useful tool for obtaining quantitative and qualitative information about your potential customers. But what should you ask them?
Here are some of the questions you can include in your survey.
Yes, it’s true, these are the most typical questions you can imagine. But that doesn’t make them any less useful. After all, before you can segment your audience specifically, you need to do it more generically. It’s worth noting that obtaining information about their family status, marital status, and socioeconomic level is also interesting. With this data, you create a general profile of the consumer.
With these types of questions, you start to obtain valuable information. These questions are aimed at finding out why they consume what they consume, their motive.If we know why our consumer consumes what they consume, we can adapt our product and/or marketing strategy for better sales.
It is very important to know what sources of information your audience uses. If you know which platforms they use to get informed, you can place your advertising there. If you know who they trust, that is, if you know who their references are, you can connect with them and gain credibility.
Without a doubt, one of the best ways to start. Find out the needs, interests, and motivations of your target audience and create a Buyer Persona. If you always have to consider these aspects, why not have them all gathered?
Thanks to Google Analytics, you can find out how many people visit your website, how long they stay, and which pages they navigate. The amount of information that Analytics provides is immense, and it is undoubtedly a necessary tool for knowing your target.
Like Analytics, using social media is an excellent way to obtain information. It is also important to note that it is not worth creating accounts on all social media platforms you can think of. Find out which social networks your target audience uses and focus your efforts on those social networks. Don’t underestimate the power of connecting with your target audience!
It’s easy to say, but how do you do it? By creating content that interests them. If you create the type of content that interests your potential customers, you won’t need to go after them, as they will come to you! These types of actions require a lot of work and effort, but if you can answer, help, and solve your audience’s doubts, you will attract high-quality traffic to your website. And, of course, a little SEO strategy never hurts.
In the previous points, we have made it clear how important it is to know your target audience and what information you need to obtain. But how do you get this information? At WAT, we have all kinds of tools for you to conduct both qualitative and quantitative market research.
Let’s say you have a new product that you want to launch on the market, and you want to conduct market research (basically, a survey for a new product). But since traditional methods take too long and are costly, you’re not sure if you should do it. At We Are Testers, we have the perfect tool to help you: the archetypes test. With this online survey software, you can conduct a tailored market research study quickly and inexpensively.
While quantitative studies can provide valuable information, we must not forget the importance of qualitative market research. Thanks to this type of study, we can delve into the data and understand why our target audience behaves in certain ways.
If you prefer to work with a small group of people, you can conduct online focus groups. With these, you can conduct in-depth group interviews online and obtain insights from customers.
If you are more interested in larger groups, we also have a product that can easily adapt to your needs: WAT Lab. With WAT Lab, you can easily create and manage online communities.
And, if you prefer, we can handle some tasks that you would rather not manage.
