Whatever your niche or industry, understanding your target audience is essential. Without knowing who you’re aiming your products, services, and marketing communications at, you’ll never reach your full potential.
Audience targeting will ensure you reach the right people with the right messaging at the right time — and expand your client or customer base.
Here, we’ll tell you what the term target audience really means, explore some practical examples, and share insider tips.
Let’s start with a definition of a target audience.
What is a target audience?
A target audience is a specific group of consumers who are likely to find your products or services valuable.
You can use audience targeting to tailor your marketing campaigns and communications to people based on their demographics, location, preferences, interests or consumer pain points. For instance, if you’re an eco-friendly clothing brand with a modern style, your core target audience could be environmentally-conscious consumers between 16 and 35 years old.
When you know who you’re talking to and why, you can create communications that grab attention, offer value, and spark engagement across channels, from your website to social media.
Why you should know your target audience
According to Shep Hyken, 81% of consumers expect brands to offer them a personalized experience. Knowing your target consumer will personalize your marketing campaigns, content, and communications.
When you understand your target audience, you can offer genuine personal value, building trust and sparking engagement in the process.
Establishing and speaking to your target audience will also:
- Allocate your resources effectively by knowing exactly who you’re targeting and the channels that they are likely to engage with you the most.
- Boost your brand reputation by creating content and offering experiences that grab attention, educate, and offer consistent value.
- Improve your sales and conversions by showcasing your product or service benefits in a meaningful way that inspires your audience to invest in what you have to offer.
- Build customer loyalty by offering consistent value to your customers and prompting repeat purchases. Perfect.
Defining your target audience will help you build better relationships with your consumers. That said, to start a business and enjoy consistent growth, you must prioritize audience targeting. It’s definitely the way to go.
Target audience examples
Now that you’re familiar with a target audience and why it’s essential, we’ll explore some real-world examples.
GoDaddy
GoDaddy’s target audience is broad, as it is a leading supplier of website domains, robust web hosting, and tools to help business owners accelerate their commercial growth.
And while GoDaddy is primarily known for its domains and hosting, GoDaddy also offers:
- An easy-to-use website builder, designed to help SMBs easily create a professional website.
- GoDaddy Airo, an AI-fueled platform that enables business owners to generate a logo, create a coming soon site, and even apply for an LLC.
GoDaddy creates valuable content, toolkits, and resources for small-to-medium-sized business owners SMBs) across a wealth of verticals (almost every niche imaginable) to educate, inspire, and empower growth.
Peloton
As a brand at the forefront of fitness technology, Peloton’s equipment and software are a hit with exercise enthusiasts worldwide.
Peloton’s core target audience consists of fitness enthusiasts looking for a challenging and immersive workout from the comfort of their homes. The brand’s marketing audience also has a healthy budget and values the benefits of innovation and technology.
To speak to its consumers, Peloton offers a subscription service that provides access to workout plans endorsed by some of the world’s leading athletes. The brand’s tone of voice is punchy, slick, and motivational, and its exercise guides also offer genuine practical value to its target audience.
Peloton’s constantly evolving products and software, in addition to its motivational yet authoritative marketing content, position the brand as a leader in its field (which is what its target audience expects).
lululemon
lululemon is a respected technical sports apparel brand that designs garments for running, yoga, and all types of athletic training. The brand’s key target audience is exercise enthusiasts who are stylish, health-conscious, and value style.
Lululemon also targets socially and environmentally conscious consumers. To position itself as a leader in its field and connect with its target audience, the brand clearly showcases its brand values across touchpoints.
In addition to creating apparel that is functional, built to last, and stands out, lululemon creates campaigns based on sustainability, wellbeing, and social connection.
YETI
YETI creates and supplies head-turning equipment and travel gear built for the great outdoors. The brand started out by selling high-quality coolers and now has an extensive range to suit the needs of every discerning outdoor adventurer.
The brand’s primary target audience are those who embrace an active lifestyle and like to spend a consistent amount of time outdoors. YETI’s target consumers are people who like camping, walkers, fishing enthusiasts, and climbers.
In addition to its products’ unique modern aesthetics, YETI uses inspirational brand storytelling techniques to inspire its audience, bring them closer to the brand, and create a sense of loyalty.
Types of target audience
We’ve looked at a mix of real-world target audience examples. Now, we’re going to touch on the five main types, starting with demographic.
Demographic
Demographic audience targeting is based on arranging your consumers based on factors like location, age, gender identity, income or relationship status. You can use demographic consumer data to create this type of audience segment and reach out to consumers with deals, recommendations, and content that suits their exact needs.
For instance, if you’re an app provider, you might reach out to tech-savvy college students with a digital tool that helps them optimize their daily schedule with tips and reminders.
Psychographic
This type of target market audience is based on values, interests, and beliefs. Creating psychographic target audiences is effective as taps into your consumers core motivations while establishing a strong emotional connection.
For instance, you could target eco-conscious digital natives with a brand-new sustainable clothing range and loyalty app that allows them to participate in your brand’s environmental initiatives.
Subculture
Subcultural target audiences are based on groups of consumers who share a strong common passion or experience. Here you can create target audiences based on preferred musical genres, pop culture interests or shared passions. Think “Swifties” (those who love Taylor Swift), Trekkies (hardcore Star Trek fans) or extreme sports fanatics. Creating subculture audiences will empower you to tap into your audience’s biggest passions and spark instant engagement with your communications or content.
Behavioral
Behavioral audience targeting focuses on how people interact both online and offline. Here, you can look at consumers’ buying and browsing behaviors as well as engagement patterns to create specific target audiences.
