How to identify your target market

How picky are you when it comes to defining your target audience? Having a crystal clear understanding of who your target market is, who isn’t, and what details set them apart is what will supercharge all your marketing strategies.

When you know your target audience inside and out, from where to find them and how to talk to them, you’ll be able to produce marketing campaigns that drive significant results, whether you’re after brand awareness or cold hard sales.

But getting your target audience right isn’t a question of stacking some demographic filters on top of each other – we humans are far too complex for that.

Just think about die hard Apple users, and those who swear by Android. On the surface, they seem like very similar people, yet there is something that makes them different.

In this guide, we’ll help you find those differences and walk you through the essential steps to identify your target market and how Attest can help streamline this process.

What is a target customer?

A target customer is a specific type of consumer at which a company aims its products and services. Your target market is the sum of all those people. Inside your target market, there will be several market segments of people you can group together.

Having a clear understanding of these segments is crucial — just think back to Apple versus Android. The more defined these segments are, the more focused all your marketing efforts can be.

Many brands get stuck at defining a larger target market, without zooming in on the customers they try to reach, which makes their target market as a whole more blurred and less defined. They’ll find that reaching the right people is difficult. The best way to deal with that, is to identify a niche market, rather than trying to appeal to everyone.

Why targeting a niche market is crucial

Finding your niche is essential if you want to spend your marketing budget wisely. There’s a common misconception that having a clearly defined niche means you only target a really small target audience, and that that could affect your sales potential. But that’s not what niching down about – it’s about having a super clear definition of who is and who isn’t your target audience.

Targeting such a specific target market rather than a broad audience helps to:

• Increase marketing efficiency: You can focus your resources on segments that are more likely to convert, rather than wasting money on marketing to the masses.
• Run better marketing campaigns: Your marketing messages become a lot more impactful and more clear when you know exactly who you’re speaking to, where, and in what tone.
• Improve your product development: When you know exactly who you are creating a product for and what they need, design choices will be a lot easier to make.
• Boost customer retention: Customers who feel like a product – or even a whole brand – was made for them, are more likely to stick around.

Not everyone is your target customer

That’s good news! There’s not a single product out there that everyone uses, unless oxygen would be sold in supermarkets. At the same time, it’s important to recognize that not everyone who buys from you is your target customer.

A customer can fall out of your target audience, just like a target customer isn’t guaranteed to buy from you.

When some customers may fall outside the ideal customer profile (ICP) you’ve identified for your business, it’s important to take note of it and start collecting data on it. Over time, you can then learn whether there’s cohesion in their profile and if it makes sense to group them in a new segment, which is one of the benefits of consumer research.

It boils down to not just formulating who your target customers are, but seeing if this is reflected in who’s buying from you, and perhaps changing your definitions based on that. This strategy allows you to focus your efforts on the most valuable segments.

What is target market segmentation?

Let’s take a closer look at how to define the segments within your overall target audience. Market segmentation means you will divide your broader market into smaller, more defined categories based on various criteria such as demographic data, geographical location, and psychographic segmentation. These differences can seem small and insignificant, but can make a whole world of difference in the way people research or buy products.

Some profiles may look exactly alike. Take two 28-year-old working women, who both live alone in the city of New York. They go to the same gym, they both take care of their health with supplements, and they are both vegan. Easy-peasy, or is it? If one of them has sworn off social media a year ago and the other one is vigorously scrolling on Instagram between her sets at the gym, there are different ways you will be able to target these women – which could group them in different segments.

Only when you get that up close to your target market to create meaningful segments, can you truly start addressing their unique needs and preferences. This is especially important if you have multiple target markets.

Key criteria for market segmentation

What kind of criteria to choose for your market segmentation will depend on your product, your goals and other strategies. But the more you know, the better. Here’s how to identify target market segments:

1. Demographic segmentation: The basics, such as age, gender, income level, education level, and marital status.
2. Geographic segmentation: Where are they based? What’s the weather like out there?
3. Psychographic segmentation: Dividing the market based on lifestyle choices, values, interests, and attitudes.
4. Behavioral Segmentation: Segmenting based on consumer behaviors. How do they shop? Which social media do they use? Which brands do they love and hate?

Benefits of market segmentation

When you segment your market, you’ll be able to create customized campaigns and tactics to reach all your different target audiences with precision. Here’s how that helps your brand:

• It focuses your marketing efforts: If a specific group needs a little more attention to boost sales, you can work on that, rather than creating a campaign that targets everyone. It also makes your marketing message more relevant and personalized.
• It optimizes your marketing budget: Since you can only spend every dollar once, segmentation helps you use resources more efficiently by targeting segments that are most likely to convert.
• It improves customer satisfaction: When you market products and services that meet the specific needs of different target market segments, people will feel more seen and heard.

If you want to start defining your key market segments, check out our market analysis template.

Target market analysis: How to identify your target audience

If you want to get clarity on who your target market is — whether you’re starting out as a new business, or pivoting an existing one — the best strategy is a systematic approach, and we’re here to help. Follow these steps to find your target audience and refine your niche marketing through market research,

1. Identify your customer base

This step is important for existing businesses. Identify your customer base by analyzing your current customers and understanding their common characteristics. As we mentioned, your prospective customers and actual customers might not be exactly the same. You can use tools like CRM systems and sales data to segment and profile these customers. Have a look at:

• Customer demographics: Age, gender, income, education and other demographic information.
• Purchase history: What products are they buying, and how frequently?
• Customer feedback: What are your current customers saying about your products?

