Who Is Your Target Customer? A Guide to Understanding Your Target Audience

Target customer means the type of person that a company is looking for to sell its products or services. People often get confused between Target market and potential Target customer. Target market is a broad group of potential customers defined by ranges. For Example, for your business, a target market might be ages 20 to 40 years or person drawing income more than Rs.5 lacs. This is the group most likely to avail your product or services. This target market needs to be broken down to a specific target customer should you decided to customize for maximum benefits.

The Basics:

Think about who your target customer is before starting your business. It is important to create a detailed profile of the person and his lifestyle. In this way, your target customer will be a prime customer for your products and services. Selecting a product or service for the target customer will increase the probability of a sale for you. Not every customer will be a potential customer for you, in fact, not every customer will find your product valuable enough to buy.

Why it's important

Target market helps in identifying which of your product is exactly going to appeal to a particular age group. In case of menswear, age group 20-40 years is a sensible target audience. Target customer can be an individual or an adult group which would be a brand’s most likely, to avail the product or services they want. It's the people who are the users of the product or service and who would be brand advocates. Types of Target Customers The age groups mentioned above are the four target customer groups in most businesses. Most businesses face major challenges when trying to engage with target customers. And in order to gain maximum benefits from target customers, it is necessary to know the four types of targets.

Target customer vs. target market

Target customer is a much-hyped concept. Many brands name their products as Target customer and then conveniently forget about it as it doesn't work for them. They are the people that your products will be aimed towards. However, you should always keep in mind that even for the target customers you should still cater to the broader range and keep your business alive. We will understand how to identify your target customer and improve your marketing and sales strategy through this quick guide.

1. What is the difference between target customer and target market?

Target customer is a broad group of people, businesses, or products being sold by a company. This group is defined by ranges.

The target customer

Target customers are unique groups of people that fit your business to a very precise form. They can be divided into 6 categories of people.

1. Gender

2. Age

3. Location

4. Earning capacity

5. Purpose of life

6. Education level

If you are operating a retail shop then gender is the main consideration. If you are running a BPO or an internet business then the age is also essential. For sales of services where the target customer has to be served the right way. The income is also key and therefore education level plays a key role.

Target customers should be;

a) Right for your business

b) Accessible in terms of age

c) Accessible in terms of income level

d) In terms of gender

e) Accessible in terms of location

How to Design a Target List? How to identify the target customer?

The first question you need to answer is how you will make sure that your company sells to your target customer. The best way is to study your target customers profiles and observe their activities. You should decide who your customer is by observing the following: Company/Professionals looking for marketing help. Plant operators looking for business insights or new opportunities Marketing companies who are running out of ideas to promote their products, consultants looking for new clients

Acquiring clients and referral marketing should be a priority for your business. This is the main target market of your company. You should find out the needs and interests of the clients to customize marketing material and promotional campaigns to boost your sales.

Targeting of customers can make or break for any organization, and with ever increasing advertising and digital marketing spends, and it is essential to hit the bulls eye with precision to get better ROIs

I will share with you 5 tactics to identify your target customer:

1. Start with your current customers

2. Collect demographic data of your target customers

3. Look for trends

4. Go Niche

5. Create market positioning map and don’t over complicate the same.

Start with your current customers

Look at the characteristics of your best existing customers and organize that list into at least one profile based on shared characteristics.  Current or previous customers can also provide useful data and insights.  Research your database of previous customers (this can even be offline customers if you are just starting out with a website) and try to spot trends.

This can be a good starting point with minimum cost.

Collect demographic data of your target customers

To better understand the customer, I would suggest marketers up draw up their demographic portrait.   It is important to make the portrait as detailed as possible, Collect data on user behavior, location, and demographics.  For example, once you have identified potential customer say 45 year man with particular income range, then find out other details such as his hobby, decision making process, home, family etc.  This portrait is very much useful for niche marketing.

Look for trends

You want first to identify what is the purpose of your product or service. Really take some time on researching and finding the benefits that your product or service provides. Then you will identify who exactly is buying or in need of your particular services. Then you can go to popular online forums to see who exactly is asking questions or interested in that industry/niche.

This will help you pinpoint what age group, gender, and industry that your target audience might be in. Once you have narrowed down who this audience might be, you will be in a better position to market specifically for this group of people. Google analytics, facebook, Youtube, Amazon are also useful to find out the trends.

Go Niche   Know your niche and own it

Join every forum, Facebook group, LinkedIn that you can. Immerse yourself in the community, understand your customer’s problems, see the world through their lens.  Join trade associations, attend events, join groups and forums where your target audience hang out. Listen to podcasts, Q&As, etc. Lurk and listen to their stories, problems, etc. Interact if you have something of value to offer for free. DON’T sell or promote anything when you’re in this research phase. Once you’ve gathered enough data about your target audience’s pain points, you can then build your website, product or services to answer those questions and provide solutions to their problems.

Create market positioning map and don’t over complicate

A good way to identify a target market for your website is to use a market analysis method known as market mapping. This is a simple diagram that allows you to identify gaps in the market or industry your product/service/website operates in.

You can prepare a mindmap of the details you have about target customers identified by you and use the same parameters for your customers and find out the gap, this gap is the opportunity for you.

Don’t over complicate the same, you can use simple pen and note book to store information you have gathered and no need for fancy analytical tools.

Once you have this knowledge, you can adjust your digital marketing campaigns accordingly, or even branch out and target a new market and new demographics along the way, as your audience is not always the one you might expect.

Conclusion

The objective of this guide is to assist you in identifying your target market and find the best ways of increasing your sales by targeting or following the niche route to achieve your goal.