Build your target audience template
A target audience can help you focus your marketing efforts on the people most likely to be interested in what your business has to offer.
Here’s a template that you can use to create a target audience for your business.
NEED
What does your target audience need that your product or service provides?
DEMOGRAPHICS
Describe your target audience by age, gender, household income, education or occupation, and location.
INTERESTS
Describe what your prospective customers are typically interested in.
BEHAVIOURS
Describe common behaviours among your target audience.
NAME AND IMAGE
Give your target audience a name and even an image, if you choose. Marketers will often do this to remind them of what their target customer might look like.
How do you determine your target audience?
Ideally, you would use customer research. For example, focus groups, online questionnaires, individual interviews with people who use certain products or in-home studies.
If you don’t have the resources to conduct this kind of research, follow these tips:
- Start with your current customers – specifically those that buy the products or services your marketing efforts are most focused on. Think about the characteristics they have in common, and brainstorm with your team to describe them.
- Monitor your competition. Get a sense of how they communicate and the groups of people they’re trying to reach. You can also monitor the accounts of important brands in your space on social media.
- Talk to friends – or even strangers – you think may have an interest in your product.
Build a target audience for Lucky Shrub
Lucky Shrub doesn’t have the time or the money to do major research now. But Karen, the owner, uses her understanding of her customers to fill in the target audience template:
NEED
People who need to plan or plant their garden.
DEMOGRAPHICS
People aged 35-54 of any gender. Karen estimates that her customers are university-educated professionals with a household income of USD 175,000 or more.
INTERESTS
Karen is trying to attract people interested in native plants, modern design and gardening.
BEHAVIOURS
Many of the people in this target audience have recently bought a house. Karen guesses that they enjoy home improvement shows, read architecture and design magazines, like to pin or save design pictures online, and like to browse design-related websites to get ideas for their house and garden.
NAME AND IMAGE
Karen decides to name her target audience Garden Designers, and she chooses a picture to remind her of the type of person in her target audience. Note that pictures are just a way to make a target audience more personable, and are optional.
Build a target audience for Hair Day
Hair Day is a salon that specialises in haircuts and colour.
The owner of Hair Day, Pria, is looking to increase product sales through the salon’s website, and has created a series of home hair-dye kits, with several bright options for her more adventurous clients.
Hair Day would benefit from a good definition of its target audience, so it can focus its marketing efforts on the people who are most likely to be interested in the new kits.
Pria did research and talked to some of her friends from the hairdressing academy as well as some of her clients – particularly people with bold hair colour. This research helped her get a better idea of what kind of people would be interested in these kits. Based on these insights, Pria wrote out her target audience and shared it with the woman who helps her with social media outreach.
NEED
A fun, non-traditional or bold hair colour.
DEMOGRAPHICS
Women aged 23-35 with an income of over USD 40,000. They are often young professionals with some higher education.
INTERESTS
Pria knows her audience is interested in fashion, hair and nail trends, and style tips and advice from celebrities.
BEHAVIOURS
Pria’s audience reads fashion magazines, follows fashion-related Instagram accounts from stylists and designers, and prefers to shop at small boutiques over big department stores.
NAME AND IMAGE
Pria refers to her target audience as Edgy Young Professionals and uses a picture of a friend to represent them.
Pria plans to use the description of Edgy Young Professional to help her plan out the Instagram posts for the next few months. She will brainstorm ideas for what may appeal to this audience and how she can attract more of them to her website. She also intends to spend a little money on advertising, and knows that this description will help her select the audience for her ads.
Key takeaways
- A target audience will help you to focus your marketing efforts on the people most likely to be interested in your product.
- Describe your target audience in a simple template that outlines their needs, demographics, interests and behaviours.
- You can also download a copy of the Target audience template.
