Cluster Sampling 21

A look into the ways of Identifying and Analysing Target Audience

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Table of Contents

What is a target market?

It is a group of people who are your potential buyers. A company will sell or promote their products to such customers. This is a group of customers that you think will indulge in your product and hence, it is necessary for you to understand them. 

These target groups can be further divided into different sub-groups depending on the demographics like age, locality, lifestyle, gender, education, etc. when the groups are divided into such sub-groups, it becomes easy for you to market your business in a way that appeals to them. 

That being said, do not forget that your target customers are also people and they have their personal lives which highly influences their perspective of the market. So it is always a good idea to get to know your customers as individuals. What do they do daily? What interests them? What kind of lifestyle do they live? And such questions will take you closer to your target market. 

Hence, to summarize the concept of the target market, we can say “A target market is a group of people who are more likely to want or need in your product.”

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Target market examples

Example 1: Target market for a medical store. 

24/7 is a local chemist shop which is located right beside a famous hospital. It provides all sorts of medicines and has a good stock too. Its target market are the patients that are engaged in the hospital right beside it. People who will come for any treatment in the hospital are more likely to buy the prescribed drugs 24/7. 

For a plus point, the owner of 24/7 also has a good relationship with the doctors in the hospitals, the result of which 24/7 is given specific orders for special drugs from the doctors which are not easily found anywhere else. 

Example 2: Target market for an educational book shop. 

Jagdish book depot is a book shop that majorly owns educational books from all the fields and streams of education. It has a scheme of second-hand books, so people can buy books and once they are done using it, they can return it to Jagdish book depot and they get 40% of the amount back. 

Its target audience is the students who are learning any educational courses.

Example 3: Target market for a snack shop.

Snackin’ is a snacks shop right in front of a school. As it is affordable and close to the school, students tend to buy the lunch or evening snacks from Snackin’. Hence its target market is majorly the students who come and go from the school and the local people from that locality who sometimes stop for snacks.

What is the target audience?

The target market and target audience are NOT the same. A target market is the group of people that the brand wants to sell its product (people that are likely to buy), whereas a target audience is much narrower than that. It is a group of people that the brand expects to buy its products.

Let’s clear the fuss with an example: 

In our first example of a medical store, the target market would be the people in the locality who are likely to come 24/7 in search of a rare medicine. But a target audience would be the patients from the hospital beside it. As the owner expects that the patients from the hospital will buy from them, he will try to advertise his brand to the people in the target market to buy from his shop.

Why is the Target market analysis so Important?

A target market analysis is a practice that will help you determine where your products will make a good impression and where they can attract more customers. Once you know that, it will be easy for the business to plan the marketing strategies accordingly to aim at certain customers and market areas. 

Benefits of target market analysis include:

  • It provides a huge perspective of the business and defined opportunities in the market.
  • It helps identify the quality of the markets and which one will be the best to pitch into. 
  • Framing a buyer persona is a target market analysis technique to build an ideal customer which helps the businesses in a detailed understanding of the target customers.
  • A good target market analysis will highlight the gaps in the market that are untouched, allowing the business to fill that gap with their products and services. 
  • Market testing is also an important part of target market analysis, especially for new products or services. 
  • Take feedback from your potential customers regarding your products to enhance your product quality and customer satisfaction.
  • Such analysis will motivate you to find new markets for your products and new customer base. 
  • Using the data gathered from the analysis, you can develop business strategies, and upgrade the existing ones according to the new information. 

What to include in a target market analysis?

The company will include various things in their target market analysis which will majorly depend on what the company is trying to achieve as a result. But let’s discuss some common things that you can use in your target market analysis, irrespective of your end goal:

  1. Industry description and outlook – get to know your industry. Study what are the latest trend, areas to progress in, growth, size and various other factors. Understand the industry norms and working closely. These things will influence your data source on a large scale. 
  2. Target market – it is the part of your market that you are trying to attract through your products and services. It can be sub-divided into groups depending on the demographics like age, gender, education, sector of work, lifestyle, etc. and each of them will need different marketing strategies for advertising your product. 
  3. Market testing and analysis – conduct a thorough market testing. You can run various surveys and product testing to determine what the market thinks about your product and how will it perform after its launch in the same market. After you have your testing results, include that in your market analysis document. 
  4. Lead time – it is the time it takes for your product to reach the customer when they order, from the time it was deployed in the market. Lead time is not the same for individual orders and bulk orders. 
  5. Competitive analysis – get to know your competitors. Understand their practices and what their strategy is helping them keep the market engaged in them. 

How to identify your target audience?

It needs you to pay attention to the data collected from your customers to understand what your target audience is. 

Here are some ways through which you can outline your target audience:

  • Analyze your customer base and conduct client interviews to get to know your target audience. It is one of the best ways for the goal. As it is always said, the answer lies in the question. Understand the groups that are already buying your products. What do they do? Where do they live? And what is making them buy your product and if applicable, stick to it? 
  • Market research and evaluate the industry for new trends and opportunities. Doing so will lead to new ideas and insights for your products. Market analysis can provide you with findings and market gaps that no one has touched before. You can proceed to develop your future products to fill those gaps and come up with all new trends. 
  • Get to know your competitors and generally the ones doing well in the market. Understand what they are doing differently and how they plan their strategies against the market changes. If you study closely and look for answers, it shouldn’t hard to figure out where you are lacking and why your competitors are doing better than you. 
  • Persona creation is one of the most effective ways of knowing your target audience. Before getting to know a large group of people, which by the way is not going to be easy to do in just one go, rather build user personas for your product. Personas are nothing but an artificial buyer profile that the company itself develops to review its products and services. You will understand the plus and minus points in your products for which the buyer will either buy to pass your product. 
  • Defining who your target audience ISN’T is equally important. Sometimes you want a particular group of people to be ignored or not attend to. Understand if your target audience is all the children or just the children between the age groups 5-10.
  • Keep on revising the data that you have collected. Go through the customer reviews and regularly keep track of your product upgrades to stand a foot on the latest trends and new updates in the market. 

