How to Identify Your Target Audience and Sell More
Not everyone will be interested in purchasing your products or services when you start out. To achieve success in your marketing as a startup, you shouldn’t undermine the importance of identifying your target audiences. And of course, this should be one of the preliminary stages of launching your brand or startup company.
If you lack a clear identification of your target customers, you’ll only be subjected to breaking the bank without achieving your desired results.
Apart from that, you’ll also have to handle low conversion rates, low sales, and low revenue. Marketing your products or services to every Tom, Dick, and Harry would simply amount to a waste of time, effort, and money.
Instead, you can shift your focus on brand and marketing your products or services to a specific group of people who are genuinely interested in your brand or business.
If your marketing effort is faulty, there is a high probability it is going to bleed a whopping amount of dollars without desired returns.
Why Do Startups Fail?
One of the factors that contribute to the significant failure of startups is the absence of a target market for their offerings. That is why identifying your ideal target market is one of the first steps of business marketing.
If your startup business doesn’t have a market to tender your offerings, the best is to get back to your drawing board and explore something else. If you can find something more valuable than your current offerings, you can invest your money, time, and other resources.
One other crucial factor behind the failure of brands and businesses is the lack of cash. Utilizing your valuable marketing budget on the wrong target market could get you out of business.
But don’t worry. How do you find your target market? Read on to discover the best ways to identify target audiences for your business.
Understanding What You’re Bringing to the Table for Your Target Audience
Before you can identify your ideal target audience, you need to clearly define what you do best and why a prospect would be interested in your product or services.
Let’s take a look at this scenario.
If you are planning to build a house, starting with interior designs or plumbing works won’t get you anywhere. If you are building a house, the first step is the foundation. The stronger the foundation of that house determines the longevity of the house. If the foundation is faulty, the house won’t last long before it collapses.
What are you bringing to the table for your target customers?
Here are the simple steps:
What product or service do you offer to customers?
Apart from offers and bonus features, why are customers interested in you? What are the essential things your customers cherish?
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Who are those that will make the most benefit from your offer?
Think about your core offerings. Who are those that will find the most value from your product or services?
For instance, Louis Vuitton is focused on providing the highest quality handbags, shoes and accessories for those who can afford the sense of exclusivity that comes with it. It’s what their customers want in their products, and it’s what they deliver.
What are the problems you plan to address with your offering?
Your audience has pains and problems. You are in the market to heal those pains and provide solutions to those problems. If you are positioning yourself as a problem solver, your audience will love you. And if you can’t, they’ll go elsewhere to find someone who can solve their problems.
So, here is the question:
What are those pains and problems your offerings can solve for your customers?
Why makes your brand or business unique?
How your product offering and brand values combine to provide value to your customers?
If you do not outsmart your competitors, how do you convince them that you’re different? How do you convince them not to jump the ship and use your competitors?
For customers, they want something that’ll benefit them.
If you lack the unique selling point that clearly differentiates you from your competitors, you’ll continue to be at loggerheads on nothing more than the price. Understand your value proposition. Clearly define your mission statement and brand pillars. Break the barriers. Identify what you do better than your competitors.
That’s one of the ways to identify your target audience.
Create Detailed Marketing Personas of Your Target Audience
Now, you have a solid grasp of your product or service offerings, who would benefit from it? What are the problems you intend to solve for your customers? Once you can provide answers to that, the next is to begin the journey of identifying your ideal target audience.
What’s the best way to do that?
Create a Customer Persona. This will ultimately help you get your products or services in front of these audiences.
You should endeavor to create a marketing persona that’ll be specific to your brand or business.
Your target customers share some specific characteristics. Your buyer’s personas will help figure out these characteristics.
Let’s take a look at some of the characteristics you should consider when creating your marketing persona.
Gender: When it comes to gender, men and women share different preferences. Obviously, there is a striking difference when it comes to the needs and goals of men and women. If you promote your products or services in a way that fails to accommodate these striking differences, you may end up gaining a few attention from either of the two main genders.
Age: What age range does your prospects fit into? Is it the millennial age bracket? Are they more middle-aged? This should be one of the criteria to identify your target audience. Why? It is because prospects in different age groups share similarities and differences in how your product or services interest them.
Income Level: Knowing the income range of your prospects will significantly help when it comes to identifying your ideal target audience. Generally, potential customers with low income tend to move towards purchasing products and services that’ll help them save some money. Customers that are within a high income level tend to be more favorable to products and services that's more of luxury and exclusivity.
Location: Generally, residents of the urban areas tend to show a buying pattern that often differs from those who reside in rural areas. This is to show that the environment where your prospect lives also influences their buying preferences and decisions.
Other criteria you can fix into your buyers' personas include occupation, industry, ethnic groups, interests, marital status, and interests.
Remember, the intent of your customers varies.
What a buyer’s persona does is to figure out the behavioral and psychological buying approaches of your prospects within the target market.
Suppose you observe that a large percentage of your target customers have a similar salary scale or occupation. In that case, you can use that to make slight changes to your marketing campaigns accordingly.
Create Brand Visuals
Create an Effective Logo
In today’s business world, everything is getting more fast-paced and more intense in terms of competition. However, getting your business in front of your target customers shouldn’t only be a top priority but a critical one.
The truth is, there are lots of competitions out there in the marketplace. Every business has to face lots of competition, even for the most precious products or services. How do you gain your customer’s attention in such an environment? That’s why you cannot underestimate the power of an effective logo.
A dynamic, eye-catching, and memorable logo can do lots of wonders for your business if you do not know. However, it can be useless if it doesn’t connect or resonate with your target audience.
PosterMyWall offers a wide variety of logo templates to create an eye-catching and attention-grabbing logo for your business. You’ll find a wide array of templates spanning through several niches. You’ll enjoy free download and professional results that are easy to connect your business with your target audience.
When it comes to identifying your ideal target audience for your brand, you should also think about how you want your business to appear in front of your customers. And the power of social media cannot be overemphasized.
Your Brand Color Matters too
What colors does your business mostly represent? Let’s take a look at the coffee shop. Imagine the cozy and warm brand might select colors such as light greens, blues, or beiges.
Now, think about your brand logo. Does your current logo represent your brand and offerings? If not, it’s time for a change.
If you do not have a logo currently, you can make your own on PosterMyWall.
The Bottom Line
Identifying your ideal target audience might be a bit difficult and challenging. However, a clearly defined and identified target audience and target markets are crucial to your business's success.
Endeavor to clearly define your business purpose and why your prospects should care. Once you have been able to identify your target audience, ensure that your products or services meet their needs, wants, and desires.
Remember, casting a wide net might be detrimental if you run a small startup. It’s even similar to a death sentence. So, be specific. Target the right audience. It'll save you from wasting your money, time, effort, and other resources. And your business will survive and thrive in no time.
