How to choose your target audience. How to create a portrait of a client (target audience). Target audience, examples

The concept of target audience (TA) is fundamental when determining marketing and advertising strategies. Without a clear understanding of your target audience, it is impossible to increase sales and organize adequate positioning of the company.

What is the target audience?

The target audience is the group of consumers for whom a certain product or service is intended. Representatives of the target audience are completely different people. However, they have something in common - the need for some product. Typically, the audience is classified into categories depending on the following characteristics:

Age.
Education.
Well-being.
Family status.

This division is necessary to accurately determine consumer needs.

FOR YOUR INFORMATION! Almost no company covers the needs of all people. Each has its own audience. Even grocery stores have their own target audience, which is determined, as a rule, by the financial well-being of customers.

Examples

Let's look at real-life retail chains. There is Pyaterochka, which has a very large target audience, but it is still limited. These are buyers who:

want to buy everything they need close to home;
want to spend a minimum of money on groceries;
They tend to shop where there is a large assortment.

According to its target audience, Pyaterochka determines its development strategy and tactics:

The stores are located in close proximity to each other. Almost anyone can walk to the nearest Pyaterochka in 5-10 minutes.
The counter offers a wide range of products at low prices.

The target audience is taken into account even at the stage of opening a store.

Why determine the target audience and by what criteria is it formed?

The target audience is distinguished by the following features:

Interest in the product. For example, auto parts are of interest only to car owners.
The ability to buy a product at its stated price. For example, it makes no sense to locate a branded clothing boutique in disadvantaged areas.
Potential susceptibility to product marketing information.

Traditionally, the target audience is determined for advertising purposes. Different categories of consumers need to be interested in different writing styles and different offers. However, this is a limited understanding of the target audience. Knowledge about it is necessary at the beginning of creating a product in order to adjust it in accordance with the wishes of consumers. This, along with advertising, helps increase sales.

Knowledge of the target audience provides:

Clientele loyalty.
Reducing advertising costs (a marketer may not target all people, but only a specific narrow group of consumers).
Creating an offer that will attract buyers.

The target audience may change. Therefore, identifying it is not a one-time event.

Methods for determining the target audience

First you need to understand who is ready to purchase products and who needs them. After this, consumers are classified according to the following criteria:

Standard: gender, age, financial capabilities.
Hobbies.
Problems.
Communication style.

In English-speaking countries, when determining target audience, the following questions are asked:

What products does a person buy?
What are the characteristics of the buyer: gender, age, social class?
Why does the consumer buy the product? What attracts him: cost, stylish packaging, quality?
How often is the product purchased?
Where do they buy the product: in a store nearby, a hypermarket or through an online store?

Let's consider common methods for determining target audience:

Polls.
Questioning.
Statistics.
Interview.

You can collect the necessary information in various ways: in person, via the Internet, through questionnaires.

Goals for identifying the target audience

First you need to determine the purpose of identifying target audience. It could be:

Analysis of consumers of an existing product.
Determining the target audience for introducing a new product or expanding the sales market.

That is, determining the target audience is necessary either to create a portrait of an existing consumer, or for the purpose of attracting new buyers. Further actions will depend on the goals of audience analysis.

Study of existing target audience

When studying consumers of an existing product, the following procedure is used:

Competitive product analysis.
Analysis of the audience loyal to the company.
Identification of segments of regular and potential customers.
Formation of a marketing plan.

The marketing strategy is determined based on the data obtained.

Attracting a new target audience

Let's look at an example. The same product may have different target audiences. For example, a fitness club may be aimed at men or women. Its price tag can vary dramatically, which also determines the consumer. So, an entrepreneur wants to open a fitness club. To do this, he needs to act according to the following algorithm:

Analysis of the existing market.
Determining the most profitable market segments.
Drawing up a portrait of a typical consumer.
Formation of a marketing strategy.

At the stage of analysis of the existing market, consumers of the services of elite, budget and other clubs are identified. Then the type of fitness club that is most popular in this country/city/area is determined. A portrait of the person who goes to these fitness clubs is compiled. After this you can:

create a fitness club in accordance with the client’s wishes;
create advertising taking into account all the characteristics of the buyer.

IMPORTANT! Representatives of the target audience can be not only individuals, but also legal entities.

