Description of your working plan. How to determine the target audience for your business and why? What should the market segment be?

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 necessary minimum, 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.

One of the most important stages in creating and promoting your business is choosing your target audience. Many entrepreneurs do not take it seriously and subsequently cannot find the reasons for the low sales volume, the drop in the number of regular customers and low income. And one of the main reasons causing such problems is ignoring the real needs of the buyer and the wrong choice of the target audience.

What is the target audience?

Target audience (from English “target audience”) are specific groups of people who are interested in the services or products offered. This includes not only real, but also potential buyers. Each entrepreneur determines the target audience for his offer, focusing on different criteria:

geographical (they take into account the region, locality, population, it is also important to take into account the mentality, needs, interests of residents);
demographic (the target audience needs to be segmented depending on gender, age, marital status and the presence of children, since these factors influence interests, needs, the decision to go to the site, buy a certain product);
social (for example, education, specialty, income, immediate environment, the amount of free money that can be spent on an unexpected purchase, religious beliefs);
psychological (we take into account life principles, motivation of actions, values, dreams, interests, lifestyle).

There can be several target audiences, it all depends on the specifics of the product and the interest of buyers. It is also important to regularly analyze indicators such as size and population dynamics, because they help assess the potential market capacity, sales volume and, ultimately, the return on advertising investment and long-term growth of the company. It is especially difficult to successfully implement without taking into account the needs and solvency of the target audience in a particular region.

Types of target audience

Each target audience has a core - this is a collection of the most active and regular buyers. They bring a large share of the profit, have a high need for the product offered and are ready to satisfy it (or potentially are). The target audience is divided into 2 types:

primary, or main (from the English “primary target audience”, it is considered a priority and unites a group of people who directly decide on the need to purchase a product or service, these are the primary initiators of the purchase);
secondary, or indirect (from English “secondary target audience”, this group plays a more passive role, its representatives, even if they participate in the purchase, do not act as organizers; they are less of a priority for brand communication than buyers from the main target audience) .

You can clearly see the difference between these types of target audience using the example of the children's toy market. There are 2 types of target audience here – parents and children. The former directly buy the product, but the latter are the initiators of the purchase, who use it and need it. Therefore, they are the primary target audience for entrepreneurs working in this niche. And the forces of marketing and advertising should be aimed at attracting the interest of children. But the services must take into account the needs of car owners of different classes, their work schedule and solvency. For example, the core of the target audience consists of car owners aged 25-50, for whom quality and speed of service at a low cost are important.

Why is it important to determine the target audience?

Without correctly identifying your target audience and competently interacting with them, it is simply impossible to build a successful business. To achieve this goal, it is important to conduct market monitoring, survey a control group of potential clients, create a portrait of real clients and understand:

what they are fond of (it is important to know the interests and needs of your audience; their favorite social networks, thematic sites, the most frequent queries in search engines will help with this);
what they say about the products and services offered;
their needs and desires (it will help to attract a buyer and present the goods correctly);
their criteria for choosing and evaluating the product (this will allow you to correctly structure the information and create the correct description of the goods on the site).

The correct definition of the target audience will help you understand what the buyer needs, what goals you should strive for in order to find him and keep demand. Otherwise, the entrepreneur will not be able to build the right business development strategy and a successful advertising campaign. For example, if you promote services without taking into account the age, interests, needs and solvency of the target audience, the institution will not develop, and the amount of profit will grow.

It will also make doing business much easier. The entrepreneur will not have to be persuaded to buy the product - customers will initially be interested in it. He learns their interests and needs, simplifying the replenishment of the assortment and forming it correctly. And what is important is that thanks to this approach the owner will save a lot of energy and finances. In addition, it will be possible to significantly reduce the time required to develop and promote a business, and to quickly and efficiently create and change an assortment that will be relevant to consumers.

To assess the choice of target audience, you can use Affinity Index calculations (or compliance index), which shows the ratio of the rating for the target audience to the rating for the base audience and, as a result, helps to see how effective the product’s contact with the target audience is than with buyers in general. The higher the indicator, the easier it will be to build a business, the less money you will need to spend on advertising and promotion in the market.

