Tips to Help Define Your Business Target Audience

After years of marketing experience, there is one thing I can say with complete certainty – if you don’t know who your audience is, you will never reach them. Creating “blind” campaigns that aren’t focused on what your audience wants or needs will not lead to success.

Do you know what group of people your service or produce appeals to? Do you know what your “perfect” customer looks like? If you are ready to define your target market, you must first answer a few simple but important questions.

For example:

  • What problem or pain point does your product or service solve?
  • What does your dream customer look like?
  • Who is your competition targeting?
  • What makes your product unique?

Even though you can take days to complete this outline, you shouldn’t. Consider your target market as a pathway to a more effective marketing campaign. With the answers to these questions, you gain an overview of who your customer is and who you should target. With this information, you can go to the next step, which is when you begin segmenting and focusing on the right audience.

Determining Who Your Ideal Client Is

When it comes to PPC, you can set your targeting to focus on any of the following interests or demographics, which will help you target the right audience:

Age

Does your product appeal to boomers or millennials? Don’t be too specific with this targeting option; just the decade is enough.

Gender

Do you have a product or service that appeals to one specific gender?

Location

Is your customer base found in a specific location only? An example of this is if you have a local business.

Education Level

Do you have a business, product, or service in the education space? Do you have a service or product with specific education status?

Language

This one is more interesting. Some advertisers exclude specific languages because of the service team. If you do this, you will be missing out on up to 75% of the world because of people who speak different languages.

Additional Considerations for eCommerce Businesses

If you own an eCommerce business, it will make sense to take a deeper dive into the person you are targeting. This means looking at psychographics, which are characteristics that pertain to the personal details of the person in question.

Some things to consider include interests, life events that your product may appeal to, or the target audience’s household income.

With this information, you should know who your business’s target market is. Not it is time to use the information to discover more about the users who are buying the services or products and conduct research to make sure your campaigns are targeting the right people. With this information, you can improve your lead generation efforts.

If you need help getting started with this, contact the professionals. They can help you define your target audience, regardless of the size or industry your business operates in.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.