Criteria ca. How to make a portrait of the client (target audience). Main target audience

Good day, dear friends! We have a very important topic on the agenda.

Do you want to start a VK group with an audience of many thousands? Sell manual work? Or maybe you are planning to open an online store? Then this article is for you. We will talk about the target audience.

The target audience(abbr. TA) is a group of people who are united by common signs and characteristics (gender, age, place of work, income, dreams). They are easily persuaded to buy, because they themselves are interested in purchasing your product / service.

Who needs to analyze their target audience:

• marketers;
• entrepreneurs;
• managers of contextual, targeted advertising on the network;
• copywriters when writing sales texts.

Anyone who knows how to work with the target audience is always one step ahead of the competition.

Incomes of the population are growing slowly, and there are more and more options for spending money. Hoping for a spontaneous purchase is like waiting for weather by the sea.

Agree that a couch potato who spends all his time watching TV does not need roller skates or a subscription to a fitness center. Of course, it is possible to pack, present any product as a candy. But the results will be miserable, and much more effort and money will be spent on copywriters, advertisers and designers.

Stay with me to find out where to find your client, how to work with him.

What threatens the absence of CA

Many entrepreneurs are not serious about planning, they try to sell goods to everyone, and not to the target audience. This is a gross mistake.

The description of the target audience is useful for:

• marketing plan,
• unique selling proposition,
• writing articles for a product or store,
• design work.

For clarity, I will give an example of a bad description of the target audience and a good one. Let's take washing powder and ask ourselves the question: "Who uses it?"

Bad answer: "Women 22 - 60 years old."

Where did we go wrong? Let's figure it out.

We did not take into account the properties of the product. It is important to consider whether this powder is expensive or cheap, of a well-known brand or unknown for what type of laundry.

Let's say our powder - an economy class, a new brand, for washing machines, eats away stubborn stains.

We describe the target audience as follows: “Women 23-50 years old. Housewives, married, have children, do not want to spend all the time doing laundry, clothes often get dirty, get tired of housework.” Of course, this is not enough. But selling a pack of powder with such a description is easier. We do not take data from the ceiling - we conduct research, surveys, observe people in real life.

What threatens a blurry characteristic of the target audience:

1. Big spending on advertising budget. About 70% of the funds will be wasted.
2. The failure of the product in the market, low competitiveness.

The ideal target audience is an audience that:

1. Wants to buy your product/service. People with gas heating do not need electric heaters.
2. Has enough money to buy. It is inappropriate to open an elite alcohol store near communal apartments.
3. Accepts advertising. Some do not believe commercials, articles, even when they simply inform about the product. Others fundamentally do not buy promotional products.

What is CA for business? This is a way to increase sales at minimal cost.

What types of target groups exist

People are different. It is important to understand this and take it into account when defining the target audience.

At the planning stage, it is important to decide which market segments you will work with. There are two of them in marketing:

1. B2B- wholesale purchases, cooperation with a legal entity. In English - “business to business”, which means “business for the sake of business”.
2. B2C - retail for final consumption. In English it is called "business to customer". It translates as “business to consumer”.

If you are focused on B2C, you will run into difficulties. This segment of the market is less stable and changes several times a year. New products appear, the level of income of the buyer decreases or increases - all this affects the portrait, the behavior of the consumer.

B2B is easier. Client - entity who buys goods in bulk for resale or the needs of his company. Fluctuations only occur during a financial crisis.

The target group consists of 2 parts:

1. The core is the leading target audience, which decides where to buy a product, in what quantity and when.
2. The minor group are people who participate in the purchase “without desire”.

I'll give you an example. Women want a fur coat, but ask men to buy it. They are the core. Husbands, boyfriends, fathers who pay for goods are a secondary target audience.

Expanded and narrowed target audience are also two varieties. Fans of perfumery are an extended group, admirers of French perfumes are a narrowed one.

We are looking for information for the analysis of the target group

Follow your customer as he walks from the store to the house - not best idea. We will act professionally. Namely, we will connect websites, social networks to work, ask around people on the street.

Questionnaires divorced like touch phones. If you want to know more - write in the comments. In the meantime, I will give you links to resources where you can conduct a survey, find your consumer.