The final stage of determining the target audience: common mistakes

The final stage of target audience analysis is a “dialogue” with existing and potential consumers of the product. Within its framework, entrepreneurs make many mistakes directly related to a lack of understanding of their target audience:

Incorrect treatment of clients. For example, a store sells clothes for teenagers. Often marketers mistakenly address such customers on a first-name basis and allow familiarity. This could turn off a lot of customers.
Incorrect identification of places visited by representatives of the target audience. For example, the practice of distributing gift certificates through friendly companies is now popular. For example, flyers for a fitness club with a discount are posted in a hair salon. A person comes for a haircut, sees a certificate, takes it and subsequently visits the club. However, it is important to place leaflets exactly where the desired target audience often happens to be. For example, in an economy-class hair salon, it makes no sense to leave certificates with a discount on visiting an elite fitness club.
One-time determination of the target audience. It is not enough to determine the target audience once and for all. You need to do this regularly. Otherwise, the needs of clients may change, but the entrepreneur will not react to this in any way. This will lead to a decrease in demand for the product.
Complete dependence on the needs of the target audience. According to Jobs, you should not focus entirely on the needs of the consumer, since he may simply not know what he needs. Therefore, you need to have a certain courage in order to offer the buyer something fundamentally new.

Determining the target audience is relevant for any type of business: small, large, mass, with a narrow specification. Accurate target audience analysis is the key to successful sales.

Today we are surrounded by advertising on all sides. Wherever we go, we will see advertising banners, some product characteristics, information on how to purchase this or that product or service. All of this is advertising materials with which we live in everyday life.

The basis of an advertising campaign is to determine the target audience. We will try to describe in detail what this means in this article. For now, let’s look at a model of how any advertising functions and how marketing technology is built.

How is advertising organized?

So, we all know how goods and services that are involved in marketing are sold. To put it simply, sellers do everything so that as many buyers as possible learn about the product, its advantages, want to buy it and tell their friends about it. Advertising exists to achieve this goal.

It works as a means of notification, conveying information from the manufacturer to the common person who makes a purchase. And it is clear that the target audience of advertising comes into play here. It allows you to accurately determine who needs to show the material; who might be interested in the product, information about it and who would even want to buy it. This is the main task of the one who is involved in drawing up and defining the target audience, that is, identifying the people who should see advertising and display sponsorship materials. This approach will allow you to convey information about the product to those who can buy it. At the same time, the advertising budget need not be spent on other members of society. This is a saving that can be quite significant, even if it does not save the company’s budget.

What is the target audience?

Thus, behind these words lies a simple definition of a certain number of people, a certain group that has something in common. It is precisely due to this unifying factor (that same “common”) that this segment of the audience is interesting to advertisers and marketers.

And the word “target” means, first of all, targeting a particular group of people from a sales point of view. After all, it is they who need to be offered a product or service; they will be interested in making a purchase.

Determining who your target audience is is one of the initial tasks of someone promoting a product. The further success of the campaign depends on whether the group of interested (target) buyers is correctly identified.

Main features

In the science of marketing, there are a lot of approaches to what basic features and characteristics an audience of buyers should have. However, the simplest and most accessible point of view is to highlight two characteristics that the target audience is endowed with. We are now talking, firstly, about the interest of people included in the target audience in a product or service. This is important, since it is this feature that guarantees the inclusion of certain social strata in the list of potential buyers. For example, this is the understanding that the target audience of a company selling CASCO insurance policies is car buyers or drivers.

The second feature should be called some kind of connecting element. In a CASCO situation, this may be the presence of a car and the need to insure it. This factor allows you to clearly unite a group of people belonging to the target audience.

Characteristics of persons

Anything can be a unifying factor. Having a car, a house in a certain area, a child, and much more are signs by which a marketer must create a correct description of what the target audience of a product looks like. There are no restrictions in this search, the main thing is to find what will interest your buyer and make him contact your company to purchase a product or service.

Such characteristics can be the presence/absence of something, the age of people (as a result, the characteristics of their behavior), occupation, core habits, preferences, financial status, hobbies, origin, native language, etc. The more accurately all these and other factors are taken into account, the better the types of target audience will be formed.