Target audience - examples

Correctly defining the target audience is not so easy. In most cases, entrepreneurs make choices based on subjective indicators based on personal experience. But this is not enough, it is important to conduct a full analysis of the target audience, understand what their preferences are, how buyers think, why they choose competitor’s products, what can interest them, what influences their choice, from which device they most often access the Internet, what content is most interesting to them, etc.

Poorly chosen

An unsuccessfully selected target audience slows down business development and prevents you from creating a good sales volume. If you offer a product to people who are not directly interested in it, you will not be able to achieve positive growth dynamics for your business. One of the most common mistakes is targeting a wide audience. But, despite reaching a large number of potential customers, a very small percentage makes actual purchases, which prevents development, promotion, return on advertising costs, etc. Therefore, it is necessary to divide it into several groups and work taking into account the interests of each of them, and not according to the general rule.

Examples of a poorly chosen target audience:

women's clothing (offers a wide range at prices close to wholesale) forms its offer based on the personal preferences of the owner. She believes that the models will be of interest to all the women of her city. The age, preferences of customers, and the individual needs of those who shop regularly are not taken into account.
A children's toy store forms an assortment based on what one wholesale supplier has in stock; the interests and psychological characteristics of children, and age categories are not taken into account in the development strategy.
The online furniture store does not pay enough attention to SEO-development of the site; it specializes in selling many types of furniture, but there are only a few pieces of each item. As a result, the user with the request “furniture” goes to this resource, but the type of furniture that he needs, for example, a children’s room, is not available or there are only 1-2 options. As a result, the site traffic will be decent, but the percentage of actual purchases will be very low.

Well chosen

Correct segmentation of the target audience and individual work with each of them allows you to build your business according to a clear strategy and the real needs of each subgroup. This makes it possible to immediately reduce the segment of insolvent, uninterested buyers, and actively work with real consumers who create turnover and make profits.

Examples of well-chosen target audiences:

An online company that sells tickets for various types of transport operates not focusing on the general needs of passengers, but taking into account individual ones:
- the assortment is designed for customers of different ages and genders (men and women from 18 to 80 years old);
- this includes representatives of all segments of the population (working people, pensioners, students, disabled people, for whom comfortable conditions and necessary adaptations have been created);
- offers and promotions are created taking into account the interests and needs of different segments - fast delivery to the desired point, comfortable travel.
The line of designer women's clothing is designed for customers aged 20 to 35-40 years, its core consists of women from 25 to 30 years old, living in big cities, who work in large companies and have a sufficient level of earnings to buy branded items. Time of active shopping - from 18-19 hours. As a rule, potential buyers are self-sufficient, successful at work, have children, but do not spend enough time with them.
An online store specializing in the sale of football-themed souvenirs works taking into account the client’s place of residence and the possibility of delivering goods to him, the assortment is formed based on the different financial capabilities and interests of consumers - not only T-shirts, scarves with emblems of different clubs, but also things for dogs, computer accessories, raincoats, and inexpensive badges and stickers. The main target audience is young men aged 25 to 40 years, so marketing and advertising are aimed primarily at them.

Who can help in selecting target audience?

If you don’t have enough time, experience or knowledge to select your target audience and create a strategy for interacting with them, you should immediately turn to professionals. Special companies engaged in consulting (this is the name given to consulting on a wide range of issues in various fields; most often they work in the niche of studying the structure of the market and its trends for quality management and achieving goals) and marketing, including on the Internet, can help in resolving this issue . Professionals provide a full range of research and consulting services, organize and conduct marketing research, engage in management and investment consulting, develop and implement advertising strategies. They will help solve many important problems: determine the target audience for specific products or services, its core, analyze the characteristics of the target audience, evaluate people’s preferences, conduct special research to determine the parameters of the target audience. If an entrepreneur needs to find a way out of a specific situation, for example, draw up a portrait of the target audience, segment it, find the most effective tools for working with it, you can contact a specialized specialist - a marketer (an Internet marketer if the business is built on the Internet), an SMM specialist (from English “social media marketing”), which specializes in promotion on social networks.