Questionnaires are posted here:

• Simpoll - the demo version is designed for 3 questionnaires, if you want more, you will have to pay 150 rubles. monthly;
• Survio - they give 5 questionnaires for 100 questions for free, to expand the functions you will have to pay a tariff (1,800 rubles = 100 surveys), you can embed it on your website;
• Google survey forms - free, available after registration;
• iAnketa.ru - ordering surveys is paid, the cost varies from 500 to 2,000 rubles;
• Testograf.ru - surveys can be created for free without a limit, the price of a premium package is 1,390 rubles. The site is optimized for tablets, phones;
• SurveyMonkey.ru - 10 surveys per 100 respondents are given as a trial, then at the rate of 1,790 rubles. for 30 days, you can add to your page, send invitations by mail.

When there is not enough experience, there are problems with the compilation of the questionnaire and analysis. It is not clear what questions to ask, how many there should be. Don't worry, there are ready-made survey forms:

• test of a new product, brand- helps to get an opinion on changes, for example, the appearance of different flavors in tea or a change in packaging design;
• service level test- you will find out how consumers relate to the quality of service of your company;
• test for loyalty to your site/blog- the information will help you understand how many times you were visited on the page, what you liked and didn’t like, how to improve the site.

For lazy users who have client base, I suggest automatic service from Yandex. Based on e-mail addresses and social media accounts, the program will tell you everything about the current target audience.

Useful information for webmasters from Google will help competently optimize the site for beginners.

Don't want to spend money on surveys? Then use social media. Post your polls in groups or analyze other people's.

Unique monthly traffic - 27 million people. 2 million of them publish posts daily. The female audience prevails - 58%. Main age group- from 23 to 45 years (63%).

• Twitter

The total number of users - 8 million. Users posting records every day - 1 million more men than women (52.4% and 47.6% respectively). Traffic often comes from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk region.

• Livejournal

He is still alive. 110 thousand bloggers live here with their creativity, dead accounts - 12 million - a terrible figure. The male audience gathers more than the female audience (54% and 46%). Young bloggers. From 18 to 35 years - about 2 million.

Summing up, we can say that St. Petersburg, Moscow and the Sakhalin region are the most “social”. They read for days news feeds on social networks, mostly girls.

We define the target audience

Before describing our audience, we must understand that it, as something generalized, has similar features: age, behavior pattern, place of residence. At the stage of determining the target group, we do not delve into individual traits. Pay attention to what unites the group.

What kind common features need to analyze:

1. Social. We are interested in how the consumer interacts with society. Studying or working, married or single, where he lives and how much he earns. We need a lot of details, so it would be nice to find out the type of activity, specialty, the nature of the relationship with the partner (if any), the composition of the family.
2. Demographic. The perception of the world is affected by: cultural values, nationality, gender, age. It is known, for example, that people after 50 years of age are not prone to drastic changes. They are used to using the same brands and rarely try new ones.
3. Psychological. and marketing formulas work better when we know the character, habits, dreams, goals, life principles of the consumer. You can supplement the psychological portrait of the client with other features, conduct an in-depth analysis. It would be nice to know how the consumer relates to the price, whether he is ready to pay more for the sake of good quality or prefers economy class products.
4. Behavioral. If this point is analyzed correctly, you will easily push the target audience to buy. You must understand why a person wants to buy a product, how important it is to him, whether he likes to experiment with different brands.

This is already enough to begin to understand the client. But we will not dwell on the listed characteristics. We must learn to make a portrait, to work with it.

Making a portrait: 20 important questions

These questions usually begin the “selection round” of each survey. They determine the “entry” of the interviewee into the target audience. If it enters, the survey continues; if not, it ends.

We ask:

1. How old are you?
2. What's your gender?
3. Where do you work?
4. Are you full time or part time?
5. Are there children in the family?
6. How many people are in the family?
7. What is your monthly income?
8. How much money is left after payment utilities, grocery shopping?
9. You are married?
10. Why would you like to purchase this item?
11. How confident are you in your future?
12. What do you do in your free time?
13. Do you own your own home or do you rent?
14. Where do you live?
15. What goals have you set for yourself?
16. Are you happy now? If not, what would you like to change?
17. What is most important to you in life?
18. Where do you see yourself in 2 years?
19. What sites do you visit often?
20. Are you learning? If yes, then to whom?

