How To Identify the Target Audience
Identifying and Marketing to Your Target Audience

How To Identify the Target Audience for Your Brand

When you think about your favorite brands, which ones come to mind? The first brands to pop into your brain could be anything from Nabisco to Louis Vuitton. Now consider where you might have most recently seen advertisements for either one. Was a $6,000 handbag in a commercial on Nickelodeon in between SpongeBob reruns, and did a package of Double-Stuffed Oreos make its way into a full-page spread in last month’s issue of Vogue? Go ahead and swap the two and you’ve got perfect matches, but leave either one stranded as a fish out of water and they’ll be headed for disastrous ROI.

Determining the most profitable part of your customer base and allocating outreach budgets accordingly is what makes marketing a multi-billion dollar industry year after year. Determining the right audience isn’t always obvious either. One significant reason why so many marketing campaigns fail for startups and even established brands is they never accurately identify their right target audience from the get-go.

Consumer research is hugely important to businesses across industries. By developing a clearly defined set of customized marketing strategies, you’re sure to appeal to your core demographic.

Ways to Identify Your Target Audience

There’s a variety of different tools and methods for conducting audience analysis, and nothing will impact a brand’s marketing strategy more than its target audience. First, let’s make sure we’re on the same page here as far as terminology.

By “target audience,” marketing experts are referring to absolutely anybody who needs and/or wants the service or product you’re offering. However, “ideal customer” takes this a step further by zoning in on the customers who not only need your services but can readily pay for them.

Here’s a quick example: let’s say you own a ritzy steakhouse. Everyone needs food, but while many hungry potential guests out there would love to carve into a medium-rare filet mignon, something resembling the price point of a well-done hamburger might suit their bank account much better.

It’s therefore your obligation to reach the clientele who are ideal and willing to fork over the extra money for a premium experience. From there, you can then go after customers who not only can afford steak but are able to rent out your banquet room and keep uncorking your menu’s most expensive bottles of wine. Catch the gist here?

One key detail business owners and operators often miss is that your target audience and your ideal customer are two different things. Confusing them can lead to unfavorable outcomes like marketing campaign failures.

Here are a few actionable tips for pinpointing your ideal target audience.

Consumer Demographics

Your consumer demographics are going to correlate key customer details that pertain to who your business reaches. The obvious data to collect regarding a core demographic comes down to age, race, ethnicity, and gender. More private details then include marital status, income, education level completed, and employment status. You’ll want to gather as much about your consumer demographics as possible – as early as possible too.

Consumer Location Data

In years past, consumer location data was a more controversial method of marketing. Now it’s simply inescapable, especially to remain competitive in today’s marketplace. Most consumer browsing is done via their smartphones, and the consumer’s location can be collected. This helps brands determine where they are gaining traction and what geographical areas need greater focus to avoid losing market share.

Consumer Engagement

Consumer engagement tools – also commonly referred to as customer engagement – will focus not only on attracting new customers but also retaining them as well (customer retention is overlooked far too often by businesses). We see more and more examples of tracking consumer engagement all the time and even rewarding brand loyalty in the form of loyalty programs, often connected to internal or third-party app services.RELATED: Check out our complete insider look at Factors That Can Impact Customer Engagement for Your Brand to determine what you might be doing both wrong and right.

How to Market to Your Target Audience

Figuring out how to market to your target audience is the final and most challenging step in a marketer’s journey. Fortunately, businesses utilizing the right marketing professionals like 5 Years Apart can enable marketing tactics and strategies to successfully target any audience on behalf of any brand.

Understand Current Trends/Interests of Your Audience

Take any negative connotations with the word “trend” and discard them immediately. Trends are popular because they take advantage of what is on the cutting-edge of technology. Your competitors are all attempting to understand current trends and captivate audience interest, so why would you ignore all of that business to be gained? 

Many of these ideas for you to implement are regularly carried out by 5 Years Apart’s array of influencer marketing services.

1.    Capitalize on Popular Trends: Some worthwhile recent trends include PR kits, gifting, and engaging events, all areas we specialize in.

2.    Ask for Feedback and Take It Seriously: The top brands aim to never stop improving. Sending out mass surveys and scrutinizing the data and feedback will help identify your target demographic and pluck out the ideal customers you can help the most.

3.    Work on Building Consumer Trust: Brands are loved because they are trusted, plain and simple. There are numerous effective strategies for building consumer trust in your brand, and we’re anxious to get started.

If you’re ready to take the next step for your business and let our marketing pros do the heavy-lifting while you reap the financial benefits, get in touch with us today.

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