Many people today operate with such a concept as target audience, although they do not realize the full depth and complexity of this term. What does it mean? This phrase in the advertising or marketing field of activity denotes a group of people who have some common characteristics, properties, interests, and therefore with a high degree of probability will pay attention to specific goods or services offered, and will respond to marketing offers or slogans exactly as expected. creators of the product.

The main property of the target audience is its needs and inclination towards certain topics, thanks to which this target audience can be effectively (the result for an entrepreneur is a successful sale) to offer any goods or services. Here are just some typical examples:

Men aged 20-35 who play sports will be the target audience for the creators of sports nutrition;
Women with a child under 2-3 years of age are the target audience for manufacturers of products for infants;
Pensioners suffering from high blood pressure will be more likely than other members of society to buy blood pressure monitors, etc.

The task of determining the target audience is key for every entrepreneur or manufacturer who wants to derive maximum benefit from their activities.

Interesting fact! Accurately identifying your potential client is the key to running almost any business.

Each field of activity has its own rules for choosing target audience. The types of target audience depend on many factors, for example, on the solvency of potential clients, their wishes and all sorts of preferences, desire to follow popular trends, etc. Each researcher of the issue has the right to make his own classification, but today Central Asia is divided by specialists into two main and large-scale camps:

The main part or main target audience. This includes those people who directly make decisions about which brand of goods to buy and what services to order. Representatives of the main part themselves initiate the future investigation; they are the owners of money;
indirect part. The characteristics of this target audience may vary, but the common thing is that its representatives have a passive role in a future purchase or order. They cannot initiate the transaction, do not have money at all, or enough money to purchase something.

This division is now the most used and widespread in the West and in Russia. Research into target audiences of both types is important for marketers, as it allows them to develop the most workable solutions to implement their assumptions.

How to identify the target audience and analyze it

A huge number of marketers are involved in determining the target audience, who strive to guess the wishes of potential clients as much as possible and make sure that their partners are sold out as intensively as possible. The values of each target audience may diverge significantly, so it is important to define your target audience very clearly. For example, you can try to form a target audience of gadget lovers, but if you ask how many of them love smart watches or smartphones, it turns out that there are very few of the former. Therefore, a smartwatch seller cannot count on such an audience.

To determine your group of buyers, for whom certain things will then be offered, you can use simple sources, for example,. Today, almost everyone uses it, so there is no problem in finding out the mood of the people and their disposition to buy this or that thing at a certain price. It is important not only to compile a database of interests of your potential buyers, but also to periodically refresh and optimize it with updated data. For example, periodic surveys are suitable for this. Analytical services Wordstat and Google Trands will help you understand the overall picture of demand on the Internet for a product or service at a specific time in the desired region. Using these services, you can find out in which region which queries are most popular. For example, you can see how the demand of the target audience (the number of requests on the Internet) for the purchase of scooters in any city in Russia grows or falls over time. This tool is useful for performing analytics.

To determine your potential consumers, you must first of all draw up a portrait of a typical client. This is necessary in order to clearly understand with whom you will have to interact and what rules you should adhere to.

Drawing up a client portrait should take into account the following important points:

Selection of the target audience begins with determining age;
The gender of a person plays a very important role, since women and men in most cases are aimed at completely different objects for purchase;
Income level. The key point to which the manufacturer or seller of goods or services must adapt. If people don’t have the kind of money you expect from them, then no matter how good your proposal is, it will not receive a response;
Marital status, level of education and cultural development, field of activity - these are no less important points that are always worth remembering.

The description of the target audience should be as complete as possible, especially where it concerns really important things. This is the only way to expect maximum response from the consumer. The benefit of drawing up an adequate portrait of the average client is that the entrepreneur will be able to take extremely reasonable steps and minimize the likelihood that there will be no takers for his product (see).