The list is unchanged. You can customize it for yourself.

What will the car dealer ask? Will the client change the car, if so, which one, how many cars does he have now, etc.

How to determine the target audience on the Internet? To find out how people feel about your product, what they like, use the Yandex.Wordstat and Google Trends services.

Consider Wordstat. Enter the name of any brand or type of product and see search statistics for the last year. You can narrow the analysis range to one month or one week.

For example, I simply entered “buy a blouse” for clarity. The results are detailed, suitable for both a marketer and a SEO specialist.

In Google Trends, you need to click on "Query History" to see detailed statistics.

Do not forget that the recognition of the target audience of the product may be on different levels, as well as the degree of involvement in the purchase.

Segmenting the target audience

Segmentation is the division of the target audience into narrow groups with similar characteristics. It helps to test, fix the attitude to the product or service.

The target segment is the group of people most receptive to buying. She purchases the product first.

The 5W method will help us. It was developed by consulting specialist M. Sherrington. This is a 5 question questionnaire. It allows you to find out how the client “breathes”, how he thinks.

We ask:

1. What(we offer)? Wallpapering or leather armchairs.
2. Who(will use the product, make purchases)? A business woman who entrusts repairs to professionals, or a family who wants to change the furniture in the apartment.
3. Why(the consumer needs your product, what problem will he solve with it)? A young girl is tired of sleeping on a cot in a new apartment. She wants to relax on a soft double bed. Here it is important to take into account the needs of the client, focus on Maslow's pyramid.
4. When(the purchase will be made, under what circumstances)? During a sale or holidays (an internal factor independent of marketers).
5. Where(consumers will purchase the product/service)? On the website, in a regular store, online store, etc.

Visualize your target audience. Attach a photo of your typical consumer, whether it is a plumber Vanya or a neighbor Lyuba.

Having found out the attitude of the target audience to the brand, you can divide it into conditional subgroups:

• Devotees. They use only your product/service, buy from you.
• Doubtful. More often they buy a product from you, but sometimes they turn to competitors.
• Former. Were your customers, but switched to other brands.
• Inexperienced. Previously, they were not interested in this product/service, they do not know anything about prices and brands.

In each column, we indicate the percentage of the total number of target audience. The numbers are taken from surveys and interviews.

We are looking for the target audience from the reverse

You do not know what type of sales you will be engaged in, but you want to make good money? Do you need to expand your business? Then it is better to look for the target audience by profit.

For example, you are simultaneously attracted by the sale of appliances and doors in bulk. You can't make a choice, but you want to earn.

At the planning stage, you scan all types of target audience, filter out unpromising ones, and focus on demand.

What do we take into account:

• how much the consumer earns;
• how much the consumer makes purchases per season;
• how much time it will take to purchase goods, sale;
• How often will the profit come in?

This is how you start successful business move ahead of your competitors.

Examples of target audience analysis

We figured out how to describe a potential consumer. Now I will sketch a few examples for clarity.

Example #1: Dark Chocolate

Bitter chocolate. We position the product as healthy. It helps lift your spirits. We conduct a survey, think who will be interested in a product with such properties, put ourselves in the place of a potential buyer.

1. Who buys: women 25 - 45 years old.
2. Why: to treat yourself, enjoy the taste, treat your friends.
3. When: I want to take a break from work, drink tea alone or with someone, watch a movie or series.
4. Where: a store at home, work, on the way.
5. Income: varies from 10,000 to 20,000 rubles.
6. Media preferences: watch TV, videos on the Internet, prefer entertainment content.

Example #2: Fitness Consulting

Let's say we're a young fitness trainer who decides to work remotely. For the first 2-3 months, you need to recruit a minimum of 10 people, a maximum of 20. To do this quickly, we draw up a summary of the service.

1. Service: compiling a menu of proper nutrition and training regimen.
2. Who orders: girls from 20 to 40 years old.
3. What problems: discord in family life, it is difficult to recover after childbirth, it is a shame to appear overweight in a bikini, tight clothes.
4. Why: want to attract male attention, show off their curves on social media during the beach season.
5. When: dissatisfied with their figure, lack of male attention, self-esteem falls.
6. Where: more often on the Internet, less often at fitness trainers.
7. Income: on average from 25,000 to 30,000 rubles.
8. Media preferences: YouTube video channels, social media monitoring.