Determining the target audience

To find out who is interested in your product, you need to follow a simple logical chain from the features of the product to the problems and needs that it can solve and satisfy. A striking example of this is that if you sell drugs to combat obesity, your product will be of interest to overweight people who would like to lose extra pounds. You can find them, for example, among women aged 20-40 who periodically visit the gym. Therefore, you can find the target platform for such advertising in a women's fitness room. However, here you should also remember that the person who came to the gym deliberately gave up pills in favor of a healthy way to lose weight through exercise. Your task is to convince him that by combining your product and sport, he can achieve greater results.

The analysis of the target audience needs to be carried out even further to take into account as many points and factors as possible. This is the task of the marketer who makes up the approximate target audience.

Calculation and verification

For each advertising campaign, it is important to create different types of target audience. This is done in order to reach as many people as possible who are potentially interested in purchasing the product. The more criteria are used to “screen out” such buyers, the better the final target audience. Moreover, the more people who join it, the better for marketing in the long run, because it will be easier and cheaper to “get” such potentially interested parties.

So, given that we are creating several models of the target audience at once, a natural step would be to further test each of them in order to identify the most successful and easily accessible one. Practical testing of the target audience will help with this.

This can be done in different ways. Some companies engage agencies that conduct social surveys and statistical samples. Others test the product locally in a limited environment. There are a lot of ways to do this, but they all involve finding out how working a particular audience model can be considered.

How to use the data?

Once the target audience has been identified, with whom it is more profitable to work within the framework of a particular project, you can proceed to the next stage - application in practice. This is a direct function of advertising agencies, which use certain advertising methods in order to “reach” the desired audience.

Let's give an example. If you have a store that is located on street A and offers goods at low prices, your target audience will be people passing by. In order to interest them, you can hold some kind of event dedicated to the opening of your store; or simply occupy advertising space on the same street, focusing specifically on low prices and the benefits that the buyer will receive.

Example of target audience: her age

It’s quite easy to analyze what age people contact you most often. Here you need to proceed from the specifics of the product. After all, it is obvious that sporting goods are of interest to young people, electronics are the same; but a telephone with large buttons will be more useful for older people, as will a hearing aid.

Any thing can be confidently attributed to one or another age group as a whole. True, some products are universal, so they need to be presented correctly in order to attract as many interested people as possible.

Example of target audience: occupation

Another generally accepted criterion that is taken into account when compiling a target audience group is the person’s occupation. Firstly, this is important because they determine the material security of a potential buyer. Secondly, occupation can sometimes serve as a link between a person's interest and need and your product. For example, entrepreneurs may be interested in accounting services or legal assistance; drivers - a new car purchase program or an inexpensive spare parts store. You should proceed from what is useful to the person doing this or that job. That is why, when creating a target audience, a person’s employment plays a big role.

Example of target audience: interests

Another indicator is interests. This is a very strong factor, since it allows you to link certain possible needs that the product can satisfy to the characteristics of the buyer. Simply put, if you know that a person loves to climb mountains, you can impose on him a whole range of sports equipment, as well as a gym membership; and for those who love reading, you can offer participation in a club program to purchase certain books. Hobbies are our weakness, so when determining the target audience, marketers take into account the person’s increased interest in his hobbies and the ability to “impose” more on him.

Error in finding audience

And, of course, when working with the target audience, it is impossible to avoid mistakes. There are shortcomings in any definition model, due to which it covers a part of society that is not interested in your product at all. These are the mistakes that create the wrong target audience. Examples of how this is done are: advertising a school near another school in the hope that parents will see it and transfer their child to another educational institution. Yes, such a result is not excluded, but it should be understood that in order to lure a client, something more is needed than just informing him, and even near the school to which he already takes his child.

Errors are easiest to correct through experience. And in fact, it is only possible to identify them practically. After all, every situation is unique. Even in the example of a school, advertising can work successfully if parents are dissatisfied with the quality of education in the institution where they are already sending their child.

You should also remember that any target audience, examples of which can be named in large quantities, is a “vinaigrette” of different people. If someone is interested in your product, then there will definitely be those who will categorically oppose it. This should also be kept in mind when creating an advertising campaign. If you try to attract buyers using more aggressive and intrusive methods, there will be even more such “dissatisfied” people.

