It seems like it’s not that hard to determine who your consumers are. For example, there is a brand of skin care cosmetics. Its audience is mostly women. But there’s a nuance. All women are different. Their needs and demands are different.
Teenage girls may want anti-acne products. Young women will be interested in basic and mild care. And older women will need cosmetics with stronger formulas: acids, vitamins, peptides.
For your product or service to be bought, you need to offer it to the customers who need it. This rule works for promoting anything, be it an online game Bompers or a flower bouquet. To do this, it’s important not just to know the audience but also to understand what segments it consists of.
Why Segment Your Audience
Consumer segmentation helps you craft your content marketing strategy and promote your business effectively. Knowing who is in your audience makes it easier to determine what to communicate with these people about and how to do it: caring, fun, serious or otherwise.
By identifying your target audience groups, you’ll also know what benefits to tell different segments about, where to promote your product, and what visuals to use.
Here are some examples of where you can use the knowledge about the characteristics of your target audience.
In Advertising Campaigns
You can formulate the main message and come up with creative ideas for an advertising campaign.
In Content
Audience segmentation allows you to understand what to write about and come up with a chain of posts and other formats that will lead people to purchase.
When Setting up Targeting Ads
Segmentation helps you or a contractor customize ads based on interests.
Signs of Audience Segmentation
Solvency
Not all consumer groups will be equally promising and profitable. For example, selling skincare products to teenage girls is more difficult than to older women. That’s because this group of customers isn’t yet self-sufficient.
Therefore, as a target segment, it’s better to choose paying customers. And if business goes well, you can gradually move on to other groups.
The Size of the Customer Group
It’s desirable that your product is in demand by a large number of people. But if the segment is small, but very solvent, it’s not bad. In that case, you can position your product as premium and luxury.
But it’s better if the audience segment is both solvent and large at the same time.
Competitive Environment
Once you have identified a solvent and large segment, you need to analyze the market and identify the competitive advantage.
The competitive advantage is a trait in your business that will appeal to an audience segment that is attractive to you.
How to Study an Audience
When researching an audience, you need to get answers to the following questions:
- What is the average age of the customer?
- Is it male or female?
- What region do the consumers live in?
- What is their marital status?
- What interests do they have?
- What social networks and platforms do they use?
- What problem has the customer solved or wants to solve with the product?
- What alternatives did the customer consider to solve their problem?
- What is the most important criterion of purchase for the customer: price and discount, speed of delivery, product quality?
- What doesn’t like about using the product, or what prevents you from using it?
It’s most effective to describe your audience based on data. Even if there isn’t much, it will still be useful. Here are a few methods of consumer research:
- Interview sales and account managers. They interact a lot with consumers and know them well. You can use them to get information about current customers.
- Interview customers themselves with a call or emails. Avoid questions to which a “Yes” or “No” answer is sufficient. You need more information. Ask open-ended questions that encourage reasoning.
- Research your audience using social media tools. Run a series of Stories with a “survey” sticker. Your followers can provide a lot of useful information about themselves.
Create a persona and describe it using the data you obtained in your research. The advantage of the persona method is that your potential client becomes not just a set of numbers, but a living person, with his or her own interests, fears, and desires.
There can be several personas. It all depends on the product. On average, you need to collect 3-5 personas. Don’t chase the number. It’s better to describe three people in detail than ten in a sketchy way.
Then, based on the persona card, you can create a promotion strategy: choose platforms and tools, make advertising creatives, determine the tone of communications, and come up with promotions and other marketing activities.
For example, based on portraits of people, postcards can be made with a key marketing message and author’s design. Such postcards can be sent together with the goods if the client orders delivery or given as a gift when buying in company stores. This helps nurture brand loyalty among consumers. And loyalty increases the likelihood of repeat purchases.
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