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LogoutTarget audiences can be segmented further into categories that reference, intent, location, interests, and more. Let’s take a look at examples of ways that you can break up your target audience:
Interest
Separate groups out based on their various interests, including hobbies and entertainment preferences. This can help you make data-driven, highly personalized messaging that allows you to connect with your audience in meaningful ways that can help drive brand loyalty.
Purchase Intention
Define groups of people who are looking for a specific product, such as a new entertainment system or car. This will help you understand your audience’s pain points so you can create tailored messaging that addresses their needs.
Subcultures
Subcultures refer to groups of people who share a common experience, such as music genres or entertainment fandoms. By understanding some of your target audience’s motivations, you can better understand who you’re trying to connect with.
The Difference Between Target Audience and Target Market
A target market is the set of consumers that a company plans to sell to or reach with marketing activities. A target audience is the group or segment within that target market that is being served advertisements. This makes the target audience a more specific subset of a target market.
To go back to the running shoe example, your target market is marathon runners, but say you are having a deal at your Boston location. The target audience for an ad promoting the sale would be prospective runners in the Boston Marathon, not all marathon runners.
Target audience can often be used interchangeably with target market, as it is a specific subset of the largest market group. However, target market does not always mean target audience.
Understanding the Roles of Your Target Audience
An important step in understanding your target audience is to go beyond learning their demographic information, and understand what role they play in the path to purchase. These roles can often be divided into the following categories:
The Decision Maker: This is the person who ultimately makes the purchase decision. In some cases, the decision-maker is the same as the supporter, but in other cases they are different. When different, you must acknowledge this and gear ads to the decision- maker. Take, for example, the transformation of the Old Spice brand in 2010. The brand wanted to revamp their product to appeal to a younger generation. While researching, the team discovered that while men may ultimately wear their product, women were making the purchases, leading their creative team to focus on this target audience.
The Supporter: The supporter may not have the power to make the decision, but they will have a heavy influence on whether or not an item gets bought. For example, a child may not directly make a purchase, but if they want something for Christmas, they influence that decision. This is why it is important to develop messaging that speaks to consumers in both of these roles.