How to get started with target audience profiling

Have you wondered why people ignore some posts and pay more attention to others? Well, you are about to get the answer in this marketing guide. Pretty sure you have come across things like “Buyer persona” or “Audience profiling” and might have given it a dead ear. Well, maybe not. But you see, digital marketing is a little tricky field if you ignore the most critical things.

Users are continuously bombarded with new information on a daily. So, they have become more selective about what information they consume on the internet. In the end, you will most likely get rejected if you are not talking to the right audience.

So, instead of trying to sell to everyone, why not choose a specific target audience? Remember, if you try to sell to everyone, then you’ll end up selling to no one.

This marketing guide will answer the following questions about audience profiling:

• What is an audience profile and buyer persona?
• How do I create a target audience profile for my business?
• What is the difference between buyer persona and audience profiling?
• Which one is the best audience profile example to use.

So, without any further ado, let’s dive into the detail of audience profiling:

Audience Profiling and Buyer persona

Audience profiling and buyer persona assist in describing the most appropriate audience for your business. Perhaps targeting everyone doesn’t make sense. Instead, its essential to discover people most likely to use your products or services. That should be your target audience.

Not everyone, of course, will be interested. So, we recommend you concentrate on the few who badly need you. And the only way to achieve this is through target audience profiling and building a specific buyer persona.

1. What is Audience Profiling?

Target audience profiling generally means collecting data about your target customers. Then, segment this data into different groups (target audience personas). In other words, you’re grouping your audience according to their characteristics. For instance, days of the week they are most likely to shop, payment methods, and the hobbies of your target audience are good examples of customer characteristics.

This way, you can understand your customer behaviour better, which helps you create customized campaigns. As a result, it increases the chances of having the most significant impact on potential customers.

So, the idea is to develop an audience profile for each segment you have created. Then, build marketing campaigns that suit their different behaviour. 

What are the types of target audience profiles?

There are countless aspects you may look at while focusing your marketing effort. But we’ve found the following three points essential while performing audience profiling for our clients:

• Demographic-based target audience profile: Segments customers on the following qualities. The work they do, their income, and their age group. Gender, family or relationship status, Language. Preferred channels or buying concerns of each person. 
• Geographic target audience profile: Groups target audience personas according to their location. Are you targeting a local or international audience? Some brands might also target both audiences. But, again, it depends on your resources.
• Psychographic target audience profile: Groups customers according to their personalities, behaviour and trends. For instance, you may want to segment your audience according to their pain point and how they spend their free time, hobbies, and interests.

2. What is a buyer persona?

A buyer persona is a fictional character built to represent an existing target audience. It is sometimes referred to as customer persona, audience persona, or marketing persona. Whatever you call it, make sure to carry out deep research while creating the desired persona.

Having the right target audience for your campaigns is more important than anything. So, buyer persona, like audience profile, also depends on the data gathered about your customers. Thus, this helps you understand your target audience and how to talk to them.

What is the difference between creating a buyer persona and audience profiling?

• Buyer persona and audience profile may serve the same purpose. Only that Buyer persona is more beneficial for B2B marketing. In contrast, audience profiles may serve B2C marketing better.
• Secondly, a buyer persona tends to concentrate on the professional aspects of your audience. Therefore, it prioritizes business information about a person. At the same time, an audience profile considers any essential information that describes a customer better.
• Besides, one audience profile might be enough in some cases for your B2C audience. But, you might need different buyer personas to target your B2B audience. We have expanded on this point with an example below.

Imagine you are running a courier service-providing company. And your target customers are restaurants. Then, you might want to create a buyer persona for each stakeholder. Hence, a persona for everyone involved in the decision-making process. 

That is a buyer persona for the human resource, General Manager, and another one for the CEO. This is because; these personalities might have different considerations. So, addressing each of their needs might give you a competitive advantage.

On the other hand, you would not need many audience profiles in managing a restaurant. This is because people from different backgrounds and professions might like your products the same way.

