Search Forum Home   General  Discussions  Defining Your T...  Defining Your Target Audience    12/21/2007 10:10:40 AM jrpittman 29 posts Defining Your Target Audience Small business owners know how important it is to be familiar with customer needs and preferences. But having a general idea of what customers want from your business is not enough to create truly effective advertising and marketing campaigns. Entrepreneurs must take that knowledge to the next level and define target audiences to connect with the customers they want to reach. Target audiences are distinct groups or segments of customers, and clearly defining your business’ target audiences will help you promote the aspects of your business that are most relevant to each group. Most businesses cater to a variety of clients and customers. Some marketing strategies will be relevant to all those segments, but knowing each target audience well will help you deliver your marketing messages in a way customers will respond to best. To start defining your target audiences for marketing purposes, take a look at the customers you have now. Who are your best or most profitable clients? Which group of customers makes up the bulk of your business? What do all these customers have in common? Defining what your customers have in common can help you craft a marketing strategy to draw in more of the same people. For example, a small diner may find that while customers come in a steady stream throughout the day, the biggest rush comes at breakfast, when profit margins are highest. Who are these customers? If the bulk of the morning rush is made up of commuters, the diner may consider offering a special for anyone carrying a train pass. Or if most of the customers are employees of a nearby company, the diner can offer a discount to anyone with an ID badge from that company. On a wider scale, you can segment your customers using demographics and psychographics. Demographic information categorizes people in categories like age, location, occupation, sex and income. Psychographic factors, on the other hand, define people based on their interests, like people who collect comic books or people who breed cats. Questions to ask yourself about your customers can include: What is the age range and median age? Is the group primarily male or female? Are they urban dwellers or suburbanites? Are they highly educated? What are their special interests or hobbies? What is their income range? Knowing your customers can help you combine these factors to define your target audiences – again, your business likely will have more than one – as specifically as possible: Upper-income women with school-age children Teen-agers living within one mile of store Men over 55 who are interested in digital photography Regardless of how you segment your customers, your primary target audiences should be those customers who make up the bulk of your business or are most profitable. Once you define your target audiences, you must learn about their preferences and habits both as they relate to your business and in context of their own lives. For example, if your target audience is teen-agers living within one mile of your store, where else are they hanging out and spending their money? Why do they come to your store and not another one down the street? The only way to develop effective consumer communications is to become knowledgeable about your core target.  Page 1 of 1   General  Discussions  Defining Your T... Flat View Tree View Oldest To Newest Newest To Oldest