By narrowing down your target, you can make sure you are getting the word out to the people who will take action.

A target audience is the intended group of people who will interact with your business. They are the ones your service or product is designed to help. 

In the best scenarios, exposure to your business causes them to contact you right away and inquire more or purchase. In other cases, they become exposed to your brand, tucking the information away for a later time when the opportunity arises where you can be of service.

It’s essential to know your target audience so you don’t waste time and money advertising to people who won’t be interested in what you have to offer. 

Why worry about it now?

Most businesses we encounter don’t worry about their target audience past a particular point. For example, a frequent target market we hear about for a physical therapist might be “injured people.” Or, hypothetically, if you pump septic tanks, the target market would be “people who need their tank pumped.” 

The above examples show you the thinking Algorithmic Global see when working with clients who are new to digital advertising. Beyond the people in need of the service right away, little thought is given to what type of person to cultivate who might need it in the future.

This strategy relies heavily on word-of-mouth and face-to-face sales. It relies on past and current customers to recommend the product or service. Word-of-mouth is a potent way to generate sales since a recommendation is better than any review or advertisement, but it’s limited in scope.

Enter: The Target Audience

Identifying your target audience is the first and most crucial step. In comes down to three main things:

1. Age/Gender
2. Location
3. Interests

Let’s look at each of these in-depth using a construction contracting company as an example.

Age/Gender

Age is the easiest one to figure out. Young people will have the least amount of use for a contractor, which eliminates everyone under thirty. Taking this logic further, not many people under forty could afford an investment in their home, so in reality, this age could skew even older—40 and up.

Gender isn’t much of a factor in this example since it will most likely be a couple who needs a contractor’s services. If this were power tools, then the target would be generally male. But for the most part, there shouldn’t be much difference between males and females.

Location

Where are they located? If you service a particular city or state, it does absolutely no good to focus on generating any awareness across the country. For a contractor, the target would be their entire service area. Back to the power tools example: if they can be shipped nationwide, the target audience would be much broader.

Interests

Getting into interests is where the difficulty lies when determining the target audience. Often, it’s easier to exclude people than to figure out what they might have in common. In this example, take renters off the list. On the other hand, people who like The Home Depot, Lowes, or Bob Vila might be interested in contracting services.

What do we do with this information?

Digital marketers use this information to serve advertisements to the people who are most likely to purchase a product or service. Google relies on search terms, and you pay to rank higher on the list. The higher you show up, the better the chance the customer chooses your company.

It’s also possible to use paid promotion on websites, signage, and paper advertisements in partnership with the people who share your target audience. Back to the example before, a flier at The Home Depot might be a way to reach more potential customers.

Social media advertising–Facebook, in particular–offers the most opportunity to capitalize on the identification of your target audience.

Why advertise on Facebook?

Facebook serves ads based on the massive amounts of data they’ve collected about all of their users. They have the demographic information (Age/Gender, Location) built-in, and it’s easy to narrow down the audience based on their interest.

Also, Facebook allows advertisers to re-target anyone who visited the business’s website, liked the business’s page, or is a member of the business’s email list. Armed with those three avenues of information, it’s also possible to create target audiences with similarities to the people who have visited the website, liked the page, or joined the email list based on factors Facebook’s algorithm deems relevant.

In short, Facebook is a powerful resource that allows businesses to capitalize on the initial work of creating a target audience.

Questions?

Identifying your target audience is the first step in creating a sales funnel that runs with less direct involvement and reliance on previous customers. It’s a way to be proactive in your search for customers and provide the impetus to bring your sales volume to the next level.

If you have any questions about your target audience, advertising with Google, or advertising with Facebook, reach out to us and tell us how we can help! Our team is ready to lead you through the process. Just fill out the form on our contact page, and someone will reach out to you within 24 hours.

Knowing who to target helps use your outreach and advertising budget–both time and money. Now that you know more about its potential, the question becomes: Who is your target audience?