Segmenting your target audience using the 5W method

Target audience segmentation is the process of dividing potential buyers into separate groups that will have similar requirements for a product or service. The more competently the segmentation is carried out, the more accurately you can determine the group of people interested in the product. People are not original and they always have some common views on the product, requirements for it, wishes regarding delivery features, etc. Segments of the target audience, even regarding the same market position, may be so different that they will not agree with each other on the main issues. For example, take washing powder. One lady needs laundry detergent, another needs laundry detergent at any water temperature, and a third needs powder with a strong deodorant effect. They all end up in different interest groups.

There are many segmentation methods, but the most famous and popular among them is the 5W method. This is the 5 questions method, which consists of answering the following:

What– what product or service you offer, how they differ from others;
Who– here there is segmentation by buyer: for whom your offer is intended, who can buy it;
Why– a motivational component that explains why people will want to buy this particular item;
When- This is a division in relation to when the consumer will need to buy the product offered;
Where- Where a person might come across the idea that he should get his hands on the thing you are offering.

This is segmentation of the target audience according to the 5W rule. It is quite specific and allows you to quickly determine the portrait of your future consumer. Having a portrait of the target audience compiled using the 5W method, you can take on product development much more confidently.

There are many characteristics that can be used to describe target audience. Most often, division occurs according to the following key parameters:

Geolocation. It is very important to understand where your future client is, where he lives, works, what he does in his free time, where he will use the thing that you are trying to sell him;
Demographic data. This includes age, gender, marital status, presence or absence of children, and other similar things. They are of key interest to a competent marketer, as they allow you to very accurately determine a person’s hobbies;
Socio-economic characteristics. How much money does your potential visitor have, how much of it is he willing to spend on what you offer him, what status and place he occupies in society, what he does in his business life. The portrait of the target audience, an example of which was given above, will be incomplete without such information;
Psychographic segmentation. Quite a difficult task, which sets the goal of taking into account the mental characteristics of the consumer. But studying them is difficult, so the picture here will always be incomplete;
Behavioral factor. The most important point, which, if implemented correctly, can replace all the others. For example, if you are going to sell fishing gear, then it is not at all necessary to know the age, place of residence and mental characteristics of each fisherman. It is enough to know that they love spinning rods and large bright floats.

The golden rule of any business is to know and understand your customer. To successfully conduct a product promotion, it is very important to find out who your target audience is, their wishes, and what could interfere with the purchase. You can learn about this and much more from our article.

What does the term mean?

The target audience is the probable and actual buyers of the product. Under the influence of promotional events, they make a choice in favor of this product.

The target audience is not all people without exception; it includes a certain part of the market or a separate category of buyers for whom this product (service) is intended.

Let's consider its types

The heart of the target audience is constant consumers of the product (service) who have high purchasing power. They contribute to the growth of product sales and provide stable and good profits to the business.

So, the following types of target audience are distinguished:

The main audience and secondary (indirect).
Wide and narrow.
Audience from the type of target group. Target audience in the field of business (B2B) and individual consumption (B2C).

The first decides to buy, is its initiator. That is, consumers independently form the demand for the product they need.

The indirect audience takes part in the implementation, acquiring secondary importance. Because representatives of this type of target audience may not buy this product at all.

Let's give examples of the target audience

Let's consider both types using the example of providing services that entertain children, who will be the main target audience. Because they are the ones who will become users. A child wants, for example, to jump on a trampoline, but is not able to pay for this fun. Then they resort to the help of parents, who make a purchase (of a product or service) and thereby become an indirect target audience.

In order to accurately determine the main and secondary audiences, you need to correctly distribute the roles: who will become the incentive to purchase, who will be the person giving the go-ahead for its implementation. Identify the influencer, buyer and end user.

Let's take an example of purchasing a pacifier for a baby. The initiator of the purchase of the product and the person who will make the decision to purchase will be the mother (the main audience). This also includes the grandmother, who can also act as a motivator for action and have a significant influence. But the father, who goes to the store to buy something, will become a representative of the indirect audience. The end user will be a baby who does not belong to any group.