For example, you could target an audience of first-time buyers with personalized product recommendations and a discount code to inspire loyalty and prompt a repeat purchase.
Interest
Interest-based audience targeting is aptly named, allowing you to connect with consumers based on their interests. Here, you can create campaigns, content, or communications based on your audience’s specific hobbies and preferred activities.
For instance, if you’re an outdoor fitness apparel brand, you could reach out to swimmers with relevant product recommendations and value-driven content like guides on how to enhance your outdoor swimming experience.
Consider your core commercial goals, analyze your available data, and lean into a target audience that will empower you to create impactful connections with potential customers.
How to find your target audience
If you have a small business idea, you should think about your target audience. Let’s review some of the steps needed to find yours.
Think about the problem you’re solving
First of all, it’s important to consider the exact problem you’re trying to help your audience solve. You can use consumer data, market research insights, and competitor research to uncover your target consumers’ main pain points.
Discovering a common problem will give your marketing content and communications direction while empowering you to reach out to your target consumers with valuable advice, guidance, and solutions.
Use market research
We touched on market research in our last point — now we’re going to dig a little deeper. Conducting market research will help you understand the types of consumers who are looking for products or services in your niche.
Exploring the wider market will also help you understand what your target consumers want and need. Carrying out market research is a core part of any business plan you have to write — and doing so will bring you closer to your target audience.
You can conduct market research by analyzing your existing behavioral data and creating surveys that give you a greater insight into who your audience is and what they value most.
Look at competitors
Peeking at your competitors will give you a gauge of who they’re talking to and how they’re marketing their brand or products.
Your competitors’ audience is essentially your audience. By examining social media conversions, looking at client or customer testimonials, and signing up for competitor newsletters, you can understand your target customers on a deeper level. You can also gather inspiration or ideas for your own marketing communications and content.
It’s worth analyzing your competitors regularly to identify any emerging consumer shifts or trends within your industry and keep up with the changes.
Create personas
Creating personas is an effective way to define your target customer and create audience segments for specific products or services.
A persona is a profile that defines an ideal target customer. By giving your target customer a name, you’ll humanize your persona before adding details, such as:
- A persona summary that gives an insight into your target persona
- ️Income
- ️Age
- Occupation
- Location
- Family status
- Pain points
- Goals
- Favorite marketing channels
You can create multiple personas for your business. Doing so will allow you to engage with different pockets (or segments) of your target audience with messaging, content, and offers that will meet their needs head-on.
Having personas at your disposal will also allow you to tweak your tone of voice (TOV) and speak to your target consumers on a deeply personal level.
Use analytics tools
Tools like Google Analytics will give you deep-dive access to data about the consumers who visit your website.
You can use these insights (in addition to consumer data from other reliable platforms or sources) to understand how people are coming from and how they engage with your brand.
Armed with this wealth of information, you can refine your personas, get under the skin of your customers, and establish your key target audience (or audiences). Regularly analyzing your data will also empower you to tweak and evolve your efforts to meet the ever-evolving needs of your customers.
The take-home here? Data is your friend — use it wisely.
Target audience vs target market
To ensure you reach out to the right consumers with the right messaging, you should know the difference between a target audience and a target market. Let’s clarify.
Your target market is the wider industry and consumers you can potentially reach with your marketing activities. Your target audience is the specific set of consumers you want to reach within your target market.
For instance, if your target market is small business owners, your key target audiences may be:
- Creative solopreneurs looking to land more long-term clients
- Founders of emerging technology startups searching for investment opportunities
- Small business owners looking for clients in a specific location or region through marketing and advertising
Knowing your target market will allow you to establish your target audience and craft marketing communications that offer genuine value, growing your business in the process.
How to reach your target audience
Once you’ve discovered your target audience (or audiences), you’ll want to get there and make a connection.
There are some approaches to consider to reach your target audience effectively and accelerate your commercial growth.
Get social
Use your brand’s most active social media channels to create content that will grab your target consumers’ attention and make them want to connect or converse with you.
Sharing attention-grabbing visuals, targeted offers, practical advice, and timely brand updates will pique your audience’s interest and expand your reach. Posting relevant content consistently will also build a rapport, generate trust, and expand your customer or client base.
Email outreach
64% of small businesses state that email marketing is an effective and convenient way to reach customers. Why? Well because it’s a chance to deliver valuable content, insider insights, and tailored offers direct to your target consumers’s inbox.
Once you’ve established your target demographic, you can connect with them through well-crafted email marketing content based on their needs or interests.
You can entice your target customers to sign up to your email newsletter by promoting it via social media or offering an incentive (deal, discount, access to exclusive content, etc.). Then, once they’ve signed up, you can hit them with content that builds trust, sparks engagement, and results in sales.
Paid advertising
Well-executed paid advertising campaigns typically offer a healthy return on investment (ROI). Creating advertising content for your target audience on social media platforms as well as Google Ads will present relevant services or products to prospects when they’re most likely to engage.
If you know who you’re talking to, you’ll develop ad messaging that offers value and prompts your target consumers to find out what you have to offer.
The bottom line here? Strong storytelling and communication skills will empower you to create relevant, relatable content that resonates with your target audience across channels.
Tap into your target audience and accelerate your growth
As a small business owner, knowing your target audience inside-out will guide your decisions, strategies, and marketing communications.
Take the time to conduct research, dive into your data, and examine your competitors. Know which type of target audience will best suit your business and develop marketing initiatives that create a deep personal connection.
Work your way back through this guide, take the necessary steps, and you will accelerate your commercial growth.