How to create a target audience profile

Target audience profiling and buyer persona are crucial in creating effective marketing strategies. They help you tailor your campaigns to suit a specific target audience. As a result, you will serve your customers better. So, here are the four simple steps to help you create the first target audience profile for your business:

Step #1: Know your target market and customers

Every business has a target consumer group or market regardless of size. These are the potential customers that are most likely to enjoy your products or services. You might have an idea about your ideal customer base if your business is already operating. But, a new company would first conduct customer research to understand their potential customers. In that case, the following strategies may apply:

• Study the market and identify the new trends in your industry.
• Use customer surveys to understand customer concerns.
• Research your competition and understand where their customers come from.
• Use digital marketing analytics tools like Google Analytics to study your audience.

All the above will help you focus marketing efforts on the people most likely to buy from you. In the end, you’re investing in the most critical processes of your business. And that will make your marketing more efficient and successful.

Case study for our target audience profile example:

You would need to research about the latest computers if you were running a computer store. What specifications do users look out for the most? Who sells what computer brand, and what customers buy it the most? In that case, for example, you might learn that university students, Lecturers, and business personnel make up your audience profile.

Step #2: Segment your target customers into groups.

Divide your target audience into different sub-groups depending on their characteristics. Afterwards, create a description for each audience segment.

Remember, audience profiling aims at helping you understand your audience. So, a broad description of these segments will help you create personalized campaigns. Here are some of the examples of segments you can create for your target audience profiles:

• Demographic Segmentation: Your customers’ gender, age, occupation, marital status, income, and more.
• Geographic Segmentation: Country, state, city, town, etc.

Still, with the computer store example, here are the target audience segments you would create.

• Gender: They might be Female or Male computer buyers.
• Age: Might range from 20-60.
• Occupation: Lecturers, Students, Business Owners.
• Marital status: Both single and married might need a computer.
• Location: Kampala, generally around the University (halls and hostels).

Step #3: Describe your target audience’s pain points

By now, you at least have an idea of your target audience and their respective segmentations. So, the next step in our audience profiling process is to identify the challenges or problems they face. 

The idea is to find a way of tailoring your products or services to solve these problems. Therefore, here are some of the ways you can use to identify the challenges your target customers face:

• Set up online surveys and open-ended questions to capture customer feedback
• Create social listening to capture what people are saying. It involves the use of social media to track customer conversations.
• Set up live chats to have an exchange with your customers

All these will help you in finding out the needs and problems of your target audience. Here are the examples of the pain points we base on for the target audience profile example we have illustrated in the above sections:

• A lecturer might need an office desktop computer with good memory storage to carry all students’ data. Also, one that is durable and with a strong processor.
• A student will need a slim-sized laptop computer with a good battery that can last long hours of reading. And one that easily connects to the internet for research.
• A business owner might need a big monitor computer with a good display that also supports longer working hours without straining their eyes. Additionally, one that has enough RAM and capable of connecting to other devices like projectors.

Step #4: Create your target audience profile

Finally, combine all the above information to develop your target customer profile. This is the final step in the audience profiling process. Looking back at our case study, below is the target audience profile example we’ve developed.

The above information gives you an idea of the person who will respond positively to your promotions, products, and services. The social media channels to concentrate on, and the content types you may create. In general, your target audience profile should include the following :

• Baseline demographics such as age, gender, income, location, and education information
• Modes of communication your target audience uses such as Social media, emails, text messages, or phone calls.
• Pain points or the common problems your target audience is facing. These are the reasons a customer has when looking for your products or services.
• What inspires their buying decisions
• Customer psychographics such as likely and dislikes, hobbies, and inspirations

Final Remarks

As we conclude, we hope this guide has answered your most burning questions. So now you know how to create a target audience profile for your business. And the difference between target audience profile and buyer persona.

We are confident the target audience profile example illustrated above will help you more. If you have any inquiries about audience profiling, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We’re always ready to help!