Identifying & targeting the right audience: Finding your audience
Even though marketers can put their best efforts into creating original, unique, and personalized experiences, the buying process is always in the hands of the customer. It can be very frustrating for a marketer to see all marketing efforts go to waste, but it also makes me wonder: did they have a comprehensive understanding of their ideal buyer? If so, they can make more informed decisions about media, messaging, and timing.
Before I move on to talking about my strategy and findings regarding my target audience and target market, I want to briefly go over the difference between the target audience and the target market, as this was something I first struggled with.
A target market is a foundational building block of your entire digital strategy. These are the people who you think might search for, recognize purchase, and use your products, and will often be determined based on the following features:
- Age
- Gender
- Ethnicity
- Income
- Education
- Occupation
- Location
- Marital status
You often see that your target market is rather broad. A target audience, on the other hand, is a specific segment of your target market that you want to see specific marketing messages and advertisements. The target audience is more detailed and smaller than your broader market and is often seen as important for particular marketing activities such as campaigns and promotions.
So, now that we have established the difference between the both, I would love to give more insights as to what I did to get an idea as to who my target market and target audience is.
Identifying a target market
When identifying your target market, you want to try and avoid guesswork at all costs. Although this might seem pretty difficult before selling a product and testing if your claims are correct, based on trends, competitors, and market research, it is possible to get a pretty clear understanding of who you should be marketing to.
Analyze your product
The first thing I did was write down exactly what I offer: I offer personalized soundwave art, which is a form of personalized wall art that is commonly seen as a part of the home decoration niche. Our product solves the problem of decorating and personalizing a home or work environment. People often have difficulties finding home decoration items that fit their personality. SensoriumArte perfectly offers a solution for that issue. I also know how people take their cameras with them on holiday, only to take pictures that will end up never being printed or looked back at again. Having a SensoriumArte art piece hanging on the wall not only solves the issue of having the perfect decoration piece, but it also more easily allows people to go back to that memory that is so important to them, and easily relive it through our augmented reality application.
But which people have these sorts of issues? There are different answers to that. Firstly, I would say that it is a perfect solution for new homeowners or people who recently moved houses and want to make changes to their current home decoration plan. Besides that, people who want to add a more personal element to their walls can also see their problems being solved by purchasing our personalized wall art.
It can also be a problem solver for people who have a certain memory that they want to frame. Not only do we solve that problem, but we have created a unique way for people to reflect on that memory beautifully and interactively. Think about framing a holiday image with a video compilation of your favorite moments behind it. Or an audio file of a concert they attended with an image of them standing in the front row. The possibilities are endless.
Conduct research and study competitors
Doing the research online is a very long and intense process. You will find conflicting articles, outdated information, and perhaps results that aren’t in line with your personal hopes or expectations. However, you must conduct proper research before launching the product.
For SensoriumArte, I went into the process with a few basic assumptions, which, after some quick browsing through Google, I found to be incorrect or not as significant as I imagined. For example, doing research has helped me learn a lot about the purchase behavior of men vs women, the research behind purchases in the home decoration space, and the most important market trends in the home decoration space.
Studying competitors is always a good thing to do. You need to determine whether the niche you plan to operate in is saturated or not, and what kind of businesses are among the most popular companies. I noticed that SensoriumArte has some competitors. But it quickly showed just how possible it was to improve the concept for me to separate myself from the competition. using premium quality, recyclable packaging, a fully intuitive customizer, and an augmented reality application was something that the competitors weren’t able to deliver, especially not to a high standard.
Document the target profile that you have created
I read that a lot of startups made the mistake of not writing down their target market. Even though it is broad, and won’t be the (entire) audience you will reach out to with your marketing efforts, it is very important to write it down. I personally don’t have anyone currently working in the business with me, but when I do, they need to be made aware of who it is that we try and reach out to. As I mentioned in the latest blog regarding Branding, elements like this need to be known throughout the entire business. While it seems that this information is only valuable to the marketing department, customer services must base their tone of voice and writing style on the audience that we’ll most likely be in contact with.
Identifying your target audience
Now that the target market has been written down, it’s time to focus on the target audience. As I mentioned at the start of this article, the target audience is a segment of your target market that you want to become aware of specific marketing messages and advertisements. When you set up your Facebook ads, you’ll notice there is a specific section completely dedicated to determining your target audience.
Break down your customer base
The first thing you do is take the audience you have picked as a part of your target market and try to break down that marketing into different segments based on demographic or behavioral traits. For SensoriumArte, I started out with two segments: The home decorators and the explorers. Home decorators are people who, for various reasons, are looking for a piece of wall decoration for their home. The explorers are those who are looking for a wall decoration because they have something like a memory, event, or experience that they want to frame.
Research industry trends
Unfortunately (or fortunately if it’s your cup of tea), we also have to conduct some research to determine our target audience. This time, we need to focus on trends. Knowing more about upcoming trends that may be interesting for your industry can help you rearrange your brand message and marketing efforts.
Two major trends that I found to have potential to incorporate into my business plans were the increasing popularity and implementation of augmented reality and the need for personalized goods. After doing the research, I became so confident in these trends that I truly feel like incorporating these into the business is something that my customers will appreciate.
Creating buyer personas
A buyer persona is a fictionalized characterization of your best customers based on information about them and how they would use your product and service. The buyer persona you create is the product of all the research you’ve done to come up with the right target market and target audience.
I found myself having difficulties with creating a buyer persona. The age group I found to be interested in personalized wall art showed significant differences. To prevent me from leaving out a large portion of the potential target audience, I decided to create multiple buyer personas. Based on each specific buyer persona, you can then repurpose your marketing efforts, tone of voice, and much more to create the best possible experience for the people interacting with your brand.
My buyer personas vary in terms of marital situation, hobbies, interests, and the platforms they use. I struggled with this because it is scary to me to ‘lock down’ a certain persona, and aim my marketing efforts towards that specific persona. But then again, this entire process is about moving away from my comfort zone, so I might as well follow through on every front.
