A well-defined and researched Target Market and Target Audience, and understanding the importance thereof is crucial for any business to grow in the cluttered industries of today’s age. Defining a target market allows any business to compete in the marketplace to be able to reach their potential paying clients, just as much as any other business.

What is a Target Market?

A target market is a group of people, broken into specific segments in order to pinpoint the audience that has the same characteristics as your ideal client based on your tested research and buyer personas created from it.

What is a Target Audience?

A target audience is the smaller segmented groups within the target market, that assists in choosing and creating the tailored market messages the business wants to get in front of the specific segments of groups. This is particularly helpful when you want to show various messaging to various segments.

What is the function of a Target Market or Audience?

A target market is an important aspect for the development of the product or services, as well as the creation of the marketing plan, choosing the marketing strategies and messages that best appeals to the ultimate paying customer in the target market.

It informs the decision-making stages as the business designs their products, branding, packaging, messages etc. that best appeals to the audience in order to drive the best sales in the long run. Let’s face it, everybody that has a business has an ultimate goal of making money…and having a well-researched and defined target market is the way to optimize profits.

How to Segment a Target Market or Audience.

There are various ways to segment a target market or audience, and it ultimately depends on what products or services are being sold and what problem it solves for the market. common segmentations to base a target market on will be listed below:

Demographic Segmentation

Demographics is one of the most important segmentations to a target market and it is based on measurable statistics on not only who needs your product or service but also who is most likely to buy it.

Demographics include:

• Age
• Location
• Gender
• Income level
• Education level
• Marital or family status
• Occupation
• Ethnic background/Race

Psychographic Segmentation

Psychographic segmentation is based on personal characteristics and divides the market into socioeconomic and lifestyle preferences. It can be derived from the choices the audience make during the buyer’s cycle as they interact with the business on hand.

Psychographics include:

• Personality
• Values
• Attitudes
• Interests and Hobbies
• Behaviour
• And Lifestyle

It is important to use the psychographics of your target market to learn how your product or services will fit into their day-to-day lives.

Geographical Segmentation

Geographical Segmentation is segmentation based on where your target market is located. This can assist in deciding when and where you want to send your targeted messaging to the market for the best ROI.

Geographics Include:

• Neighbourhoods
• Area or Postal Codes
• Cities
• Provinces or States
• Countries
• Continents
• Climates – should this be an important aspect of your business

Geographical segmentation works particularly well when there is a notion that groups of particular locations may have specific needs for your product or services.

Behavioural Segmentation

This type of segmentation literally refers to how your target market behaves based on what they expect from your product or services and how it impacts their behaviour directly.

Behaviour includes:

• The benefits that they are looking for
• The stage they are in when looking at the buyer’s cycle
• Their loyalty to the business and whether or not return customers are available for your business
• When and how often your customers need, use, and buy your product or services.

A straightforward example of behavioural segmentation would be a Christmas shop that sells Christmas decorations only – their buyers will most likely only buy from them in the last quarter of the year, around Christmas time…

Where to start when segmenting your Target Market or Audience.

Now that you’ve learnt the importance of target markets and audiences as well as the points you need to keep in mind when segmenting the target market, you can read further to find some tips on how to know where to start in order to define your target market.

1. Look at your current customer base – when evaluating your current customer base, you will find specifics such as similar demographics, similar psychographics, similar geographics, especially when geography is important to your business, similar behaviour traits as well as similar characteristics. When you collected the above-mentioned data, you have a good place to start.
2. Do some research on your competitors – look at who they are targeting and how they communicate with them. You can also use this to see if you can maybe find a niche that they are overlooking, that will benefit from what you have on offer.
3. Analyse your products or services – by doing this you can pay attention to the benefits and features that your products and services offer and use this info to find audiences that have a need for it or even use it to market to people that have a problem that your product or service can solve, but isn’t aware of the relief you can offer…

Evaluate your decisions for your Target Market or Audience

Once you defined your target market, it is important that you evaluate your decisions by asking various questions to yourself, such as,

• What problem do you solve or need so your product or service meets?
• Are there enough people who fit my criteria?
• Will my target really benefit from my product or service?
• Will they see a need for it?
• Do I understand my target audience enough to make an informed decision for marketing?
• Is my product or service affordable to my desired audience?
• Is my product easily accessible and purchasable to my audience?

Conclusion on Target Markets

Dividing and narrowing down the segments of your target market is the name of the game for succeeding businesses. A business can have more than one target market, and it may expand as the business grows.

The main purpose of a target market is to allow you to customise your marketing strategies and messages to appeal the best to the desired paying customers.

Defining your target market is the most difficult part of developing a highly profitable marketing plan, however, once this step is finalised, the rest of the marketing plan will be so much easier.

It is important to also understand that you cannot market to everyone, as this is dangerous and expensive gambling that you can get yourself into.

Most importantly, remember that people want to buy solutions, in the most convenient way possible. More often than not, they do not care about reasons for selling the products or services…