Practical skills

In general, to know how to search and identify the target audience, practical experience is needed. Let's take regular mobile operators. These are companies with billions of dollars in turnover and years of experience, which, while constituting target audiences for communications, also often resort to experiments and promotions to test certain ideas. The specialists in them understand what kind of audience they need and how to influence it, but nevertheless, even with this knowledge, experiments are needed to practically prove the idea.

So if you want to identify the target audience for your product, do it! But then check the result in practice. It may differ from what was originally intended. This is, in fact, what large advertising agencies doing in preparation for the campaign do. They also don’t know what to do, but they can roughly guess what results this or that advertising move will lead to. And then it’s up to statistics, which will give the final answer.

Or a service in demand? In the modern world, any financial expenditure, be it a trip to the supermarket, a visit to a museum, or a vacation at a resort, is perceived by people as an investment that must solve a problem, generate income, or have an ultimate goal. And the more attractive from the point of view of the result this or that investment is, the more money a person is willing to spend.

What is the target audience?

In order for your product to become a way for someone to achieve a real goal, you need to know how to define it. First, let's understand the essence of this concept.

The target audience is a set of potential consumers, that is, those people whose problem your service or product can solve. To more accurately determine the needs of a particular group, the entire population of individuals is usually divided into segments by gender, age, social status and financial status.

When introducing a new product to the market, all manufacturers dream of making it popular and successful. But, unfortunately, rarely anyone knows how. Determining the target audience of a product means laying a foundation on which it will be possible to slowly and without extra costs build a reliable advertising campaign.

Limit or generalize?

When determining the target audience, many experts make a common mistake. Unfortunately, it can have negative consequences. For example, they believe that strictly limiting a certain group of people as the target audience and focusing promotional policies only on them will put the product at risk of losing consumers who might make an impulse purchase.

But this is a myth. Today, the share of random purchases on the market is extremely small. Its percentage is steadily falling, which is explained by a decrease in household incomes and, accordingly, more precise cost planning. That is why it is very important to both correctly identify the target audience and correctly target promotion specifically to it.

Characteristics of the target audience

Knowing the basic characteristics and criteria will help you easily figure out how to identify the target audience. This group of people has the following characteristics:

Interest. People should be interested in the product and seek information. It's difficult to sell a car to someone who doesn't know how to drive and doesn't intend to learn.
The ability to acquire. The group to which the advertising message is aimed must have the means to purchase and have the need to make it.
Willingness to change loyalty to the current seller when marketing pressure is applied. Fanatical brand followers cannot be interested even with the most iron-clad arguments. In order to respond to your message, the buyer must be ready for dialogue.

Correctly defining the target audience implies its compliance with all three parameters simultaneously, since an interested consumer who is ready to switch from a competitor to you may simply not have sufficient financial resources. Or, conversely, have money and need a product, but be a strict adherent of a different brand.

More criteria!

The second, no less common mistake made in the process of identifying target groups is the insufficiency of the criteria used. To correctly identify and take into account the needs of a particular person, it is not enough to know his age, place of residence and gender.

Within one there may be consumers with diametrically opposed hobbies, different psychological characteristics and lifestyles. The deeper you dive into the world of potential buyers, the more you will learn about them. And you will better understand what problems you can solve for them.

Ask yourself the right questions

To get a clearer idea of how to identify your target audience, experienced experts recommend making a list of questions. By answering them in detail, you will be able to imagine the end consumer in as much detail as possible and find the shortest path to him.

Determine the gender of your consumer, decide for whom you are producing your product. Winter shoes can be created for both sexes, but for ladies these will be elegant boots, and for men - practical boots.
Find out the age category of the people you work for. Try not to spray yourself. The clearer the boundary, the more accurate the direction of the send. Fashionable winter boots with thin heels are unlikely to suit older women, and teenagers prefer sneakers even in winter.
Where do your consumers live? And if they use your products, how? It is much easier to determine the target audience of a product if you understand that leather insulated winter boots are good for a city in the middle zone, and high boots are good for a village in the far north.
What does he do? Where and in what position does he work? His motivation in the decision-making process directly depends on the level of education and social status of a person. A wealthy executive lady can easily decide to buy a second or even a third pair of winter boots, while a trolleybus driver barely has enough money and imagination to buy one weekend shoe for each season.
What does your consumer care about? What are his problems? Does he want to dress warmer in winter? Or maybe become more stylish? Or do you just feel comfortable and cozy in good quality shoes in a slushy winter? The answers to these questions are also important.

