How to determine the target audience of potential buyers: we segment the audience and create avatars

Why do you need to know your customers well?

Everything is simple. The success of your business depends on it. Working with clients based on trust will make it easier and faster to sell a product or provide a certain service.
In this article, you will learn how to identify the target audience, and how to develop good relationships with your customers. First of all, it is necessary to pay attention to customer segmentation, that is, the distribution of buyers into categories. This includes the following points:

• what do they like?
• what do they do?
• what are they afraid of?

The answers to these and other questions will help to create a figurative portrait of the future client and determine his desires and needs.

What is the term “segmentation”, and for what purpose is it carried out?

A segment can be called a certain number of people, a group that have something in common. For example, they can be united by their place of residence (one village or city), the same working hours, gender (male, female), status (mom, businessman, housewife, pensioner, etc.).

Audience segmentation is carried out according to the following characteristics:

• data of the place of residence;
• income level;
• native language;
• social characteristics;
• seasonal and behavioral factors.

And these are not all the criteria, there may be many more. It all depends on what information you have about your customers and the level of sales.
This distribution of the market audience helps to determine how many potential buyers can be counted on, whether there are competitors, and whether there is demand for the product.
You can distribute customers into groups even if you don’t have your own website yet. However, then you will not be able to use Google Analytics statistics.

How is segmentation performed?

Segmentation of the consumer market takes place according to the criteria listed below:

• Demographic characteristics include: age, gender, education, occupation;
• Psychological ones include: goals and fears of the client, motivation to purchase;
• Place of residence data: region, local language, etc.

In Internet marketing, it is important to find out whether potential customers are able to use new technologies, in particular the Internet and electronic gadgets. How much time does a person spend on the Internet, from where exactly does he make purchases and other operations? Which device does he use: a smartphone, a laptop or a desktop computer?

Segmentation also includes an analysis of the market capacity, what it is at the moment and whether there is a chance of growth. To do this, you can use the following tools:

1. Google Trends — helps to see the level of demand and track the dynamics of purchases depending on the season.
2. Yandex Wordstat, Google AdWords — show which words and phrases are most often entered in the search engine by the target audience.
3. Serpstat — deeply analyzes users’ search queries, evaluates different sites.

If the target audience (abbreviated CA) does not know whether it needs a particular product or service, it is necessary to understand whether there is a need for it at all. To do this, watch social networks and determine how active users are on the right topic. The following resources will help in such monitoring:

• Google Alerts
• Hootsuite
• Socialbakers
• Social Mention
• YouScan

We determine the needs of each group of customers

After discussing how to identify the target audience, we will analyze each group of customers more deeply. What are their needs:

1. Functional — necessary, supporting normal life activity (food, medicines).
2. Emotional — are divided into external and internal (external needs are associated with social approval, includes the desire to join a wealthy group, and this encourages the purchase of expensive branded items; internal needs reflect the psychological state of a person, the purchase of things is motivated by the desire to please someone).

What does the buyer expect from the product? Remember, the higher its cost, the more expectations it has.

What can prevent the purchase:

• The customer does not need the advantage that a particular brand offers;
• The person took advantage of a competitor’s offer;
• The buyer does not believe that your brand is better;
• There is no desire to change the company whose product he uses;
• The buyer cannot figure out how to use the product correctly.

A deep analysis of the audience allows you to determine which category of consumers (and there may be several) will become the main one, and who will be eliminated. The main audience with the greatest profit growth potential is called the target segment. It has common characteristics:

• Maximum revenue from the target segment;
• The segment is located near the enterprise (then it is easier to deliver);
• The audience is promising, its purchasing power will increase;
• Expectation of profitable investments;
• Acceptable number of competitors, allowing the target audience to grow;
• The segment is strategically aligned with the business objectives.

It is also important to develop a template called “customer journey map”. With it, you can understand how a buyer from the main, target segment will interact with a branded product. Depending on what stage of interaction the consumer is at, he is only a beginner or already an experienced user, the appropriate advertising communication is selected.

After the target audience has been identified, it is necessary to create an audience portrait that will help the manufacturer become closer to the user.

Creating an audience portrait (avatar)

Under the portrait of the target audience, you can imagine a client from a certain audience of buyers who may be interested in your products. This is a fictional person that the marketer created based on the characteristics of the client group.

Thanks to the fictional avatar of the CA , you can:

• To guess the needs of customers and develop a KP (comp) that would affect them;
• Understand exactly where it is better to use advertising products;
• To make an advertisement that would correspond to the archetype of the client and seemed to speak his language;
• Determine which emotions should be affected by advertising.

