Understanding who your target audience opens up endless possibilities. The success of the business will depend on how well you know these people. After all, the time of mass marketing is behind. Personalized companies survive today. According to the study, 49% of consumers made impulsive purchases, thanks to an individual approach to service. But how can a differentiation strategy be achieved without the knowledge of its customers? No way. Further details on how to find your audience.
How does understanding your target audience begin?
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Analyze your product
To determine the audience you need to understand your business perfectly. What tasks does the product solve, in what price segment is it located, what problems does it solve. Feel it, think why you are different from others and why you are better. This will help to form the initial picture and develop USP.
When you find a fundamental difference, you can clearly identify the target audience and develop an effective strategy. 79% of US consumers said they could switch to another brand if the price was more favorable, while 52% would do if the quality of the goods was better. Understanding the target audience allows you to understand the motives and take this into account in promoting.
Protip: Make sure you don’t skip your own social media. For instance you can find very useful data about your own customers from your Instagram’s business account analytics.
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Do a competitor study
A large number of businesses forget that the market is a place where there are other players. Each of them conducts its activities and affects what is happening around. This creates game conditions that cannot be ignored. Analyze the activities of competitors, find their strengths and weaknesses, who their consumers are.
One of the most obvious ways to conduct such an analysis is to use benchmarking, where the company determines the effectiveness criteria and compares them. Evaluation is carried out on a scale, so it is very easy to find your advantages and weak areas.
. In order to study competitors’ clients, use social networks and view subscriber profiles. Pay attention to who these people are, how old they are, what they are interested in, marital status, sphere of activity. Try to find out as much as possible. It will be very useful.
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Segment your audience
Customer segmentation is the best way to meet their needs in a quality manner. Divide the audience into several groups, depending on the problems they seek to solve. This will allow a precise approach to the issue and maximally solve it. The same product may have different users. We give an example of segmentation. Let’s say your business is dry cleaning. Your target audience may be end-users, as well as other businesses. In the first case, most likely customers will be interested in cleaning clothes that require special care, in the second – these may be hotels that give away linen, towels, etc. And so it works with any business or service. Thus, we have at least 2 consumer groups who need different approaches, pricing systems. You cannot broadcast a similar message to different segments, otherwise it will not be effective. The selection criteria can be a huge number. This is especially well demonstrated by creating a customer avatar.
https://unsplash.com/photos/cY_TCKr5bek
How to create a consumer avatar
A consumer avatar is a clear idea of the people who buy from you. This is an opportunity to get to know each other and understand the motives. The technique helps to imagine who your ideal client is. Further more about this.
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Identify important criteria
Creating an avatar involves considering all the details. This is not just an analysis of demographic indicators. The approach is much deeper and more relevant in today’s market. Today it’s not enough just to know where the target audience, marital status and number of children come from. To understand the motive and create effective strategies, you need an avatar. Among the possible criteria:
- Position. Describe in detail what the avatar does, what decisions it makes and what zone of influence it has. Make it as detailed as possible.
- Demography. Where does your character come from, what kind of education did you receive, his age, gender, marital status, income level. All this is included in this criterion.
- Psychography. Try to think like a consumer. Think about his hobbies, habits, what he is interested in and what values he shares.
- Problems. What he wants to achieve, what excites him and keeps him awake at night. Penetrate into his consciousness and find pain points.
- Objections at the time of purchase. What prevents him from making a purchase? Why hesitates and whether he makes a decision on the acquisition.
- Information sources. What books and newspapers he reads, which sites he prefers.
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Confirm hypothesis
It is possible you created the best consumer avatar, but it’s better to make sure that you are right. To do this, check the data. You can do a survey, focus group and chat with the sales department. If you do not have customers yet, analyze the audience of competitors in social networks, conduct a survey, look for information in industry publications or use the tools for analyzing competitors in social networks. Confirmation of the hypothesis is an important stage that cannot be ignored, because on the basis of this information you will build a strategy.
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Make a study
Transfer all avatars to the table format, so you can visualize all the avatars and develop activities for interacting with each. To do this, you can create your own version or use the templates. There are a lot of them on the Internet, select the one that suits you and use it.
https://www.digitalmarketer.com/blog/customer-avatar-worksheet/
Conclusion
Understanding the target audience is the only way to gain acceptance among consumers. Business development to outstanding results is impossible without it. Not so long ago, exclusively demographic characteristics were used to work with the audience, but today this approach can cost a lot for companies. Therefore, marketers are increasingly developing consumer avatars. This gives a clearer picture and helps ensure differentiation in the process of developing strategies. Which provides better results and lower marketing costs.
Image credit: Serj Marco