Why You Need To Know Your Target Audience

What is a target audience?

If you’ve ever wondered what a target audience is, you’re not alone. A target audience is a group of people who receive your marketing messages that are tailored to them. A company understands that this group of buyers are likely to buy your products and services based on their previous shopping behaviours.

Why is it important to know who you’re targeting?

Every business should know who its target audience is so that they can target them in the right way, with the goal of converting them into valuable customers. Understanding your target audience means that a company is able to spend its marketing budget more effectively to maximise its ROI by targeting customers in the best possible way. This will help a company to generate more leads and sales at a cheaper cost.

How do I create a target persona?

Firstly, you will need to make sure that each customer profile paints a clear picture of who the target audience is so that your company can address their needs and wants.

Carrying out customer research allows a company to choose key messages and appropriate channels that can be used to communicate its products and services to the right target audience. A fine-tuned customer profile means that a company can target its audience with direction.

You may also download our Target Personas Template resource to save you time and give you a clear format for your target persona profile.

How will I know WHO to target?

Knowing WHO to target can be a difficult task. Nevertheless, businesses need to make sure that they are targeting the correct audience, and can do this by collecting data.

A customer profile offers the company a snapshot of the type of user they are likely to direct their marketing efforts towards. This can help a company to plan key marketing messages to make sure that they are engaging their target audience.

According to Sprout Social, marketers will see sales increase by approximately 20% when they use personalised content. Targeted messaging is therefore important if a company wants its marketing to stand out from the crowd and appeal to the right audience.

Researching my audience

To research your audience, you will firstly need to identify who is currently buying your products and services so that you can tailor your marketing efforts to gain the attention of these in-market audiences.

A company can then collect information about this audience by creating a customer profile that contains demographic information, such as:

Gender – Understanding if your target audience is male or female can help to identify who it is you will be targeting
Age – How old is your target audience? If they are at a different stage of their life, they may have conflicting interests and will need to be targeted accordingly.
Profession – Where do they work? Evaluating if the price of products you are selling can be afforded by this buyer is valuable information to know.
Location – Recognising where your customers live can help to determine if your Google Ads are targetting buyers in the correct geographical area.
Interests – What hobbies do your customers have? This is great if you want to build an emotional connection with your audience. Maybe you’ll offer them a personalised freebie with a piece of marketing material to show that you really thought about them in their customer journey.

Remember: Not all marketing messages appeal to everyone!

Knowing that not all marketing messages will appeal to the same group of buyers is important. Companies should make sure that they are targeting the right audience and are communicating to them in the best way with messages that actually appeal to them! Otherwise, a company may waste valuable marketing spend.

You can download our How to create your target persona resource to know who your target audience is and how to tailor your marketing to them to increase clicks and engagement.

What if my business has more than one target persona?

So, you’ve found out that your business has more than one target persona? That’s fine! Simply create individual customer profiles that will reflect each target audience, and create marketing messages that target each individual buyer.

Make sure you are reaching the right target audience

Tracking the performance of your campaigns may reveal if you are targeting your audience in the best possible way. Your campaigns should clearly communicate your products and services whilst appealing to the needs and wants of your target audience and resolving any of their pain points.

A/B testing is a fantastic way to learn a little bit more about what is working well with your campaigns, as well as areas that could be improved to target your audience better!

What we do

A strategic approach to digital marketing means that we make sure your company is reaching its target audience in a cost-effective way. Managing Google Ad campaigns to see if your ads will be seen and heard by your target audience, in return for conversions, brand awareness, and increased ROI is a particular area we specialise in.

Let us help you understand and target your audience! Contact Lnet Digital for a FREE consultation and learn how we can help you understand your target audience.

Lnet Digital is a digital marketing service that has a range of skills in Technical SEO, SMM, and PPC. We are always happy to help our clients who would like to improve the performance of their websites.