Knowing How to Target Your Audience
There are many elements to running a successful business, and having a strong idea of your target audience and how to impact it is a critical part of business success. No matter how impressive your product or service is, without being able to reach the consumer there will not be many people interacting with your business.
Marino Sussich is a knowledgeable international business consultant who understands the importance of good communication with an audience to form a positive relationship. Learn more about how to identify your target audience, which may be the best to target, and how to reach it.
What is a target audience?
An audience could be anything from young mums or elderly Australians to small business owners. Identifying your audience is extremely important, as while trying to reach anyone and everyone with your products or services would be ideal, they will sell best if their purpose is specific and there is an identifiable group of people who would definitely interact with them.
Targeted, personalised marketing will always be more attention-grabbing than a generic shout into the void saying, “buy my product!”. As explained by Marketing Evolution, $37 billion is wasted every year on ads that fail to engage their audience. Understanding how to reach an identified group ultimately saves time and money and leads to greater success.
Audience vs. market
The dictionary definition of a TA involves “a particular group at which a product such as a film or advertisement is aimed”. For a business, the audience is a group of people that have been identified as likely customers, and will be a smaller subset of the larger target market. Both these groups can be identified by traits such as age, gender, location, education or socioeconomic status.
TA can often be used interchangeably with TM, but the audience is generally a more specific subset. While the market involves the wider group of people that will interact with your business, the audience will be ad-specific, depending on who you are specifically attempting to reach at that moment. The market remains unchanged, while the audience can change depending on the campaign.
Finding your audience
Your main audience could either be very large or very niche, depending on what you are selling. If you sell pens, you could have a broad audience as most people use and own pens. This would be a much smaller audience, however, if the product was a certain type of fineline pen. In this case, the audience may be artists.
The best way to determine your audience is to look at the data which shows who is already interacting with your product or service. This can be determined through social media engagement or by conducting surveys. Identifying trends in the industry will also help to find a niche or gap that your product may be able to fill, as well as see where competitors are targeting.
It may be useful to determine who your audience definitely does not include. Customer data should be constantly revised to create accuracy, and using programs such as Google Analytics will assist in developing insights.
Why Generation Z is a good audience to target
As explained by Partick Blacker at Inside Small Business, the Gen Z market holds over $140 billion in spending power. By not employing tactics to attract this audience, you are missing out on this buying potential.
Hugh Grant at Scoop NZ also states that Gen Z will increase their income times 5 by 2031, making them the wealthiest age group with an upcoming influx of disposable income. Many companies will be turning their attention to this group to begin attracting their attention and let them know they should spend their money with their business.
How to get their attention
Grant claims Gen Z’s favourite brands, in order, are Google, Netflix and YouTube, displaying a large technology focus and reliance on social media and the digital sphere. Ensuring your website and any of your platforms are mobile-friendly is one way to guarantee higher performance among this market.
The portrait-shaped video as opposed to landscape is also important for greater social media reach. Moulding to this new way of showcasing your business and products will assist with integrating and attracting this audience. You should also ensure you are linking your website or creating an easy route to purchase your product, contact your business or any other desired actions.
Above all it is important to show some quirks and personality, while maintaining a trustworthy and authoritative tone. This generation is well aware of, and bored of, being sold to, so good marketing needs to subvert standard forms of advertising to avoid being scrolled past or skipped.
Marino Sussich can help
Marino Robert Sussich is an innovative and experienced business consultant that has mastered many fields and, over the years, become a respected name around the world. If you are unsure about any aspect of business management and struggling to employ business techniques, Marino can help you to develop approaches to reach success.