Create a description

After answering the questions asked, write a description of the consumer. Analyze your recipient’s lifestyle: where does he go, what TV shows does he watch? Rides in a car and listens to the radio? Or maybe he reads an advertisement on the rear window of a trolleybus? What restaurants does he take his wife to, what kind of films does he like to watch with his children?

A detailed story about the person for whom you created your product will quickly help you understand: where and what kind of advertising should be placed, in which news blocks to insert a promotional video. And also where to put the booklet: in the mailbox or on the table of the nearest beauty salon. Are you still wondering how to determine your target audience? Then let's look at special cases.

Determining the company's audience

Organizing your own business, especially at the initial stage, requires not only material, but also intellectual costs. And not least, along with the ability to competently draw up a business plan and develop a development strategy, is the need to determine the company’s target audience. That is, understand who your efforts will be directed at.

The peculiarity of determining the target audience of a company is the choice between an individual buyer and a business as a consumer. The analysis of the first group is more complex. The market it is aimed at is subject to significant fluctuations and, therefore, has low stability. Choosing the second segment as a target audience is less unstable, but requires significant development costs.

Target audience for the site

The specificity of determining the target audience of an Internet resource lies in a clear understanding of who may be interested in this or that content and for what purpose. When developing a website, it is important to take into account not only the gender, age and income level of possible users of the resource, but also the operating system and browser they use. A factor such as place of residence, on the contrary, will not be of paramount importance.

The peculiarities of promoting Internet resources dictate the need for a more thorough study of the interests of the audience. But, on the other hand, they provide the opportunity to attract so-called casual consumers. For example, by promoting the query “do-it-yourself car repair,” you will attract to your website not only representatives of your target audience, but also users who entered “car repair” or “do-it-yourself repair” as a query.

Another method that will help you quickly figure out how to determine the target audience of the site is to use key phrases with low and medium frequency and competition when planning promotion. In order to be as specific as possible about your group, do not use an all-encompassing “window”. Select, for example, “wooden windows with double glazed windows.”

How to determine the target audience of a service?

Determining the target audience is a labor-intensive process that requires special education and significant experience. The success of the advertising campaign directly depends on how competently and accurately potential consumers are identified and how their needs are identified and taken into account. And the return on investment in promotion.

In addition, knowledge of how to identify the target audience and analyze the behavioral characteristics of the group will make it possible to create a service that best solves consumer problems and surpasses the capabilities of competitors. In addition, it will be possible to predict changes in consumer preferences. As well as behavioral characteristics of the target audience. Based on this, the manufacturer will adjust the promotion features in a timely manner. He will have the opportunity to identify and apply the most effective motivation to influence the recipient’s purchase decision.

In order to clearly understand why you need to look for your buyer, let’s figure out what the target audience is. The target audience is a group of people who are united by common needs, concerns, and needs. These could be unmarried women over 25 years old, teenagers or mature people. Successful companies try to narrow the circle of potential buyers in order to create a clear and competent marketing message.

Any business, be it a huge company or a small enterprise, needs advertising. To determine your target audience, you must first answer the main question: “Who is my product intended for? Who is my potential buyer? There is a certain algorithm that allows you to identify your buyer. Therefore, if you need to study your audience, make a rough plan:

