Hey there,
We always hear that it is important to know your target audience in the PR and marketing space, but the truth is sometimes people tend to skip this part of the journey and jump right to the plan, which is absolutely wrong. You need to KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE before you can set up a plan? I mean who are you planning for if you don’t know who you are targeting?
So what does a target audience mean? Niel Patel defines a target audience as “a share of consumers that a business direct is trying to reach with their advertising (in this case PR) efforts”, while Marketing Evolution defines it as “a specific group of consumers most likely to want your product or service, and therefore, the group of people who should see your ad campaigns. Target audience may be dictated by age, gender, income, location, interests or a myriad of other factors.”
Both are right, in fact a target audience is a group of people that your business speaks to and calls to in terms of their need and want of your product or service. By understanding who these groups of people are, it will help you to fine tune your PR plan for the specific people who are likely to respond and engage with your campaign and thus your product.
How do you know your target audience?
There are multiple ways to group them, as highlighted in the definition by Marketing Evolution, it can be done by age, gender, income, location and of course the psychography of the audience in terms of their desires, interest, habits etc. You cannot talk to everyone in your plan, even if the core of your message is targeted at a whole lot of people, you still need to segment them to be able to identify which core group to speak to directly. Are they women in their 20s or women in their 30s, are they working class people or students, are they entrepreneurs? Where can you find them? At conferences or malls? What is their general income, can they afford the product you are pitching or not, are they interested in a certain medium or can they be reached online or offline? These are some of the pertinent questions you can ask when trying to identify your target audience.
A good way to plan for a product such as a new Sanitary Pad would be to categorize based on women between the ages of 13 to 25 who are just starting their periods or are exploring brand options to try on. They earn between 0 – £2000 monthly, are mostly found in urban areas, are social media savvy. They use apps like Tik-Tok and YouTube, are very conscious of their bodies at this age, are easily influenced by friends and word of mouth recommendations from people they respect and would love a sanitary pad that offers comfort, no stain and “coolness”. They are open to exploring new things and do not yet have a fixed mindset about products or brands that they love.
By doing the basic analysis, it gives you a clearer picture of who you are speaking to, who you want your communication message to be directed at and what type of message to craft to fit that particular audience. In analysing your audience, you are able to pin point the strategy that you can adopt to satisfy this group of people. It is not right to generalize, you must really dig dip and create a persona for the audience as well. You also need to know if your target audience are decision makers or if they are influencers. This means that some people rely on their parents, friends and family for support to help them purchase a product because they don’t have the buying power, but they can influence the decision making of the buyer and there are those that actually make the decisions and buy, since they have the purchasing power to buy a product or service.
In our next article, we will be discussing customer persona and how to identify the right persona for your campaign.
I hope you enjoyed reading up to this point, thank you! Join me bi-weekly in my journey into the PR world where I discuss challenges, tips, pointers, and wins in the PR career space. See you soon!
Warm regards,
The PR Chic