Example #3: Selling Sewing Machines

We sell an electromechanical sewing machine worth up to 7,000 rubles. in the online store.

1. Who: women 30 - 60 years old.
2. Occupation: seamstresses or housewives.
3. Why: To repair old clothes faster, sew new ones to save money.
4. When: at will, the old machine broke down or it doesn’t exist at all.
5. Where: online stores (at least 35%), offline stores.
6. Family status: Married/divorced, with children.
7. Income: from 15,000 to 25,000 rubles.
8. Media preferences: melodramas on TV, popular Russian TV series, talk shows.
9. Note: subscribed in Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki to groups about needlework, home economics. Most are conservative.

I wrote an approximate description of the target audience. It may be wider.

How to attract the target group?

When the data is collected, the long work with the target audience begins. It is necessary to prepare a good advertising material, calculate the places of audience congestion, find and form channels of influence.

Success - payment for the order, conclusion of the transaction; failure - the client turned around and left.

From acquaintance with the product to purchase, the consumer goes through five stages:

1. Product Introduction. A person sees advertising on TV, on the Internet, on billboards or stores.
2. Knows brand and product well. The ad worked. She sat down in the head, a potential consumer discusses it with friends.
3. Loyalty. If the consumer needs a product / service, at the time of selection, he will lean towards you.
4. Confidence. The person understands that you offer him the best of the market assortment.
5. Conversion. A potential customer becomes a real customer by making a purchase.

You can compose selling texts, shoot videos, taking into account these stages. It will also help to increase conversion.

1. Start with the triggers of fear, need, pleasure.
2. Fight off any objections that may arise.
3. Point out the properties of the product, its advantages.
4. Call out emotions.
5. Give arguments so that the consumer justifies the purchase with logic.

To get clients, you need to catch them. To do this, we must collect enough information. Find out:

1. Where the consumer spends his day, when he has free time, where he likes to go.
2. When and under what circumstances a customer might need your product.
3. Where the customer is before the need arises. Children's furniture and clothes are bought by those who go to the gynecologist, are discharged from the maternity hospital, and attend courses for expectant mothers. There you can broadcast advertisements, hang posters, offer leaflets, rent premises for a store.

How to find and capture an audience using the Internet? There are several effective channels:

• mailing list,
• site management,
• contextual advertising,
• SMM promotion in social networks,
• targeted advertising,
• content marketing,
• banners,
• teaser ad.

You probably have a dumb question: “How do I know which channel is best for my target audience?” The matching index will help you. This is a formula by which you can calculate the power of influence of a particular type of advertising.

Marketing Mistakes

Mistakes in marketing adversely affect sales.

Analysts from BrightEdge found that over 50% of internet marketing content is ignored by users. Money for advertising companies go to waste.

There are two main reasons:

1. One-time target audience search. Needs, tastes, and attitudes towards brands change, so you need to update your target audience data at least once a year.
2. Vague description of the target group. Men 25 - 35 years old - a bad portrait of the target audience. From the fact that you remove people who do not fit the definition from the zone of attention, the level of sales will not fall. But you less money spend on advertising.

Why do marketers keep making trivial mistakes? Many lack knowledge and experience. Marketing is popularized, so even just “amateurs” do it.

Don't want to be a teapot? Do you dream of writing sales texts with 100% results? With us you can go through, learn how to write not only selling, but also informational texts.

Conclusion

Do not joke with the search for the target audience. The irony will result in the loss of money, the death of the business.

Start thinking, describing the target audience even before the launch of sales. You do not have the opportunity to call everyone for a cup of tea for a heart-to-heart conversation. Use the results of real polls, watch people, see statistics in Google and Yandex.

On this I say goodbye to you. If you have any questions - ask in the comments. I will be glad to answer.

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The golden rule of any business is to know and understand your customer. For successful In a product promotion, it is very important to find out who your target audience is, their wishes, which can interfere with the purchase. You can learn about this and much more from our article.

What does the term mean

The target audience is the probable and actual buyers of the product. Under the influence of promotional activities, they make a choice in favor of this product.

