Optimize sales with target group definition and personas
Whether you offer online courses, publish a video podcast, or sell shoes, in order for your product or service to reach your customers, you need to think about who your target audience is. But what exactly is a target group? How can you define your target group? What role do personas play in target group analysis? And how do you actually get data and information to learn more about your target group? Read our overview.
What is an audience?
A target group is the mental grouping of people with common characteristics, desires and behaviors. You can take advantage of these characteristics and desires for the development and marketing of your product or service, since your target group corresponds to your potential customers.
What is the use of target groups?
In order to know who you want to address with your product or service, you need an audience. There is often a great danger that providers want to appeal to too many or everyone with their offer. This can mean that your message is too broad and you end up not addressing anyone. If you use online advertising or social media ads that are paid according to visibility, they will also fail to have an effect without a precise definition of the target group.
However, if you know who your target group is, you can tailor your sales approach, target advertising and tailor marketing and acquisition activities to your desired customers. In content marketing, this means that you offer content that is useful and relevant to your target group.
By the way: Ideally, the target group definition does not only take place when your own offer is ready, but already in the development phase. If you are wondering who your ideal customers are and what needs you can cover with your product, align your offer with your target group right from the start.
How is a target group developed?
At the beginning of the target group definition there is the question: Who is interested in our offer? It is worthwhile to first analyze your own offer and ask yourself: What is the benefit of our product or service for our customers? What distinguishes our offer from those of our competitors? What expertise can we offer?
Based on this, the development of personality traits will help you to define your target group:
4 characteristic categories in the target group definition
To define your target audience, consider four categories of personality traits:
Demographics:
Age Gender Marital status Place of residence Household size
Socioeconomic characteristics
Level of education Profession Income
Psychographic Characteristics
lifestyle values and opinions interests needs and desires
consumer behavior
Media use Price sensitivity Purchasing behavior
Personas
Once you have compiled the personality traits of your target group, it is worth deriving personas from them. This means that you develop an ideal-typical representative from the rather abstract characteristics of your target group, who represents this group of people with similar characteristics and goals. By assigning these representatives to your target group with names, characteristics and interests, you humanize the previously determined target group characteristics. Incidentally, personas do not always have to be fictitious. In the case of existing customer contacts, you can also use real people as a guide.
Target groups in B2B marketing
So far we have dealt with the target groups in B2C marketing, i.e. with the end customers. But what about target groups in B2B marketing? Of course, it is also worth defining a target group if you want to reach companies with your offer instead of end customers. However, this requires a change of perspective. The personality traits mentioned above are not decisive for the target group definition, but rather the company’s economic characteristics, such as legal form, company size, industry, finance and geographic region. In addition, with B2B marketing, offers are often created specifically for the inquiries and individual wishes of business customers and tailored to their needs.
Where does the information for the development of target groups and personas come from?
The target group definition should be based on statistical data and research whenever possible. There are several sources available for this:
Research whether there are any publicly available studies, investigations and market research results in your industry. Web analysis tools such as Google Analytics: If you already have a website, you can evaluate the usage behavior of your visitors and draw conclusions about their characteristics and interests. Social media data: If you maintain social media channels, you can use the statistics available there to define your target group. Include comments, questions, and feedback from your followers as well—this is valuable information about the needs and wants of your target customers. SEO tools like Google Keyword Planner provide insight into what your potential customers are looking for and what is frequently requested. Customer surveys: Ask existing customers about their wants or needs, either in person or via a survey on your website or social media channels. Feedback from existing customers: Use existing customer relationships and transactions with your customers to find out who they are and what drives them.
Now it’s up to you: Start today to define and analyze the target group for your company offer. We hope our overview will help you.