Identifying your target audience

Any business that wants to become successful must spend some time learning about their target audience. While you may have spent millions of dollars on market research a few years ago, it is still important to spend more time and money identifying your target audience every year or so. This is because people's buying patterns change and their tastes change. While they may have been one of your best customers in the past, they may go in a different direction because they are motivated by the price another company is offering.

Marketing efforts must be focused on serving the needs of your target audience if you want to become successful. Would your target audience appreciate an ad that was designed to suit the needs of only men or only women? Finding out who your target audience is will help you create better marketing campaigns and it will help to improve other things for your company as well like increasing your visibility and improving your customer relationships.

Take a look at the different interactions your customers will have with your company. Are you portraying the image you want to? Is the image you are sending out consistent with the needs and reputation of the company? Spend time focusing on improving your companies image so you can reach your target audience more effectively.

One area that needs constant improvement is your company's web site. Do you have broken links and outdated material on the site? If you do, it's time to revamp your web site. Your site should be easy to navigate and customers should be able to come here and find exactly what they are looking for in a matter of minutes. Consider giving your web site a major overhaul if you are not getting the maximum exposure you should be.

You can do simple things to improve your web site like adding videos, articles, or a blog. If you are talking about an extensive overhaul, you may want to consider investing some serious money into your web site to make it more user-friendly.

To gain an understanding of who your target audience is, send out surveys. Ask them to fill out it with some important information that will help your company create better marketing promotions and create products that are centered on the customers needs. Surveys are easy to create and they provide you with all the information you need to find out if you are wasting advertising dollars on the wrong audience.

Surveys also allow you to identify if you have a niche market. Even shoe companies have a niche market. If you can identify them, it will be so much easier to find ways to target them. Plus, you know exactly who to go market to when you need some quick cash for your company. Some of the information you need to ask in the survey must include the following:

• Age of the audience


• Location of the audience


• Gender of the audience


• Average income level of your audience


• Education of your audience


• Motivational buying patterns

Each bit of information you can get will help you develop solid marketing campaigns because you can tailor the campaign to fit their needs. For example, if your demographic is primarily female, you automatically know some of the channels to advertising with like People Magazine, the WE channel, and other female-related media outlets. If your audience is split, consider using 2 different types of marketing programs, one that is geared toward men and another that is geared toward women. All of the different things you learn from the survey each indicate different marketing ventures you need to participate in.