The target audience is not all people without exception, it includes a certain part of the market or separate category customers for whom the product (service) is intended.

Consider its types

The heart of the target audience is the constant consumers of goods (services) who have high purchasing power. It is they who contribute to the growth of product sales and provide a stable and good profit to the business.

So, the following types of target audience are distinguished:

1. The main audience and secondary (indirect).
2. Wide and narrow.
3. Audience from the type of target group. Target audience in the field of business (B2B) and individual consumption (B2C).

The first decides to buy, is its initiator. That is, consumers independently form the demand for the product they need.

The indirect audience takes part in the implementation, acquiring secondary importance. Because representatives of this type of target audience may not buy this product at all.

Let's give examples of the target audience

Let's consider both types on the example of the provision of services that entertain children, who will be the main target audience. Because they are the users. The kids want, say, to jump on a trampoline, but are not able to pay for this fun. Then they resort to the help of parents who make a purchase (goods or services) and thus become an indirect target audience.

In order to accurately determine the main and secondary audience, you need to correctly distribute the roles: who will be the incentive to purchase, who will be the person giving the go-ahead for its implementation. Identify influencer, buyer and end user.

Let's take the example of purchasing a pacifier for an infant. The initiator of the purchase of the product and the person who will decide on the purchase will be the mother (the main audience). This also includes the grandmother, who can also act as a stimulus to action and have a significant impact. But the father, who goes to the store to buy, will become a representative of an indirect audience. The end user will be a kid who does not belong to any group.

An example of a broad one is lovers of sweet pastries, and lovers of biscuit cakes are a narrow target audience.

We looked at examples of the target audience. Now it is clear how to recognize its types and highlight the essence.

So, to summarize, the target audience is a certain community of people who are most likely to purchase your product. And before we proceed to further discussion of the topic, we will answer one important question.

Do we need to know the target audience in person?

Certainly, because a complete representation of the target audience:

• promotes more effective sales;
• expands and improves the boundaries of the use of advertising tools that are designed to convey information about the product to the consumer in the best way;
• at the stage of drawing up a business plan, it makes it possible to make an accurate assessment of the size of the market, which will serve as the main aspect for a successful start and profitable investment investments;
• provides comprehensive information on the possible improvement of existing products and services on the market, on the creation and launch of new ones.

Everything shows that the analysis of the target audience is very important. milestone when developing an advertising policy, which cannot be shelved. This can cause loss of funds, buyers and part of the market. Therefore, it is extremely important to know your buyer in person, to take into account the wishes and requirements. How to define the target audience?

Definition, steps, methods

Let us repeat, the target audience is a community of probable and indirect buyers of a product (service), united by similar parameters and indicators, signs of segmentation. Let's consider the main ones:

• gender;
• full age;
• whether he is married;
• place of residence;
• speciality;
• education;
• the number of family members;
• material wealth.

The model for describing the target audience based on these features will look like this: the fair sex is 30-40 years old, with good earnings and higher economic education, work in the management of state structures, living in a large city with a population of 500 thousand people.

But using only general characteristics to determine the target audience is not enough. As a result, it turns out to be vague, and it becomes difficult to make a choice. advertising methods impact. And you can also get the wrong number to calculate market opportunities. Therefore, in order to reduce the scale number of possible buyers, it is necessary to use other characteristics and relationships between the components. This is nothing but segmentation. The more specifically the segment within the target audience is defined, the better the result will be from the ongoing promotions aimed at these parts. Other criteria may also be used.

We characterize the target audience on a psychological basis

Based on these characteristics, it can be described:

• by behavior (gaiety, sociability, leadership, ambition, and so on);
• according to life passions, social and public values, principles (relation to nature, struggle for ecology and cleanliness, etc.);
• by life position, way of life, hobby, favorite pastime;
• according to the buyer's behavior model from the moment of desire to the actual purchase of the product;
• by determining the place of purchase of goods, the method of use;
• in relation to the price;
• by the reason for the choice and the action that prompts the use.

This is about psychographic characteristics. Consider the description of the target audience in the B2B market.

You can use the following features:

• type of activity, range of products;
• amount of workers;
• sales volume for the year;
• scale of production (local, national and international);
• number of branches;
• who makes decisions;
• sales of products and factors affecting it, for example, seasonal production;
• price policy.