2. Gather consumer feedback from surveys

With surveys, you can further solidify your knowledge of your target audience. Use these to learn what your potential customers think about your product or service and what improvements they would like to see, or find out what marketing campaigns resonate with them.

Getting this direct data from your target audience enables you to make data-driven decisions for your business. It takes the guesswork out of marketing and product development, and helps you build stronger relationships with the people in your target markets.

3. Conduct focus groups

A great way to know your target audience and the differences between segments is to sit them together in a focus group. This will allow you to gather first-hand qualitative data about your potential customers’ preferences, behaviors, and pain points, and see how they think and interact. This can provide deep insights that surveys alone might miss. In focus groups, you can explore:

• Customer opinions: What do your potential customers think about your product or service?
• Behavioral insights: How do they use your product, and what features do they find most valuable?
• Unmet needs: Are there additional features or improvements that they would like to see?

You’ll get a more nuanced understanding of consumer behavior and shared characteristics, which is key for creating tailored messaging and products. Focus groups also provide a platform for real-time feedback, enabling you to ask follow-up questions and dig deeper into specific topics.

4. Create customer profiles

Start by developing detailed customer profiles or buyer personas that represent your ideal customers. Pay close attention to details and key characteristics such as age range, income level, family status, and even core values. Having a visual representation of who your target audience is will be helpful for everyone on your team, whether that’s customer support, market, sales or product development. They’ll then know exactly how to create products that meet their needs, give stellar customer support and create more personalized marketing campaigns.

5. Optimize your business strategy based on your (new) niche

Once you know who your target customers are, it’s time to cross reference that with your existing strategies. Or, if you’re launching a new business or project, start building your strategy from the ground up, with the right target audience in mind, every step of the way.

For existing businesses, this might mean you have to update your product features, pricing, or distribution channels based on what you learn from your market analysis.

6. Use a mix of primary and secondary data

Good research hygiene means combining primary data (directly from your surveys, focus groups, and customer interactions) with secondary data (existing data from market reports, studies, and competitor analysis) to get a holistic and balanced view of your market.

The more mixed your data sources are, the easier it will be to cross-check its accuracy, and the more detailed your research outcomes will be.

7. Start marketing

Let the fun begin! Once you have identified your target market, you can begin marketing to specific segments. Based on the outcome of your research, you can choose to put your marketing focus on content marketing, social media, email campaigns, OOH or anything else that popped up during your consumer research.

How having a specific target market helps real-world businesses

The brief calls for another lift of the benefits of having a clear ICP, but we’ve been over that already a couple of times. Instead, choosing to focus this part on an Attest example.

Case Study 1: Ocean Bottle

After five years in business, Ocean Bottle realized they had lost track of who their target customers were. They had started out focusing on direct-to-consumer sales but had then expanded into the B2B market. Sales were great, but they did lose the connection to their original target market. They noticed the marketplace was getting more and more crowded and competition was coming in hot, so they decided it was time to go back to basics and refine their marketing strategy, this time including both their existing and potential customers.

Using Attest they were able to develop detailed buyer personas, based on a mix of consumer behavior that they researched, and the existing data they had.

The results showed their existing customers were older than expected. They also identified new niche markets among users of competitor products. With this insight, they refined their targeted marketing by focusing on two key personas: ‘Progressive Peigh’ and ‘Active Ash.’

All of this leads to better marketing messages, an optimized marketing budget and even a new product range that is completely tailored to their ICPs.

If you want to read the full case study, check it out here.

Case Study 2: Little Moons

What made Little Moons take a closer look at their target customers? For them, it was going viral. The brand exploded on TikTok, leading to a surge in sales. Which is great, but Little Moons wanted to be smart about it, and find out who was actually buying all their ice cream, and whether these people would consistently pay the premium price of nearly £5 per pack.

Using Attest, Little Moons was able to identify their most valuable target market quickly. They aimed to discover who the bigger spenders on premium ice cream were and which brands they were competing against.

Just like ocean Bottle, Little Moons found out that the customers they had been selling to were actually older than they had anticipated. Their key target audience wasn’t the younger social media crowd, but well-off people aged 30 and above that had the disposable income for regular purchases, and a little ice cream treat every now and again.

Knowing this, Little Moons has been able to adjust their marketing strategy and consistently target this demographic, with the right messaging and right product prices. They’ve now not only gone viral on TikTok, but also secured global PR and press coverage, which has helped them to reach even more new customers and increase sales. Here’s the whole case study.

For more insights on gathering consumer data, read our article on how to gather consumer insights.

Identify target customers & market segments with Attest

With Attest’s platform, you have everything you need to truly understand and connect with your target market. Whether you’re looking to create detailed customer profiles, explore how different market segments respond to your products, or test out new concepts with pinpoint precision, Attest has you covered. Plus, with expert support just a click away, you’ll never be navigating these insights alone.

Explore how Attest’s consumer profiling service can help you identify and understand your target market.

For more information on tracking brand performance, check out our article on brand tracking.