Whether you’re building a new website or launching an online marketing campaign, knowing the audience to target is key. In this blog, we’ll look at target audience vs target market, where to find your audience online, building a website that resonates with your audience, and more.
Table of Contents
- What is a target audience?
- What is the difference between a target market and target audience?
- How do you find your audience profile?
- Can a company have more than one audience?
- Designing your website for your target audience
1. What is a target audience?
According to Sprout Social, a “target audience is a group of people defined by certain demographics and behaviour. Often, businesses use what they know about their target audience to create user personas. These personas guide their decisions on marketing campaigns”.
$37 billion is wasted in ad spend every year from ads that fail to engage the target audience
2. What is the difference between a target market and target audience?
Marketing Evolution describes this best, “A target market is the set of consumers that a company plans to sell to or reach with marketing activities. A target audience is the group or segment within that target market that is being served advertising. This makes target audience a more specific subset of target market”.
Understanding both is critical for the development and marketing of your product or service offering.
3. How do you find your audience profile?
There are several ways to find your audience, beginning with looking at your existing customers. Understanding who is already buying from you gives you an idea of who else will be interested in your offering.
Use social listening to uncover what people are saying about your brand. Identify what’s being said about your business or your competitors by monitoring keywords and hashtags. Take it one step further and look at the hashtags your audience is using. As Hootsuite says, “you can then test adding these hashtags to your social posts to extend your reach to more relevant users”.
Analyse your competition. According to inc.com, “Your competition can also provide insight into your ideal audience. Identify the top three or four products that compete with yours. Then, review their marketing strategies and social-media presence. Pinpoint the specific groups that each company is targeting with their marketing messages”.
4. Can a company have more than one audience?
As you gain insights into who your target audience is, it’s likely you’ll discover more than one buyer persona. This is attributed to several factors, e.g. where in the sales pipeline they are, who the person is responsible for making purchasing decisions, where they are consuming content, etc. Once you uncover your different audience profiles, create targeted content that speaks their language and addresses their needs.
5. Designing your website for your target audience
Before building your website, know and understand your audience/s first. Incorporate elements that will appeal to the visitors you’re trying to engage and attracts their attention. One must also consider the stats on how many people are viewing websites off mobile devices. The number is incredibly high and makes the mobile responsiveness of your website critical. You don’t want to be losing your audience because your website doesn’t perform well on mobile.
At QoboWeb, we design fully-functional, beautiful websites that reflect your aesthetics and retain brand integrity. Contact us here and let our team help you build a website that makes you stand out from your competitors.