A portrait of a potential client is created based on the following information:

1. A woman or a man, age, what kind of education, where and in what position she works, whether there is a family, where she lives. This information is collected at the stage of audience segmentation.
2. What goals does the buyer set for himself, will the product be able to contribute to their achievement?
3. What problems does the character face? Will your product be able to facilitate them?
4. What does the person dream of?
5. What can he say as an objection not to buy the product or not to use the service?
6. Where and through what does the buyer access the Internet?

Specific answers to these questions will help you create a portrait of a person who will become your client in the future. Let’s try and create a similar character that belongs to the CA of consumers of building materials:

“Yuri, 40 years old, lives in Sumy, has a country house outside the city. Most often uses a stationary home computer. Regularly makes purchases online, prefers live communication with a consultant by phone. It is important for him that the ordered materials are brought immediately to the dacha.”

Knowing the needs and circumstances of the avatar, you can understand what to focus on (in this case, it should be indicated that delivery is carried out outside the city). In addition, it is necessary to specify the phone numbers of consultants on the website of the online store.

What if we need to advertise a cosmetics store? The main target audience, in this case, will be young girls and young women. Therefore, our fictional persona will look like this:

“Marina, 22 years old. Lives in Lviv. Recently graduated from university and works in a prestigious company near the city center. Naturally, she always needs to look “sharp”, this also applies to makeup. Marina has been using the Internet for quite a long time, she goes out most often through a smartphone, sometimes through a tablet. It is important for her that the site is externally attractive, has a lot of high-quality, branded products and fits different screen resolutions, and the order arrives as early as possible.”

It seems that everything is clear here, what the marketer should pay attention to. It would be nice to add a feedback function so that clients can contact the consultant if they have any questions. Banner ads can also be decorated brightly by depicting several examples of makeup on it. The advertisement should have an intriguing call to visit the site. And on the resource itself, you can add several useful articles on how to use cosmetics.

Where can I find out information about a potential client?

Here are a few sources with which you can create a specific portrait of the buyer:

1. Data about existing customers. This option is suitable for those who have been running a business for a long time. You can conduct a survey to determine what your customers dream about, what their needs are.
2. Analysis of subscribers’ pages on the social network. Having your own group in one or more social networks is very profitable, since you can analyze who subscribed and what he might be interested in. Manually viewing each profile and evaluating it is very difficult, so use the helper sites buffer, keyhole and wolframalpha.
3. Google Analytics provides information about users who have visited your site. With it, you can find out demographic information about a person, as well as his interests in various goods, and what devices he uses. Google Analytics will help you determine which browser is most often used by the target audience to make sure that the site interface opens well and conveniently in it.

When all the information is collected, the whole team should work on improving advertising. Together, you can implement different ideas that will help attract even more customers.

We communicate with real people

There are different buyers: someone bought your product for the first time, someone compares it with the products of your competitors, while others are ready to buy it right away. Therefore, the marketing offer must meet the needs and desires of each client.

How to create content for each type of user

The brand does not stand out against the background of others — we entertain

To distinguish your brand from competitors, you can apply an entertainment strategy. For example, add:

• game elements;
• quiz;
• as bonuses — free products or discounts.

As for advertising communications, you can use the following formats:

• Graphic advertising information in the display network of the most common search engines;
• Videos for search networks and YouTube;
• Interesting entries in social networks that carry useful information.

We have learned the brand — we motivate you to purchase

To motivate a person to purchase a product that the emu liked, use:

• reviews from other customers;
• approval of famous personalities, show business stars, etc.

Brands are looking for — we provide information

In order to encourage a client with rational thinking to move from the stage of reflection to the stage of action, it is necessary to publish as much useful information about the products offered as possible. For example:

• operation manual;
• infographics;
• a short and detailed description of the product.

The brand is interested — we assure you of the correctness of the purchase

There is also the category of people who are most ready for conversion. They have already taken certain steps to purchase.
For advertising, it is worth taking the existing remarketing lists. It is desirable to distribute them into groups:

1. Users who have just selected a product, but have not yet purchased it.
2. Users who have read several pages of the site and stayed on them for 2-3 minutes.
3. Users who have already purchased the product.

Depending on the CA group, you can do the following:

1. Focus on the completion of the initiated action, that is, to buy a product that has already been put in the basket. To do this, visually remind that there is something in the basket, as well as about promotions and discounts.
2. If the audience only watched the site, make an attractive, intriguing KP.
3. For users who have already made a purchase, you can show ads calling for the purchase of additional products or novelties.

Targeting is based on remarketing lists. But thanks to Google Analytics, you can analyze the audience, see user behavior and, in accordance with this, set up targeting correctly.

So, we looked at how to determine the target audience, and how to take into account the needs of each individual buyer. Thanks to careful study of the interests of potential clients, their feelings and wishes, you will make your trade offer useful, relevant and interesting. This will help to develop trusting relationships with future customers, which, in turn, will encourage them to purchase your product.