What Is a Target Audience?
A target audience consists of individuals targeted with products, services, or marketing efforts based on age, gender, income, interests, challenges, and goals. By targeting the right audience, businesses can reduce costs and increase conversions.
For example, a high-end fashion brand may target affluent women between the ages of 30 and 45 interested in luxury goods.
Later, we will discuss how to identify your target audience. However, if you want to start immediately, use Semrush’s One2Target tool. Please enter up to five competitor domains (or create a list of up to 100), and the tool will gather information about their audiences’ demographics, socioeconomic status, and behavior.
Target Audience vs. Target Market
A target market is the whole group of people interested in your products or services. The target audience, on the other hand, is a smaller subset of the target market.
For instance, the target market for a high-end fashion brand may include affluent women, but the target audience may also include their friends and family who may buy gifts for them.
Target Audience vs. Buyer Persona
A buyer persona is a detailed profile representing a typical member of your target audience. It helps you effectively engage and address their needs.
Why You Should Find Your Target Audience
Understanding your target audience is crucial for effective marketing strategies. Tailoring your messaging, content, and advertising to the right people increases conversion rates. Additionally, targeting a narrower audience can be cost-effective. Researching your target audience profile helps in copywriting, content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing and advertising, PPC, and SEO. Knowing your audience lets you attract and convert them with the right messaging and platforms.
Types of Target Audiences
Let’s look at some of the most useful types of target audiences. Marketing to these groups can help you achieve important goals and better results.
Let’s explore some of the most useful target audience types. Marketing to these groups can help you achieve important goals and better results.
Target Audience Type
Description
Marketing Tips
Localized audience
People are located in a specific area, which can be broad (e.g., a country) or narrow (e.g., a town).
– Localize your content
– Use local SEO
Early adopters
People are eager to try new products or services as soon as they are available.
– Focus on innovation
– Offer free trials or demos
– Build a community
Competitors’ customers
People who currently use a competing product or service.
– Create comparison guides
– Target competitor keywords
Influencers
People who have the potential to influence your other target audiences (e.g., industry bloggers and podcasters).
– Create shareable content
– Leverage email outreach
– Try influencer marketing
– Start an affiliate program
Previous customers
People who have already purchased your brand.
– Invest in loyalty programs
– Use email marketing
Here are some other useful ways to define and segment your target market:
Target Audience Examples
Target market: Listeners
Target audience example: U.S. college students aged 18-23 who listen to music while studying
Persona example: Sarah is an undergraduate engineering student with a tight budget. At the library, she listens to lo-fi beats in noise-canceling earphones to aid concentration. She sometimes listens through her Macbook instead of her iPhone.
Marketing tactic ideas: Student discount promotions, landing pages for study playlists, App Store SEO
Target market: Content creators (musical artists and podcasters)
Target audience example: Emerging artists with over 3,000 followers on Instagram and at least five tracks on Bandcamp
Persona example: Luna Louise plays the guitar and uses digital audio workstations to produce electro-folk music. She plays at venues in her home state of Texas and wants to expand her audience, but she’s concerned about the streaming income model.
Marketing examples: Spotify for Artists’ events, videos, blog posts
Target market: Advertisers
Target audience example: Medium-sized businesses with a primarily Gen Z audience and an advertising budget of over $2,000 per month
Marketing examples: Spotify Advertising webinars, research reports, case studies
How to Identify Your Target Audience
Let’s explore the research methods you can use to gather all the details about your target audience.
1. Research Competitor Audiences
You and your direct competitors often have the same or similar target audience. By studying your competitors’ target audiences, you can gain insights to help you define your own.
For example, let’s use Ikea as an example to see what we can learn about their audience. To do this, open Semrush’s One2Target tool, enter Ikea’s domain, and hit “Analyze.” This tool will provide demographic, socioeconomic, and psychographic data about Ikea’s audience.
You’ll get a complete overview of your competitor’s target audience.
In the “Demographics” tab, you’ll find a breakdown of their audience by age, sex, and country.
In the “Socioeconomics” tab, you’ll find their audience’s household size, income, employment status, and education level.
In the “Behavior” tab, learn about their audience’s interests, device types, and most-used social media platforms:
Here are some key insights we can gather from the data on Ikea’s target audience:
– The majority of Ikea’s audience consists of males.
– Most of the audience falls within the age bracket of 25-34.
– Most of Ikea’s audience works full-time and has a low household income.
– 43.25% of the audience has a university or college education.
– Ikea’s audience is predominantly mobile users and shows interest in online services and mass media.
– Ikea’s audience’s primary social media platforms are YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
This information can help you better understand Ikea’s target audience and assist you in competing with them.
2. Analyze Internal Data
Use your internal analytics data to understand your target audience comprehensively. The advantage of using internal data is that it provides real user data, eliminating the need for assumptions. Consider analyzing the following internal data sources:
1. Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
2. Customer relationship management (CRM)
3. Past campaign performance
For instance, let’s utilize GA4 to examine audience demographics. Go to “Reports” > “User” > “User Attributes” > “Overview.” Here, you will find a breakdown of your website’s audience based on country, city, gender, interests, age, and language.
Review the data and feed it into your audience profile.
3. Collect Social Media Analytics
Many social media platforms have built-in analytics that allow you to learn about the demographics of your followers. Since these individuals are likely interested in your social media content, they are also interested in your products and services. Therefore, it is beneficial to gather information about them.
With Semrush’s Social Analytics tool, part of the Social Media Toolkit, you can access Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn data all in one place. In the Facebook and Instagram reports, you can use the “Audience” tab to view the following information:
– When your followers are most active online (which can provide insight into their lifestyle)
– The geographic location of your followers
– A breakdown of your followers by gender
– A breakdown of your followers by ag