06/21/2022

What is a Target Market? Master Guide to Markets

Insights

7 min remaining

Identifying your target audience is the first step to creating your business. 

Your target market should be able to see your assets. Your website should be written in a language and with visuals that appeal to your target market. This will allow you to convert more leads into customers.

Keep reading to learn more about how to identify your target market and expert tips for how to implement this targeting into your business strategy.

Who is your target audience?

Your primary market is your target customer. This will enable you to focus your marketing and branding efforts on your primary customers.

Your target markets could include anyone, including married men over 40 in the US. It is up to you to determine which market your product will reach.

These three aspects are key to a target audience:

  • Demographics: Income, Education, or Employment Status.
  • Geographics – The primary location for your market.
  • Personality traits are what they like and dislike, where they shop, and which brands they enjoy.

To pinpoint your target market, you will need information about your customers and market niche.

Target market vs. target audience

Target market and target audience can be interchangeably used. You may have a target market within your target audience. However, the person you advertise to might not buy the product. 

Let’s look at an example to illustrate: Toys that are for children, such as the, have a clear target audience: Children. Toy manufacturers must target parents (the target audience) to sell toys directly to children.

Generation Alpha refers to children who were born between 2010 and 2025 to millennial parents. Generation Alpha is a group of children born between 2010-2025 to millennial parents. They have different toys and consumer habits than their Baby Boomer parents.

How do you identify your target market

  1. Collect consumer data
  2. Find out more about the advantages of your product
  3. Investigate your competitors
  4. Segment your audience
  5. Create a statement about your target market
  6. Fine-tune your research

1. Collect consumer data

Get to know your customers better so you can target your market. 

Collect information about past and present buyers to identify commonalities. Take a look at your competitors’ markets to determine your market.

These are the data points you should be aware of when using website analytics tools and social networking platforms for email marketing.

  • Age: Are they the same generation or decade? Are they millennials
  • Localization – Where are your customers? Think of the different countries, cities, and regions.
  • Language – What languages do your customers speak? language: It is possible that their language is not the most used in their country.
  • How much money can they spend? 
  • Hobbies, career: What are your customer’s favorite things? What do you do for a living?
  • You can tell where your customers are at various stages in their lives. College students’ Parents? Retirees.

Consider whether your company is a. These characteristics are:

  • The size of your business: Are the businesses that buy from you small, medium, large, or large?
  • Localization – Where are these businesses physically located?
  • Vertical: Which industries do these businesses make up the majority of?
  • Budget – How has this business raised funds Consider how much they would spend on similar products to yours

Keep track of all this information so you can identify trends and organize your findings. This will allow you to target your audience through your inbound marketing efforts.

2. Learn more about the benefits of your product

Next, you must find out why customers choose your product over the competitor. 

You should consider the benefits of your product and not just the features.

It is important to understand your market. Business travelers and frequent travelers would be the ideal customers for the suitcase company.

3. Investigate your competitors

This will allow you to narrow down your focus and look at the market your competitors are targeting. A SWOT analysis can help you understand your customers.

You can do a deep dive into competitor blogs, websites, and social media channels.

Take a look at the most popular social media posts. How similar are they in terms of branding and offering? What is their interest? This will allow you to determine which attributes and benefits are most attractive to your customers.

4. Segment your audience

Now, you have data about your target audience’s interests and characteristics. This will be the foundation for your market.

Market segmentation can be the best way to do this. This process involves dividing customers into groups or segments based on similar characteristics.

You can divide your customers based on:

  • Geography is the geographic location. If you have customers around the world, this could be your locality or another part.
  • Demographics: Characteristics such as age, gender, race, income, marital status, and ethnicity.
  • Personality: Lifestyle, personal values, and personality. 
  • Behavior: This online behavior is used to determine the buyer’s willingness and frequency of usage.

B2B businesses should use the same characteristics but adapt them for their business. Firm demographics are information such as location, customer size, and business structure.

To gain a better understanding of your segments, you can create buyer personas. These characters are your target market. They help you understand their wants and needs.

5. Create a statement about your target market

Now that you have identified the key characteristics and characteristics of your audience, you can put them on paper. Add the following:

  • Demographic information, such as gender and age, about your target market.
  • The geographic location of your target market
  • The key interests of your target market

Combine it all in one sentence. Let’s take this example:

“Our target market is women in their 30s and 40s who live in the United States, love casual, comfortable clothing, and are in their 30s and 40s. “

This will help you maintain consistency in your marketing and brand image. 

6. Fine-tune your research

While thorough research is crucial to defining your target audience, it does not necessarily guarantee that you will get it right the first time. To keep up with technological advances, consumer preferences, and other passing trends, you can track your market research.

To evaluate the success of your business, you will need to test your targeting strategies. This information can be used to improve your product development strategies.

A/B testing is a method to test different versions and audiences of an ad.

About the author

Kobe Digital is a unified team of performance marketing, design, and video production experts. Our mastery of these disciplines is what makes us effective. Our ability to integrate them seamlessly is what makes us unique.