First, you need to clearly define who your product is intended for. First of all, determine the age of the potential buyer. Who will be interested and purchase your product? The real age of the audience, for example, is from 18 to 30 years old, from 35 to 50 years old. The scope can be changed depending on your proposal.
It is important to find out the gender of your audience and focus on this. This way you can conduct a consumer needs analysis. It will be easier for you to find the buyer’s “pain points” and thereby push him to purchase.
Income level. The choice of target audience depends on the financial capabilities of the person. Let’s say a product worth 50 thousand rubles is unlikely to interest a single woman with an income of 20 thousand rubles a month.
What does your customer do? What hobbies does he have, what stores does he presumably visit, what does he watch on TV? You can highlight these aspects using social networks. The Internet is a place where potential buyers themselves gather into groups.
Problems of target audience. It is necessary to evaluate their pain points. What do they need for complete satisfaction and happiness? What specifically prevents your consumer from making their purchases?
Buyer's dreams. What does your target audience dream about? What will your target audience listen to and what does it consider important?
Speak the buyer's language. Research by marketers shows that target audience loves when they communicate with them in their “native” language. That is, if your buyer is a person 15-25 years old, you need to use special slang, words that a person uses in life (“smiley”, “lol”, “like”, “mail”). If such words are in the buyer’s vocabulary, it is better to use them to become closer to the consumer.
How does your target audience think? Men are practitioners. They need to present information accurately, concisely, and concisely, since they have analytical thinking. Women are more creative thinkers. They need to present the storyline in the form of images and pictures.

Forming your target audience is a painstaking task. Creating your buyer persona will decide ad conversion.

What market segment are you in?

It is important to understand who and how you are selling to. The market can be divided into two large groups:

(business to business) – business business is more stable. Demand rarely changes. Working with companies is not so difficult, since they will independently promote your product. In this case, your element is product sales.
(business to customer) – consumer business is most susceptible to change. If your business sells directly to customers, keep your nose to the wind as demand can change daily. This is influenced by fashion trends, economic crises, and seasonal fluctuations.

In the consumer business, the criteria for selecting target audiences are very broad. It is important for a brand to identify a clear portrait of its buyer. Otherwise, advertising will not work. The parameters of B2C target audience are always subject to external influences. Innovative products and new items appear, so the buyer should always be kept in their ranks. What methods will help to do this?

A target audience portrait is a composite, general image of your typical client. It makes it clear how to satisfy the needs of a potential buyer. Includes data such as:

age;
location;
Family status;
occupation;
income level;
typical problems;
desires and dreams.

This is the most minimum required, which you need to know about your customers.

Often business owners do not understand who they are selling their services to. The “selling to everyone” approach works against you because you end up not selling to anyone. Generalized advertisements, attempts to make one offer for everyone, usually miss the consumer.

For example, you should be familiar with the women's clothing brand Zara. These are clothes primarily for modern women, relatively inexpensive and of high quality. Another brand is Bershka. These are clothes for young people that an adult woman will never wear.

By the way, Both Zara and Bershka are owned by the same corporation(together with other brands such as Stradivarius) – Inditex. But for each category of their clients they created a separate clothing brand. No one is trying to sell youth tops to ladies over 40.

If you want to make your business successful, you need to know who you are selling to, what problems it will solve, and how. Moreover, it is not enough to know that your clients are successful men in their 30s. The better you know your customer, the more successful your advertising campaigns will be.

A portrait of your target audience will help you

think over a competent offer, an offer that your client cannot refuse;
choose the optimal promotion channels. A simple example: if your target audience is young girls, then it makes sense to try;
think over the presentation format, website design, text style, so that it really works - in other words, you can speak to the audience in their language;
work out key triggers, hooks that can hook your client.

Let's figure it out.

How to create a client portrait

Each product may have several categories of consumers. Therefore, you will have to make not one portrait, but two or three, or even more. In other words, you need segment your audience.

Let's take shoes as an example. There is a shoe store for women. Sneakers are preferred by teenage girls. A business woman will buy pumps with heels; she is not so interested in sneakers. But a young mother will prefer ballet shoes, as they are comfortable; you won’t be able to walk around with your baby much in heels. Older women love comfortable shoes with a small, stable heel.

As you can see, the product is the same – women’s shoes, but the clients are completely different. The general description “a woman who lives in our city” will not work here.

In the store itself, which has different shoes “for everyone,” sneakers are not placed on the same shelf with shoes. Everything is sorted into departments so that every buyer can easily find what he needs.

Therefore, you need to create several portraits of your target audience. Yes, it will take you a lot of time, but it will save you a lot of money later.

Drawing up a client portrait based on information in the profile on social networks

Of course, the easiest way to create a portrait of your target client is through social networks. Let's look at the example of the social network VKontakte.

People simply write about all this on their page, in information about themselves.

Here, a person with an above-average income, a young man, married, two children, a company manager. Higher education. All this information is scanned in two minutes.