An example of a broad target audience is lovers of sweet pastries, while lovers of sponge cakes are a narrow target audience.

We looked at examples of the target audience. Now it’s clear how to recognize its types and highlight the essence.

So, to summarize, the target audience is a certain community of people who are most likely to purchase your product. And before we proceed to further discussion of the topic, we will answer one important question.

Do we need to know the target audience by sight?

Of course, because a complete representation of the target audience:

promotes more effective sales;
expands and improves the boundaries of the use of advertising tools, which are designed to convey information about the product to the consumer in the best possible way;
at the stage of drawing up a business plan, it makes it possible to make an accurate assessment of the size of the market, which will serve as the main aspect for a successful start and profitable investment;
provides comprehensive information on the possible improvement of existing products and services on the market, on the creation and launch of new ones.

It can be seen that analysis of the target audience is a very important stage in the development of advertising policy, which cannot be postponed. This can cause loss of funds, customers and part of the market. Therefore, it is extremely important to know your buyer personally, take into account wishes and requirements. How to determine the target audience?

Definition, stages, methods

Let us repeat, the target audience is a community of probable and indirect buyers of a product (service), united by similar parameters and indicators, signs of segmentation. Let's consider the main ones:

gender;
full age;
whether married;
place of residence;
speciality;
education;
number of family members;
material wealth.

The model for describing the target audience based on these characteristics will look like this: women aged 30-40, with good earnings and higher economic education, work in the management of government agencies, living in a large city with a population of 500 thousand people.

But the use of general characteristics alone to determine the target audience is not enough. As a result, it turns out to be vague, and it becomes difficult to decide on the choice of advertising methods of influence. And you can also get the wrong figure for calculating market opportunities. Therefore, in order to reduce the scale number of possible buyers, it is necessary to use other characteristics and relationships between the components. This is nothing more than segmentation. The more specifically the segment within the target audience is defined, the better the result will be from ongoing promotions aimed at these parts. You can also use other criteria.

We characterize the target audience according to psychological characteristics

Based on these characteristics, it can be outlined:

by behavior (gaiety, sociability, leadership, ambition, and so on);
according to life passions, social and public values, principles (relation to nature, struggle for ecology and cleanliness, etc.);
by life position, lifestyle, hobby, favorite pastime;
according to the buyer's behavior model from the moment of desire to the actual purchase of the product;
by determining the place of purchase of the goods, method of use;
in relation to price;
by reason of choice and action inducing use.

This concerns psychographic characteristics. Let's consider the description of the target audience in the B2B market.

The following characteristics can be used:

type of activity, product range;
amount of workers;
sales volume for the year;
scale of production (local, national and international);
number of branches;
who makes decisions;
sales of products and factors influencing it, for example, seasonal production;
price policy.

These are the characteristics of the target audience. Let us note the following: the more criteria we apply, the more specific the portrait of a potential buyer will emerge.

You need to know that there can be several segments. But the target audience needs to be divided into segments, taking into account certain characteristics. It is necessary to work with each individual individually, using appropriate advertising tools.

If you understand the pain of your customers and, in the flow of information, you can draw their attention and interest them, you can sell everything on the Internet - even houses for several million rubles.

This table crystallizes the advantages and disadvantages of your business compared to your competitors. You clearly see how to build, what you should focus on, and what is better not to mention. This information will help you present your product or service more favorably to the consumer than your competitors.

With a comparison table, it is easier to form several USPs for different campaigns and understand how to write texts. In the West this is called SWOT analysis.

SWOT analysis is short for

S : strengths, strengths;

W : weaknesses, weaknesses;

O : opportunities, possibilities and

T : threats, threats.

SWOT helps you analyze external and internal business factors - your own and your competitors' - and make strategic decisions based on the data obtained.