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7 Steps to a Successful Target Group Analysis

It is important for any business to gains its customers’ satisfaction. That is the goal of any company. But for this to happen it is important to know the groups that you are developing your product for. You should know what your customers are interested in buying and what solutions they are looking for. Once you know this, you are several steps closer to them. As a result of which you build your products in a way that appeals to its users. 

Target group analysis is a crucial step concerning customer satisfaction. So, we are here with a step-by-step guide on how to do a successful target group analysis in 7 simple steps:

  • The right target group

You want to address your product to the people in the market. But who are these people and how do you know them? Well, this group of people are called the target audience or target group. As the name suggests, your products and services will be targeted at this set of people. As there are several demographics to the bifurcation of these target groups, you can define your own set of a target groups to advertise your products to. For example “Men within the age of 40-60 with a minimum income of 7LPA”

Apart from these, there are other demographics like marital status, lifestyle, education, occupation, etc. that will help define your target audience in more detail. After all, the more detailed the target audience is, the more effective your marketing will be. 

  • Purchase behaviour of the target group

Given all the demographics of the target group, the marketing strategy mainly depends on the lifestyle and the behaviour of the target group. What do they buy? Why do they choose to buy that? What are their needs? Answers to these questions will define the nature of your target audience. Some of the common questions you can ask about your target group are:

  • How is their life situation?
  • What are their needs?
  • What influences their purchase decisions?
  • How often do they buy the product?
  • Are they willing to buy your product given the competitors?
  • How do they choose their product?
  • Connect with the customer

To get the answers to all of the above questions, you need to KNOW your target group. But how do you do that? Obviously by interacting with them. Now, this doesn’t mean go and talk to every one of them. But there is various way of getting their information. A common method is by using primary data. There are various instruments of data collection like conducting surveys, taking interviews, polls, questionnaires, etc. that will get the customer base to respond to them. This is the easiest way to know your target group. 

Apart from this, you can make use of secondary data. This means, make use of the information that is already available to you. Study the customer base of similar products. Learn the information of the customers that you already have. 

  • Conduct online surveys

As discussed earlier, surveys are the easiest and effective way to connect to your target group. Make an effective questionnaire for the survey which will have its focus mainly on the questions to which you want the answers to.

Along with the market surveys, it is important to conduct customer satisfaction surveys as well. It is a good practice to keep track of how your customer is feeling about your products and services. 

Include questions like:

  • On a scale of 1-10, how much will you rate our product?
  • Will you recommend our product to your friends?
  • What changes would like us to bring in the product?
  • Specify your top 3 preferred products.
  • Make questionnaires 

There are various survey tools to conduct your online surveys with ease and effectiveness. The key to making the best out of those surveys is to frame proper questions. Decide if your survey is going to be a qualitative one or a quantitative one. In the case of qualitative, ask the direct questions to which there is a specific answer. 

Keep in mind the following tips while framing your survey questions:

  • Ask clear, firm and limited questions. 
  • The customers should not be confused while answering the questions, or else it is likely that they will leave the survey mid-way. 
  • Choose a large and sufficient sample size to conduct your survey. 
  • The questions should be in an easy and simple language that is understandable by the customer. 
  • Frame limited questions that focus on the objective of the survey.

Some of the demo survey questions are:

  • How would you rate the (business) relationship with company x / brand x all in all?
  • How often have you contacted company x / brand x with inquiries or complaints in the past year?
  • Were your inquiries or complaints answered in an appropriate period?
  • How satisfied were you with the answers or suggestions for solutions that brand x offered you?
  • How satisfied were you with the customer service of brand x / company x all in all?
  • If you have additional suggestions or criticism for the customer service of brand x / company x, you can name them below.
  • Include qualitative surveys

While conducting a survey, it is always advisable to make use of open-ended questions. Qualitative data give you the information in a large size and descriptive manner. 

It allows the customers to express their thoughts freely. You can make use of this section of the survey in any way you want, you can ask them to report their problem by actually showing the video of the product and its issues. 

This way the customers feel more open and expressive in the survey and there are chances they will stick to the survey till the end. 

  • Create user profiles

Creating user profiles refers to the practice of analysing the survey data and making a user perspective or profile on that basis. It helps you understand how the user sees your product and what they need. 

One user profile can be created for each target group or a group representative of the population. Make sure to update the user profiles on regular basis along with your follow-up surveys to keep their needs and views updated with your product.

Explore all the survey question types possible on Voxco

Explore all the survey question types possible on Voxco

FAQ

Some ways of identifying the target audience are:

  • Analyze your customer base and conduct client interviews
  • Market research and evaluate the industry
  • Get to know your competitors
  • Persona creation
  • Defining who your target audience ISN’T
  • Keep on revising

The demographics of the target audience are age, gender, education, occupation, marital status, lifestyle, etc. which will define your target audience depending on which features you want to focus your marketing.

Efficiently identifying your target audience and successfully analysing them will help your business to focus on the specifics of the marketing strategies and where to aim them. This doesn’t only save the efforts, but also the time that is invested for the marketing campaigns and costs invested in it. 

For an online teaching software, the target audience would be students who are pursuing education in any field and are looking for an online learning platform with affordable prices for the courses. 

It helps in defining the intent of writing and understand the difficulty level of the piece. It helps understand the writer perspective and what Is going to attract the audience. 

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