The Goldbox Blog

How to define your target audience

Figuring out your ideal target audience can be tough! Here's some simple solutions to help you bring your product or service to the right people.

November 22nd, 2022

Written by Ben Collison

Figuring out your ideal target audience, or audiences, can be hard work!

You might think your product or service can benefit anyone and have no idea where to start, or perhaps you’re doubting whether anyone wants what you have to offer.

At first, it feels like there is so much to consider, and breaking it all down can be difficult when beginning to define who your ideal audiences are. Luckily, there are simple solutions to this problem!

In this blog, we are going to:

Identify the best ways to figure out your audiences

Define the different types of audiences out there

Explain how to research your audiences

Optimize your video content for the right audiences.

Taking the necessary time to plan what you put out to the world ensures you have a solid foundation to build upon.

The last thing you want is to spend a ton of time, money, and energy creating content that is not reaching the right audiences.

What is a target audience?

A target audience is a group of consumers most likely to want your product or service. They can be characterized primarily by their demographics and behaviours. This would include things like where they are located, their age, and what interests them most.

Depending on what you sell, your target audience could be broad or very niche. For example, if you are a driving instructor, your audience is going to be a huge amount of young people all with the same need.

Most business decisions, especially those relating to content creation or marketing, will be determined by your target audience's needs.

Taking the time to ask yourself who your ideal customers are, as well as conducting further research, will allow you to discover trends you can use to segment your target audiences most effectively.

The more you understand the people you are targeting and their needs, the better your content will be produced and distributed.

How to break down your target audiences

01. Demographics

These are the core segmentations to start with when breaking down who your ideal customers are. Collecting this data will allow you to create buyer personas.

Buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your most ideal customers backed by market research and educated assumptions. You should aim to make them as clear as possible, removing wide generalisations and finding the specifics instead.

Some demographic indicators that best help with this include:

Gender

Location

Income

Profession

Marital Status

Hobbies

Ideally, you want to construct a description of a believably real person using these indicators.

Saying they're around 30 - 50 years old and make a decent living does not paint a clear enough picture. Envision precisely who it is that will benefit from your product or service and build off of that.

For example:

"Jennie is a 30-year-old fitness instructor earning £60,000 a year who loves the outdoors and sports"

You can probably think of a few products or services that would appeal to her based on this information. We can certainly think of a few compelling video ideas that Jennie would be a perfect star in!

02. Psychographics

Once you have broken down the key demographics and can create accurate buyer personas, it's time to go deeper and consider how your ideal audiences think.

Getting in front of the right people is only one piece of the puzzle, understanding their psychology will allow you to create engaging content that actually fulfils their needs.

Important questions to ask yourself include:

What problems are they facing?

What are their goals and aspirations?

What motivates them to make decisions?

What excites and entertains them?

What are they looking to avoid?

By getting to the heart of what your audience is striving towards and what they are eager to get away from, you can improve everything you do in order to help them.

03. Behaviours

The final, and most strategic stage for breaking down who your ideal audiences are, is understanding their behaviours the best you can.

Important questions to ask include:

What kind of content are they already consuming?

What types of platforms do they use?

When are the best times to engage with them?

By understanding where your audience is most active and what kind of content engages them the most, you can not only create the best content for them but also distribute it in the right places.

You might be selling the coolest kids' toy in the world, but promoting it through an hour-long documentary on LinkedIn is not going to get you very far at all. No matter how good it is!

So it's important to create an enticing narrative, but you have to craft and optimize it in a way that also considers how your audience behaves.

Different types of target audience

Perhaps you are still struggling to break down your ideal target audiences, or maybe you need a different way of categorising them.

Not to worry! Here are 3 more creative brainstorming techniques to better understand your ideal target audiences.

01. Intentions

Small details make a big difference. Place yourself in the shoes of your customer and imagine their journey when making a purchase decision with you.

Ask yourself, what is it they are looking for and why?

They may be in urgent need of an immediate fix to their problem, meaning they will want a quick and easy process to go through.

On the other hand, they make be making a big decision that requires them to receive a lot of information and reassurance before trusting in you.

Factors like these are important to consider so you can focus on pushing the selling points to your target audience they actually care about.

02. Interests

Understanding your target audience's hobbies and what brings them enjoyment will drive much greater brand loyalty. It will allow you to craft personalised content that they genuinely enjoy consuming and want to keep coming back to.

Let's say your customers really care about the environment. Great! Now you get to contribute to helping the planet in some way.

Maybe there's a large part of your audience that really cares about their health. Surely you can come up with content that will improve their mental or physical health in some way right?

Focusing on positive values is simply the best way to create content. It makes your customers happy and provides you with a greater sense of purpose as well.

03. Subcultures

Subcultures are groups of people who share a common interest. Usually something like a certain type of music or sport.

Tapping into a specific subculture means you can dominate a niche and stand out from the crowd. Perhaps you're in a highly competitive industry where it's tough to compete. Start small by winning over subcultures.

Define who is not your target audience

Far too often, we can fall into the mental trap of using additive solutions to solve a problem. However, sometimes taking something away can actually provide a better outcome.

Consider looking at your target audiences from a different angle at some point and ask yourself whether there are any routes you do not want to go down.

Ruling out the types of people you definitely do not want to target develops your critical thinking skills by assessing a wider range of information. This leads to greater clarity in the long run.