Secret agents

Then the fun begins - you turn into secret agents and try on the personalities of the buyer. For example, one of the clients of our fitness club is a stylish girl of 25-30 years old who dreams of sculpted abs and a healthy, beautiful body. She goes to the club with an annual subscription - in the morning or in the evening after work. Now you must become this girl and go under her mask all the way - from calling and buying a card to the first lesson.

This “game” will help you become completely immersed in business. It is not enough to draw detailed portraits of representatives of all segments of the target audience and conduct online surveys; you must “go out into the public” to see how the audience behaves, what language they speak and what they want.

On the spot, you will easily notice additional advantages and be imbued with new ideas - even the most detailed comparison table will not help you with this.

We register brand avatars

Another useful technique for working with target audience is creating brand avatars. An avatar is an average image of the target audience.

For example, for our agency this is the owner of a medium-sized business from Moscow, let's call him Andrey Sergeevich. 40 years old, owns a chain of high-end restaurants, has two children and a wife who does accounting for these restaurants. Andrey Sergeevich loves gadgets, cars, expensive clothes and travel and invests in real estate. Things are going well, but now the businessman is looking for new promotion channels and wants to tidy up the restaurants’ social media pages.

In fact, your target audience may have many segments, but if you need to target one person or give a collective image, an avatar comes in very handy. Like, for example, in a course on personal promotion Digital Bandito Eva and Pavel introduced three characters: copywriter Petya, confectioner Masha and event organizer Vasya. The course is not intended only for representatives of these professions, but it is clearer and easier for students to identify themselves with one of them.

When you create brand avatars, you create real people. Specific Sasha, Katya and Nastya who need your product. You think about how these people live, what problems they have, and what solution they will come to you for. You address avatars in advertising texts and show how you will solve their problems. And this distinguishes you from competitors who offer a product or service without reference to the world of the target audience. You can sell an abstract smartphone, or you can sell belonging to a culture of successful people who think differently, as Apple does.

Target specific people - this is how you improve your advertising campaigns and increase sales.

Making audience maps

The next stage is segmentation and creating an audience map. Let's look at it again using the example of a fitness club.

The visitor chooses the service, the time of visit and the type of subscription that suits him. For example, many businessmen and office workers can only study in the evenings; and it is more convenient for young mothers to come in the morning. Different segments of the fitness club audience have different motivations. Let's take women: someone is losing weight, someone is energized, and someone likes to dance and move in rhythm. The same applies to men - everyone has their own motive for visiting a fitness club.

Segmentation will help you accurately calculate the needs of each subgroup of the target audience and select the closest advertising message.

Target audience for context, SMM and SEO

The target audience within one business or project will be the same for contextual advertising, SMM, and SEO. But how you target your chosen segment depends on the specific tool. The right targeting methods will help you understand customer behavior in each medium (social media and search engines) and build advertising campaigns that will make people pick out your product among the deluge of digital clutter and pay attention to it.

Targeting Methods for SEO

The principle of targeting in SEO is the division of target audience segments. Develop a separate landing page for each search query - then the search engine will index your pages well and lead the user to where he needs to go.

Targeting methods for contextual advertising

In contextual advertising, we play in search engines and networks, and here the user will go to the one whose ad seems more attractive. But seduce your potential client carefully - people do not like intrusiveness.

Targeting methods for SMM

SEO and contextual advertising specialists work with hot audiences who know what they want and are actively looking for it. But in Target the audience is cold - people “walk” on social networks and are not going to buy anything. Here you don’t have time for flirting and warming up - the text and picture should hit the target from the first sentence. Your job: find the pain of each segment of your target audience and provide such a cool solution that a person who just a minute ago did not know about your product becomes interested and clicks on the link, or at least, thinks about buying and remembers you.

Working with insights from negative comments

Love negative reviews - they will give you insights for new approaches, help you see and work out customer fears and objections and improve the product. How to react to negativity:

Separate trolls and haters from normal people. Send the first ones to ban, take the comments of the second ones into work.
From constructive criticism, highlight objections and work on them in detail. Don't just respond to a negative review correctly, but fix the problem itself. For example, your courier delivered your purchase two hours late. Think: How can you optimize the process so this doesn't happen again?
Show people what solution you have found. Write a post about it so they don’t have any doubts.

