A well-identified target audience is the basis for the success of all marketing strategies. If we know precisely who we want to convince to buy from us, we will know what the product should look like and how we should connect with the audience. And yes, market research also helps you to identify your target audience. Today we tell you how.
The target audience, also known as the target audience, is the specific group of people to whom a brand, product, service or communication campaign is addressed. This group is defined according to common characteristics that make them more likely to be interested in what is being offered. These common characteristics can be of various types:
Some demographic characteristics pertain to the household and generally affect all individuals living in the household. Others are particular to each individual.
The most common demographic characteristics of the household are:
There are other demographic data that are specific to each individual, for example:
Sometimes it is important to know whether households have certain equipment. For example, in the case of a coffee capsule brand, it will be very important to know whether households have an electric coffee machine and what type. Depending on the sector, other brands may find it useful to know whether they have a fridge or fridge-freezer, or whether they have a freezer cabinet. Others may be interested in whether the individual has only a mobile phone or also a computer or tablet. Or how many cars are available in the household and which segment or brand.
The choice of products or brands depends not only on our demographic characteristics and our equipment, but also on our needs, values, beliefs, tastes and interests. These are called psychographic characteristics. For example, people may have different degrees of interest in reducing packaging consumption. Or a greater or lesser taste for ethnic food. Or when buying their next car, they consider safety attributes more or less.
Sometimes the definition of the target audience is influenced by characteristics of what consumers do. For example, a running shoe brand may be interested in accessing people who do sporting activities in general, who do a specific sport such as long-distance running, or even who do that sport with a certain minimum frequency. In all these cases, we are referring to behavioural characteristics.
Theoretically, a brand’s target audience should be all potential buyers in a market. The broader the target audience, the better the chances of finding buyers to grow. But in reality, only the big brands have portfolios and budgets that allow them to address the whole market at once. For all other brands, trying to please everyone can result in appealing to no one.
This is why all brands concentrate their resources and efforts on specific groups of customers or consumers, which allows them to:
Focusing efforts on specific consumer groups that are easy to grow among is often a better use of budget in the short term. And in the longer term, you can open up the circle with new varieties and propositions that incrementally attract consumers to the base.
There are several market surveys you can conduct to identify the ideal target audience for your brand
Whenever you don’t know a market in depth, you will want to conduct qualitative research. This will allow you to better understand consumer motivations and the situations that trigger the need to buy. In-depth interviews and focus groups will help you to identify all these keys. And once you have a list of what is important, you can quantify the incidence of each of these cues through quantitative market surveys in a second phase.
Accurately quantifying the consumption habits of a product or service is essential to define an appropriate marketing strategy. Thanks to consumer habits surveys, we can understand which factors are important in terms of consumer behaviour and find the consumer’s profile,
The more detailed the reading of the consumer profile, the easier it is to translate the information into actions. This is why it is important to know not only who buys the brand, but who buys the category and perhaps identify consumer profiles with different degrees of consumption intensity, such as ‘heavy, mediums and light buyers’. Finally, it will also be important to know the profile of the non-consumer to find out which part of the market we are not yet managing to attract to the category and why.
Once we have detailed information on the consumer profile, we will be able to define our target audience. A brand with a young profile and low awareness can build on the current consumer profile and convince more similar consumers to buy the product. On the contrary, a very mature brand, which can no longer grow within its traditional segment, will have to prioritise other segments to find new buyers to grow.
The most common way to find out the consumer profile is to launch online surveys that allow you to collect a precise quantification of each variable. A consumer panel allows access to a sample of which a good part of their characteristics are already known.
In addition to the habit surveys, more sophisticated segmentation research and statistical analyses can be carried out to help us group consumers into 4 or 5 groups of consumers who share common characteristics, habits and attitudes. This is usually done through multivariate analyses that find the best possible combinations taking into account all variables simultaneously. Looking at the different segments and evaluating the performance of our brand in each one will allow us to know in which segments our brand is currently most successful and in which other segments it is in a weak position compared to competing brands. From there, the possibilities are endless: do we continue to focus on our most successful segment if we still have a lot of room for growth, or do we strengthen other segments with new product proposals or new campaigns?
If you are looking to identify your target audience, We are testers can help you. We have a research platform to carry out qualitative and quantitative research that will allow you to understand the consumer in your category and profile your consumer.
You can carry out segmentation studies, identify priority segments and use all this information in your marketing plan. All with the support of our team of research experts who will help you define the projects that best suit your needs.
Contact our experts to give you all the details on the best way to identify your target audience.
Update date 30 December, 2024
