McDonald’s has a clear understanding of who their target market is versus their target audience. This is why their advertising for Happy Meals tends to focus on aspects that would not be of interest to their target market (kids), such as the nutritional value of the meals.
Another brilliant example of a target market vs. a target audience is the 2010 Old Spice advert, The man your man could smell like. Proctor & Gamble (the company behind the advertising campaign) discovered that around 60% of men’s body washes and deodorants were purchased by women.
P&G studied the fact that many women buy Old Spice for their boyfriends/husbands and decided to target them specifically in future marketing campaigns. This is best exemplified by the ad featuring Isaiah Mustafa. Men aged 18-35 are the target market while their wives and girlfriends make up the target audience.
Your target market is your customer base. Your target audience is whom you’re advertising to.
Target Audience vs. Customer Persona: How Are the Two Related?
Your target audience and customer persona can help you create better marketing strategies. It’s helpful to think of the target audience as a club, and the buyer persona as one of its members. You will notice that there are many people with similar characteristics and interests in your target audience. If you look closely at the customer persona, you will see a person with their own goals, desires, and needs.
A buyer persona is a fictional character that represents a specific group of people. You can base the person you’ve created off of your ideal customer research to give them a background and personality that you can relate to.
The target audience is the group of people you are trying to reach with your product or service. The target market for a business includes the people who are most likely to buy the product or service offered. This can be defined by characteristics such as age, gender, education, income, lifestyle, interests, and values. Understanding your target audience’s thought process and motives can help you better understand how to market to them.
A buyer persona is much more focused. It targets a specific person within your target audience. This individual is a representation of the ideal customer archetype. It allows you to see your ideal buyer as a person, rather than a generalization, and provides valuable information about their buying habits to help you more effectively market to them.
A buyer persona is a detailed description of a character that includes their background, goals, and challenges. The customer’s pain points are defined as the specific areas where your product or service can help improve their situation.
Marketers came up with buyer personas while target audiences were present. Customer surveys are an excellent way to gain insight into customer behavior. Buyer personas can help you identify specific issues and target your marketing efforts to show how your product can help. Both concepts are critical in building better marketing strategies, and they should work together seamlessly in your marketing plan.
Broad Audience vs. Exact Audience: Which Is Better?
Reaching a broad audience with your marketing efforts means reaching as many people as possible. This will help you create brand awareness, but it may not give you the results you want over time. A focused customer audience is the total opposite of a broad audience. Marketing is a tool that will help you promote your product or service to a large group of people. Some people you approach will not be interested in buying your product. If you’re new to the market, this might be a good approach for you.
An audience that is more specific will help you place your product in front of people who are more interested. Targeting a specific demographic group will make it easier for you to promote your product or service to people who are likely to be interested in it. Focusing your marketing efforts on a specific audience will help you reach your goals much more quickly. You will have a better understanding of what messages are most effective and when to advertise your brand. If you want potential customers to learn more about your product and eventually make a purchase, then try this approach.
A smaller audience for your product or service advertising is not necessarily a bad thing. This is positive news if you are only wanting to target consumers who are interested in your services. It depends on what you want as to what kind of audience you pick. If you want to be recognized, it is a good idea to have a broad audience. However, as your goals change, you can target a specific audience to get more accurate results.
How to Find Your Target Audience
It is crucial to learn who your target audience is when trying to create more effective campaigns. How can you determine who your advertising efforts are aimed at? To identify your target audience, you should define what needs your offering helps fulfill. If you can identify the problems that your product or service can solve, you will be able to target those who are most likely to benefit from it.
When finding your target audience, you need to identify as many specific characteristics about them as possible. This will ensure that your ads are targeting the right people. Here are some steps that will help you understand your target audience.
MARKET RESEARCH
When finding your target audience, it is essential to gather data on your ideal customer. By analyzing your industry, you can determine which areas are underserved and can be potential markets for your product or service. By understanding this information, you will be able to create more interesting ads that focus on your product’s unique value and target potential customers who may be interested in what you have to offer. This will also allow you to choose the most appropriate channels to communicate your message.
GOOGLE ANALYTICS: WHAT WILL THIS TELL YOU?
People are spending more time online these days. Most consumers use search engines like Google to find products and services. The Google Analytics service provides website owners with comprehensive data about their visitors, including information on how they found the site, how long they stayed, and what pages they viewed. This data can be used to find out which channels your audience is using and what kind of content they engage with the most. Optimizing your website for more visibility online can be done by making data-driven decisions in your content strategy.
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS AND THE INSIGHT PROVIDED
Knowing who you want to target makes it simpler to reach them. If you want to better understand your target audience, you should look into social media analytics. This will help you figure out which platforms they prefer and how they interact with the content you post. This will give you reliable information about what your audience is most interested in and what affects their decision to buy. In other words, you’ll be able to create marketing content that is more tailored to each individual.
LOOK INTO YOUR CURRENT CUSTOMER BASE
One way to figure out who your target audience is, is to look at who is already buying from you. People who have already bought your product or service are the best people to study to understand who you should market to. This tool can be used to estimate the age, location, and interests of your target audience, as well as other details. Monitor your brand’s interactions with customers on social media, or use customer surveys to gather information about them.
Benefits of Defining Your Target Audience
Before you can craft a message that resonates with your target audience, you have to first identify who makes up that audience. Defining your target audience is an important step in successful marketing because it allows you to focus your advertising efforts on the people who are most likely to respond positively to your message. If you want to be successful in marketing, you need to know who your target audience is and how to reach them. Wasting resources on people who are not interested in your product is a sure way to fail. It is more effective to focus on a specific segment of the population when trying to reach potential customers instead of speaking to the general public.
Here are the primary advantages of having a clear target audience:
DEFINES THE TYPE OF CONTENT YOU SHOULD CREATE
You will be able to create a better content strategy if you know who you are catering to. If you want to increase sales, target your advertising directly to people who are interested in your product or service. It is important to understand who your audience is before you decide what to say and how to say it.
GIVES DIRECTION TO YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY
When you know your target audience, you can better focus your marketing efforts for more successful results. It will allow you to identify which channels are best for promoting your products and services.
ENSURES YOU ARE MARKETING TO YOUR INTENDED AUDIENCE
If you don’t know who your target audience is, you could end up marketing to the wrong people. “If you choose not to do something that could help your strategy, it will slow down your progress and you might use up resources unnecessarily.”
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