Target audience: concept and tips to define yours

You are planning your business, you have already defined the idea, you have sought options to make it profitable and are organizing everything to start the new job full of new expectations, and aiming at profitability .

However, do you know who your target audience is?

For any type of business, it is of utmost importance to understand who your audience is in order to better define the strategies you’ll be using in your promotion.

Therefore, we will tell you in this post:

What is a target audience?

Your target audience are those people for whom your business is intended, because they identifying with your product or service.

To better understand this, let’s consider the following example: Jeniffer Paulson is 18 years old, lives in Seattle and likes rock ‘n’ roll. With this profile, she would be an example of a target audience for a concert hall or a record store, for example.

Let’s look at an example from the other way around.

Pablo has the dream of opening an artisan brewery in the city where he lives, which has only 20 thousand inhabitants. Although Pablo knows all the techniques, has already developed his business plan and has the necessary funding, the entrepreneur still has one fear: will he have public to consume his product?

It is therefore necessary for him to get to know his possible clients.

While conducting a preference survey, Pablo discovers that artisan beer lovers are: men and women in the 20-40 age range, with an X average income. By verifying the demographic data, the entrepreneur realizes that many people are part of this audience and therefore, his business can be lucrative.

In this manner, we understand that the target audience is the portion of the population for whom your message, service or product is intended. The target audience can be defined by: region, social class, purchasing power, age group, gender, behavior and preferences.

A comprehensive business can even be created by targeting everyone, but considering that each individual has their preferences and particularities; it will be much more effective if the company focuses on the needs of a particular group.

With this knowledge, it is possible to direct not only the products or services but also the type of content that will be produced and the ideal channels for the promotion.

So far, we have learned what a target audience is and now we are going to see more specifically other reasons why it is so important to define it.

Why is it important to define your target audience?

In his book “Advertising Planning”, Roberto Corrêa explains that in the early days of the industrial era, when several products appeared, it was believed that consumers were part of a large mass and that it was logical for these people to consume everything that industry would produce.

However, with the emergence of competition and as technology progressed, many products became similar or even equal, reversing this process: the market is what needs to adapt to what the public wants to consume.

Just think about it: is what you like and consume exactly the same as the preferences of everyone you know? If preferences are not equal, an advertisement might make more sense to you than to these other people for example.

The consumer public is increasingly specific, in other words, there’s no use in encompassing everyone generically.

You need to segment in order to meet the needs of each group.

How to define your target audience

The main tip comes from Sebrae, which is a business support service: you, the entrepreneur, must know who your audience is and focus on strategies to disseminate the best message.

How do you follow this tip?

1. Research your market

This is how you understand those who are looking for the possible solutions you offer.

The market research begins with the search to understand the branch in which one intends to operate and also, the competitors.

It is also important to check the survey data about the segment, already conducted by competent agencies, such as the IBGE for example, which can provide a lot of relevant information about the population and consequently, the consumers.

2. Delimit a specific audience within your market

There’s no use in trying to attract everyone, it is necessary to delimit the type of audience you wish to reach.

To do so, you can develop your own survey with questions about people’s preferences. If you have, or intend to invest in an online game channel for example, you can create a questionnaire about it and begin to understand your audience better.

Basic questions always refer to age (age group), city or state of residence, gender and average income.

These items already delimit your audience a lot, since you’ll understand for example, which age group is most interested in the subject you are proposing, and then target your content and ads to that group.

Questionnaires can be applied both online and in person, depending on the niche you wish to cover.

3. Use social media

If technology and easy information are available (and especially, for free), let’s take advantage of them!

If you don’t already have social media for your business, get it at least on the channels used the most by your potential customers.

Remember that creating a page is more effective than a common profile, since business pages on social media, such as Facebook for example, not only gives you more credibility, but also allows you to create ads.

Once you have your business page and/or other social media directed towards your business, find out who are the people who interact the most with you through these means because they can give you interesting insights about your target audience.

4. Use online tools

You can use online tools, such as Google Trends, to view what has been searched the most and who searches certain subjects the most.

This tool provides a lot of data and you can search for what interests you and your business in order to know and delimit your audience.

If you plan to open a gift-oriented business for example, you can use in Google Trends to view the volume of searches for that term in recent months and the demographics of who searched.

The answers provide you with insight into understanding your audience and what they are looking for.

So, shall we put it into practice?

As we have seen, knowing and delimiting your target audience is essential so you can have a general idea of who are the people you want to reach.

The market is becoming increasingly segmented and knowing who the potential customers are is the right path to success since products, services, actions and marketing will be focused on this audience.

In addition to the target audience, it is also important to know the person well, which will further ensure the direction for your company’s growth. To understand this subject better, read our post on how to create a buyer persona for your business.