These are the characteristics of the target audience. We note the following: the more criteria we apply, the more specific the portrait of a potential buyer will become.

You need to know that there can be several segments. But the target audience needs to be divided into segments, taking into account certain signs. It is necessary to work with each separately, using appropriate advertising tools.

In order to clearly understand why you need to look for your buyer, let's figure out what the target audience is. Central Asia is a group of people who are united by common needs, worries, and needs. It can be unmarried women from 25 years old, teenagers or people of mature age. Successful companies try to narrow the circle of potential buyers in order to create a clear and competent marketing message.

Any business, whether it is a huge company or a small enterprise, needs advertising. To determine your target audience, you must first answer the following questions: main question: “Who is my product for? Who is my potential buyer? There is a certain algorithm that allows you to identify your buyer. So if you need to study your audience, make a rough plan:

1. To begin with, you should clearly define who your product is designed for. First of all, determine the age of the potential buyer. Who will be interested in and purchase your product? The real age of the audience, for example, from 18 to 30 years, from 35 to 50 years. Frames can be changed depending on your offer.
2. It is important to know the gender of your audience and focus on it. Thus, you can conduct a consumer needs analysis. It will be easier for you to find the "pain points" of the buyer and thereby push him to buy.
3. Income level. The choice of target audience depends on financial opportunities person. Suppose a product worth 50 thousand rubles is unlikely to be of interest to a single woman with an income of 20 thousand rubles a month.
4. What is your buyer doing? What are his hobbies, what stores does he supposedly visit, what does he watch on TV? You can highlight these aspects with the help of social networks. The Internet is a place where potential buyers themselves accumulate in groups.
5. CA problems. It is necessary to evaluate their pain points. What do they need for complete satisfaction, happiness? What specifically prevents your consumer from making their purchases?
6. Buyer dreams. What is your target audience dreaming about? What will your target audience listen to and what does it consider important?
7. Speak the language of the buyer. A study by marketers shows that the target audience loves to be spoken to in their “native” language. That is, if your buyer is a person 15-25 years old, you need to use special slang, the words that a person uses in life (“smiley”, “lol”, “like”, “mail”). If such words are in the lexicon of the buyer, it is better to use them in order to get closer to the consumer.
8. How does your target audience think? Men are practitioners. They need to accurately, concisely, concisely present information, as they have analytical thinking. Women are more creative thinkers. They need to submit storyline in the form of images and pictures.

Forming your target audience is a painstaking task. Creating your buyer will decide ad conversion.

What market segment are you in?

It is important to understand to whom and how you are selling. The market can be divided into two large groups:

• (business to business) - business business is more stable. Demand rarely changes. Working with companies is not that hard as they will be promoting your product on their own. In this case, your element is the sale of goods.
• (business to customer) - consumer business is most subject to change. If your business sells directly to the customer, keep your nose to the wind as demand can change on a daily basis. This is influenced by fashion trends, economic crises, seasonal fluctuations.

AT consumer business The criteria for selecting target audiences are very broad. It is important for a brand to identify a clear portrait of its customer. Otherwise, ads will not work. The B2C target audience parameters are always subject to external influence. Appear innovative products, novelties, so the buyer should always be kept in their ranks. What methods will help to do this?

If you understand the pains of your customers and in the flow of information you can draw their attention and interest them, you can sell everything on the Internet - even houses for several million rubles.

This table crystallizes the advantages and disadvantages of your business compared to your competitors. You clearly see how to build up, what is worth focusing on, and what is better not to mention. This information will help you present your product or service more profitable for the consumer than competitors.

With a comparison table, it is easier to form several USPs for different campaigns and understand how to write texts. In the West, this is called a SWOT analysis.

SWOT analysis - short for

S : strengths, strengths;

W : weaknesses, weaknesses;

O : opportunities, possibilities and

T : threats, threats.

SWOT helps to analyze external and internal factors business - their own and competitive - and based on the data received, make strategic decisions.

secret agents

Then the fun begins - you turn into secret agents and try on the personalities of the buyer. For example, one of the clients of our fitness club is a stylish girl of 25-30 years old, who dreams of embossed abs and a healthy beautiful body. She goes to the club on an annual subscription - in the morning or in the evening after work. Now you have to become this girl and go under her mask all the way - from calling and buying a card to the first lesson.