Eva Katz , managing partner of the 5 o’click agency:

“It’s always better to listen not to the comments of satisfied customers, but to those who did not buy or for some reason had a negative experience - they provide much more insight than laudatory reviews. Therefore, we always try to get feedback from those people who did not become buyers. Those who didn’t buy help to see doubts and objections in order to further address them in content and comments.

From the agency’s practice, I’ll give the example of Donskoy. It is new, trees are being planted there, but our photos on social networks were not enough for our subscribers to understand that there is a lot of greenery in the village. In the comments they wrote that the streets were bare and there were no trees, so we came to the client and asked to take photographs that would show the greenery of the village. Afterwards, they released a series of materials where they talked about the work on landscaping the village, showed the streets and courtyards of people and got a client to view.

It turned out that the man had great doubts, but new posts cleared up his doubts. He ended up buying a house after watching it. And there are many such examples. We are very careful about the negative experience of the audience, work with it and benefit from it.”

Negative customer experiences are the fuel for new ideas and improved content and service at all stages of the sales cycle. If, of course, this is adequate criticism with specific and justified claims. Satisfied customers are much more impressed by the competent handling of objections in comments and the development of the brand than by the removal of constructive comments and the banning of “undesirable” ones.

Interview customers who didn't become buyers

People don’t become buyers for many reasons: some can’t afford it, some are dissatisfied with the service, product or service, some don’t have a purchase in their short-term plans. Instead of guessing and throwing resources at improving everything at once, conduct a survey of customers who did not become buyers. People love it when brands are interested in their opinion. The answers will give you new insights, reveal negativity and previously unnoticed fears, objections, pains and desires of the target audience. You can improve your advertising campaigns and increase conversions.

Generating ideas: brainstorms, live conversations in cafes and a cloud of ideas

American TV series about doctors and police officers often feature a large white board where the characters write down diagnoses or, accordingly, unsolved cases. We also have one - we “unload” a cloud of ideas or a cloud of tags onto it. It looks quite strange - we sit in a room and throw out incoherent words, voicing everything that comes to mind. But then cool ideas emerge from this that can be developed further.

Have team brainstorming sessions. When you switch things up and get out of the box, new ideas immediately appear. Sometimes they are completely crazy, but among them there will probably be several worthwhile ones. Creativity dies during intense hours of work on one task - at such moments the eye becomes blurred, and the brain, tired of monotonous work, does not see new paths.

But ideas come not only from brainstorms and tag clouds. Sometimes it could be a conversation with an old school friend or a casual evening out with friends. In a relaxed state, you are able to look at a task from a different angle. And a person not from your professional environment can suggest an interesting, unconventional solution. Collecting people's stories and impressions of the world around them is a useful practice for a marketer. How can we not remember about storytelling, which has captured social networks and the hearts of users.

Testing new ideas using heidi loops

Heidi loops can help you test new ideas. Determine the purpose of the test, the desired results, the time period, and decide how you will interpret the data obtained.

Heidi loops are an ideal tool for testing hypotheses. What is their essence: almost every action affects one of the metrics. If you formulate certain hypotheses, plan changes and calculate approximate final indicators, you can control the process. With the help of heidi loops, you will understand how actions affect results and quickly test all ideas. Discard unworkable hypotheses and keep valuable ones.

In each test, follow the algorithm: hypothesis → action → analytics → conclusions. For example, what will happen if instead of rational texts in advertising campaigns on social networks, we focus on emotional and figurative ones?

Hypothesis (hypothesis)

So, our hypothesis: “emotional texts in a Facebook advertising campaign will increase conversion.” Here you can substitute any key indicator of the project that needs to be changed or improved. And put forward a hypothesis according to the principle “if I change this, then the output will be such and such a result.”

Action

Data (data collection)

After the completion of the advertising campaign, we collect all the data and count the leads. At this stage, you should have analytical tools that will help you control the process from start to finish and clearly track the stages of the “action→result” chain.