You can also use this way of thinking to give more consideration to your current circumstances. For example, say you are a new small business and want to run your first video ad, but have a fairly low budget.

In order to receive a better return of investment, you should really be refining your target audience as much as possible. Then, as you grow, you can gradually expand the range of people you target.

To summarize, make sure to define and refine using subtraction as well.

How to research your audience

01. Competitors

The easiest starting point for anymore is to look at what others are already doing. Scratching at the surface alone should reveal some pretty stand-out signifiers and common trends.

Taking a look at what the leading brands in your industry are doing will ensure you do not miss the mark completely.

You do not want to copy everything your competition is doing for obvious reasons. More importantly, though, you should strive to stand out from the crowd to reach untapped market potential.

Engaging with more niche target audiences will allow you to deliver a much better service. Your execution will have so much more style and substance because you are crafting more bespoke solutions.

02. Feedback

There is no excuse for not making the effort to hear the opinions of others. You can even turn to family and friends at the very least!

However, there are plenty of other ways to receive trustworthy feedback with not a lot of effort involved.

You could get in touch with previous customers and ask them a few simple questions. An email or call is probably the best way to go about it, but why not put out some fun Instagram polls as well?

Just make sure you are willing to take any criticism that comes your way. It might sting a little to hear them at first, but correcting the most common negatives you receive can bring you spectacular results!

Besides, there will be plenty of positives as well to keep you in high spirits. Hell, you might even be able to get a few great testimonials!

03. Analytics

Utilizing proper data is a fantastic way to better understand your audiences. It might not be the most personal approach, but you can be damn sure the results will be reliable!

More than anything, taking the time every now and then to review analytics will stop you from wasting a lot of effort and money where you do not need to.

Start using features like Google Analytics, Instagram Insights and any analytics your website provides you to really understand who is interacting with you and how.

Doing so will reveal things you would likely never discover yourself. Some of this information will be useful and some of it will not be. What is important is what you do with that information.

How to apply all of this to your video content

Really, these tips can probably apply to all kinds of ways you put yourself out there to reach an ideal audience. To round off though, we want to provide you with some top tips where our expertise lay most!

01. Tone is crucial

There's nothing worse than a video that simply does not connect with the audience it is targeting. If you do not get the tone right, your audience will feel like you do not understand them and they will not want to interact with you. Rightly so!

Do you need to be informative or just deliver a really entertaining experience? Should your video be short and sweet or grand and epic? Are you going to be very formal or more down with the kids?

These are the kind of questions that make all the difference. It is so important that you know the style of video you want to make. If you just copy a bunch of ideas you have seen in other videos, the tone of your video will be all over the place because you have no clear vision.

Careful consideration of the tone you want your video to have will ensure every component is working in harmony to achieve it.

02. Getting each component right

Once you have considered the type of video you need to make to best connect with your audience, you need to optimize each component that makes up a video such as:

People - Ideally you want the people featured in your video, whether they be actors, influencers or actual employees, to be able to relate to your audience as much as possible.

Say you are promoting your new mobile game, your target audience is likely to be a young generation that watches Youtube a lot. So a smart move would be to feature some famous Youtuber gamers in your video ads to best connect with your audience and build hype.

Just make sure to pick people that act most like your target audience as much as possible really.

Locations - Picking a familiar environment that makes sense is also highly important when connecting with your audience. They need to reflect your brand image and fit the tone you are going for.

The simplest solution to this is knowing where most of your audience spends their time. Perhaps they love watching football, being around nature or staying in 5-star hotels.

Try your absolute best to pick great locations because they will be the main component that makes your videos visually appealing.

Branding - These are all the little details that go a long way! Wherever possible, try to implement your brand colours and style wherever possible.

If your primary brand colour is navy, make sure everyone wears navy clothing. Try to place on brand objects wherever possible, like cushions or posters for example.

Then when it comes to editing, make sure all the typefaces, visual effects and colour grading conform to your brand guidelines as well.

Of course, your video should have flair and originality, but when it comes to branding it needs to fit in with every other piece of content you put out. That way you can become more recognisable because you have created your own unique identity.

03. Prioritize & Optimize

You cannot do everything at once. Especially not when creating video content as each idea needs time, money and resources to bring to life. With your audience in mind, you should organise your video projects in order of what they need the most.

Do you need to build your brand? Inform people more? Guide them through a process? Entertain them? Focus on the big problems first that will remove the biggest pain points.

Creating systems that work for you and your business will also allow you to be more efficient. You can save a lot of effort and money simply by managing your time better.

For example, when producing our own content at GoldBox, we have a backlog of ideas and often bulk-shoot videos for a couple of days. This reduces stress because:

1) It allows us to form ideas much more naturally without any pressure. Rather than being stressed each week thinking if we do not come up with something before the deadline we are screwed!

2) It means that if we have a really busy week, there are still videos available that we can post. Then when we have time, we simply film and edit a few more.

Lastly, optimizing for maximum output should always be on your mind to make the most out of your content. Why settle for just one big video when it could easily be broken down into lots of little videos as well?

Create case study videos, social edits, and even snap a few photos. Whatever will give you the most bang for your buck. Be creative!

So there you have it!

That's our masterclass on how to define your target audiences and serve them in the best way! It is always important to do what you love, but within that, you should always strive to serve your audiences in the best way you possibly can. Trust us, the best things come out of it!