For example, this person works in the stone processing industry. Listens to heavy music. Interested in tattoos (perhaps he has one or more). He loves hunting and fishing (he is a member of groups dedicated to this, plus he has a lot of photos from fishing, in the forest with a gun). He likes interesting and unique things (follows pages with unique souvenirs and T-shirts).

Match information about groups with what you see on the page.

As you analyze profiles, enter all data in the table(from niche to niche the set of questions may vary). Separate segments of your target audience will emerge on their own.

This is what the target audience analysis for the women's shoe store mentioned above might look like.

Questions	Client 1	Client 2	Client 3
Floor	Female	Female	Female
Age	15-18	18-25	25-40
Location	Moscow	Moscow	Moscow
Income level	Supported by parents	Supported by parents or husband, earns little	Above average
Place of work	Schoolgirl	Student	Own business
Hobby	Sport	Active lifestyle	Playing guitar
Hobbies	Run	Running, gymnastics	English language
Family status	Single	Married or have a boyfriend	Single
Children	No	Eat	No
Typical problems that your product can solve	It's hard to find beautiful, fashionable shoes inexpensively	It's hard to find comfortable and beautiful shoes, but not sneakers	Comfortable and high-quality high-heeled shoes are difficult to find
Dreams and wishes	Wants to get beautiful, inexpensive and comfortable shoes, cooler than those of her peers	Wants everyday shoes to last a long time and look elegant	She wants to look her best, and her shoes should speak of her high status.
Fears	That my classmates will laugh at my new sneakers	That new shoes won't be comfortable enough because she has to walk a lot	Rub your feet with new shoes before an important meeting

Even if you don’t have a customer base yet, you can sit down and think for yourself and answer these simple questions. Go through the groups and forums where your target audience lives - there you will find many descriptions of the typical problems of your clients. This will help you create avatars more accurately.

Example of portraits of target audience of Starbucks coffee shop

Let's look at an example of audience segmentation. Take the world-famous Starbucks coffee shops. They offer their clients well-roasted coffee (you can take it with you or drink it in a cafe), sandwiches and cakes, and tea. These cafes are distinguished by their price (above the market average), quality of products, and a special, cozy atmosphere. The coffee shops have comfortable sofas for friendly gatherings and free Wi-Fi.

The target audience of these coffee shops is young people. But to be more specific:

students: here you can quickly drink coffee, have a snack, and in the meantime go online and prepare for class.
young women who come for friendly get-togethers with friends on weekends or after work. The cozy atmosphere of the cafe is conducive to warm conversations, and Starbucks also has delicious cakes and a separate line of diet drinks.
businessmen, freelancers, IT specialists - where else if not here can you meet a client or partner? Yes, and work “outside the home”, there is free Wi-Fi. Take your laptop with you and you can sit and get creative.

As we can see, these coffee shops offer special products and additional services for each segment of their target audience. This is precisely the secret of their success. And high prices don’t hurt at all 😄

Useful tools for creating a portrait of your target client

In order to create a portrait of your target audience, you can use various tools.

1. Survey serviceswill help you collect the necessary data about your clients. These could be surveys on the company's official website. For example, you can easily insert a survey created using Google Forms into your website. This service is free, and the survey can be completed in literally half an hour. All user responses are collected in one place, and they can then be easily analyzed.

2. Surveys of community subscribers on social networks– another way to find out the problems, preferences and dreams of your audience. Using an example, we see how to find out whether it is worth opening a new business at all, and whether your offer will be interesting to potential clients.

3. Your community statistics- another treasure trove of useful information (provided that you are subscribed to by clients, not bots, and subscribers are not scammed). From statistics you can find out where your clients are from, their age, whether there are more men or women.

4. Google Analytics and Yandex.Metricawill show who visits your site. Here you can also extract data about the geography, age, and gender of your visitors. That's the minimum.

5. SimilarWeb– this tool will help you understand what is interesting to the audience who visits your site. Enter the website address into the search bar, and then go to the “Audience” tab.

This is necessary (and free) minimum tools that you can use to analyze your target audience.

Don’t be lazy to study your target audience and draw up a client portrait. Yes, for this you need to sit, think, collect and process information. But in the end, you will be able to make not only your advertising campaigns, but also your business as a whole more successful.