Insights

Based on the data obtained, we conduct a detailed analysis and draw conclusions about whether our hypothesis worked. Did emotional texts really bring us more leads? How much more compared to the previous advertising campaign? Compared to all ad campaigns running before the experiment? Then we either refute or confirm the hypothesis, and start a new cycle.

Psychological triggers: we put pressure on explicit and implicit motives

Each person has their own motives for buying a product or service. Our task is to play them in advertising campaigns.

Implicit motives

Imagine an advertisement for an SUV. In the video, the car drives off-road, effectively passing difficult sections, and the voice-over talks about the enormous engine power, all-wheel drive, stylish design and the fact that the car is suitable for any type of road. And now the potential client already imagines how he goes on a hike with friends or to the mountains on the weekend, and on weekdays he shows off in the city. There is not a word about this in the advertising, but the human brain figures everything out on its own, reading the subtext.

Psychological trick: our subconscious clearly sees these encrypted messages and perceives them positively, without requiring justification or evidence. After all, in fact, we ourselves think everything out, which means we don’t analyze it.

Implicit information is suppliedimplicatures- ambiguous meanings (the author of the theory is the English philosopher and linguist Herbert Paul Grice). You give the target audience subtext, seasoned with literal information, and create the illusion of independent decision-making.

Explicit motives

Explicit information is specific and direct - it does not need to be thought out, revealed and interpreted depending on life experience, character and preferences. It could be a call to action, a promotion, or a free product sample.

Specificity reinforces implicit information. With its help, we deceive the brain - it sees a clear message and thinks that it is making a decision rationally.

Mix explicit and implicit motives in the right proportions

Then the client's brain will do everything for you - it will see the literal message and unconsciously consider it hidden. Put the most important information into this hidden message: put pressure on emotions and pains, add triggers - the subconscious mind will believe in the image you need and will not require proof. A person will become hooked on new sensations without buying anything yet, and in anticipation of pleasure, the brain will begin to produce dopamine. Under the influence of this hormone, the client will make a purchasing decision. Rational criteria again lost to emotions.

A good example is Nike's powerful campaigns, which never encourage girls to play sports, but appeal to their desire to be strong, beautiful and independent. Nike woman is a confident woman who knows her worth, does not depend on a man and lives the way she wants. This image resonates with many girls.

The same video “What are our girls made of” that received a huge response:

Sell not a product or service, but a dream

By knowing the dreams, desires, values and inner motivations of your target audience, you influence them with the right images. After all, in essence, we do not need perfume, but the feeling of being beautiful and sexy; not a car, but status, comfort and mobility.

By launching an advertising campaign, you are selling clients the fulfillment of their dreams. How can you fulfill a person’s dream without knowing what he wants, how he lives and what kind of life he strives for? Therefore, a complete analysis of the target audience goes far beyond the soulless “woman, 25-40 years old, married, two children, average income, Moscow.” These are mannequins, and we focus on living people. Don't be afraid to spend a few days creating avatars, custom scripts and segmentation and try on the role of secret agents. It will pay off; the client will definitely choose you.

And finally: a checklist for launching successful advertising campaigns from 5 o’click

We have combined all the information from the article into a short summary. Use this checklist and launch successful advertising campaigns that will increase your sales!

Collect data about your target audience using surveys and analytical services for websites and social networks.
Turn your data set into real people: create brand avatars and buyer personas.
Analyze your competitors and your business and enter all the data into a comparison table.
Write down user scenarios and follow the customer journey from first interaction to purchase.
Divide a wide target audience into narrow segments and make a mental map of the target audience. In the mind map, you should have the motives, pains and desires of potential customers that you will use in advertising creatives.
Determine the behavior of your audience in social networks and search engines and create several different ads for contextual and targeted advertising.
Regularly organize brainstorms, generate new ideas and test them using Heidi cycles.
Work with insights from negative comments and surveys of customers who did not become buyers.
Strengthen your advertising campaigns with triggers, implicit and explicit information.