Hands up if you’ve created a product or service without actually considering your target audience! The trouble with a lot of businesses is their propensity to see things from their perspective only without giving a thought to prospective customers.
Sure, your product is the all singing, all dancing solution to a problem but what problem exactly?
Who needs and wants your product?
Why should they come to you for the solution?
Ideally, you should know the answers before you finish your product/service as this will help you tweak it to meet the specific needs of your target audience. What I’m going to do in this article is provide you with some tips on finding the right audience for your product and hopefully increase your ROI in the bargain.
Who the Hell are you Selling To?
So you sell motorbikes, sports gear or fashionable clothing? Who actually needs what you’re offering?
Need Fulfilment
It’s a good idea to look at basic demographics such as age, income, gender and location for example. A single mother with three kids and Harvard graduate with no kids will have very different needs. Do you think broad spectrum marketing that includes both will have much success?
Just a quick tip, if you’re selling non-essential items, target ‘millennials’ as they tend to buy more crap than non-millennials. This is especially the case if you’re selling clothes as these youngsters love purchasing clothing they’ll only ever wear once!
Filter
It’s best if you stick to a handful of demographics; common sense should tell you which ones to choose. I would imagine that there’s little call for sports shoes amongst seniors for example (apologies for the ageism as active septuagenarians take umbrage). Likewise, I doubt people on lower incomes are interested in your £2,000 handcrafted Persian rugs. You should now have a reasonable idea of your target audience but I’m not quite done yet.
Unique Value Proposition
The third step involves uncovering the people most likely to identify with what you’re offering. Your USP is what sets you apart from the competition and also appeals to your target audience. Camera lovers may be enamoured by the fact your cameras can withstand falls while beer lovers could be overjoyed by the fact you sell craft ales from 44 countries around the world. In simple terms, consider the core values of your company and product and align them with likely consumer groups.
Brand Personality
This could be the joker in the pack as far as finding your target audience is concerned. You could be:
• Friendly
• Caring & Generous
• Fun & Playful
• Sexy
• Assertive
• Adventurous
• Innocent
• Trustworthy & Sagely
Clearly, an Adventurous brand is not targeting inactive middle-aged men while Caring brands probably won’t do well with Wall Street traders!
Conclusion
The above is just a brief overview of finding your ideal target audience and serves as a gentle introduction. I plan to go into much further detail in future pieces so I hope you come back to learn!
what a despicable race of narcissistic monsters we are, i think... every time I'm in this coffee shop. via photopin (license)