Such a "game" will help you to fully immerse yourself in the business. It is not enough to draw detailed portraits of representatives of all segments of the target audience and conduct online surveys, it is necessary to “go out in public” to see how the audience behaves, what language they speak and what they want.

On the spot, you will easily notice additional benefits and be fed with new ideas - even the most detailed comparison table will not help you with this.

We prescribe brand avatars

Another useful technique for working with the target audience is the creation of brand avatars. An avatar is an average image of the target audience.

For example, for our agency, this is the owner of a medium-sized business from Moscow, let's call him Andrey Sergeevich. 40 years old, owns a chain of high-end restaurants, has two children and a wife who does accounting in these restaurants. Andrey Sergeevich loves gadgets, cars, expensive clothes and travel and invests in real estate. Things are going well, but now the businessman is looking for new promotion channels and wants to tidy up the pages of restaurants in social networks.

In fact, the target audience can have many segments, but if you need to focus on one person or give a collective image, the avatar comes in handy. As, for example, in a course on personal advancement Digital Bandito Eva and Pavel presented three characters: copywriter Petya, confectioner Masha and event organizer Vasya. The course is not designed only for representatives of these professions, but it is clearer and easier for students to identify themselves with one of them.

When you come up with brand avatars, you create real people. Specific Sasha, Katya and Nastya who need your product. You think about how these people live, what problems they have, and what solution they will come to you for. You address avatars in advertising texts, show how to solve their problems. And this is what distinguishes you from competitors who offer a product or service without being tied to the world of the target audience. You can sell an abstract smartphone, or you can sell belonging to a culture successful people who think differently than Apple does.

Target specific people - this is how you improve your advertising campaigns and increase your sales.

Building audience maps

The next step is segmentation and creating an audience map. Let's analyze it again using the example of a fitness club.

The visitor chooses the service, the time of visit and the type of subscription that suits him. For example, many businessmen and office workers can only study in the evenings; and it is more convenient for young mothers to come in the morning. Different segments of the fitness club audience have different motivations. Let's take women: someone is losing weight, someone is energized, and someone likes to dance and move in rhythm. The same applies to men - each has his own motive to visit a fitness club.

Segmentation will help you accurately calculate the needs of each subgroup of the target audience and select the closest advertising message.

Target audience for context, SMM and SEO

The target audience within one business or project will be the same for contextual advertising, SMM, and SEO. But how you will target the selected segment depends on the specific tool. The right targeting methods will help you understand customer behavior in each medium (social media and search engines) and build advertising campaigns that will make people stand out and pay attention to your product among the digital garbage.

Targeting methods for SEO

The principle of targeting in SEO is the division of target audience segments. Develop a separate landing page for each search query - then the search engine will index your pages well and take the user to the right place.

Targeting methods for contextual advertising

AT contextual advertising we play search engines and networks, and here the user will go to the one whose ad seems more attractive. But seduce a potential client carefully - people do not like obtrusiveness.

Targeting methods for SMM

SEO and PPC specialists work with a hot audience that knows what they want and are actively looking for it. But in the target audience is cold - people "walk" on social networks and are not going to buy anything. Here you have no time for flirting and warming up - the text and picture should hit the target from the first sentence. Your job: to find the pain of each segment of your target audience and give such a cool solution that a person who didn’t know about your product a minute ago becomes interested and clicks on the link, or at least thinks about buying and remembers you.

Working with insiders from negative comments

Love negative reviews - they will give you insights for new visits, help you see and work out the fears and objections of customers and improve the product. How to respond to negativity:

• Separate trolls and haters from adequate people. Send the first to the ban, take the comments of the second to work.
• From constructive criticism, highlight objections and work them out in detail. Don't just respond to a negative review correctly, but fix the problem itself. For example, your courier delivered a purchase two hours late. Consider: How can you optimize the process so that this doesn't happen again?
• Show people what solution you found. Write a post about it so they don't have any doubts.

Eva Katz , managing partner of 5 o'click agency:

“It is always better to listen not to the comments of satisfied customers, but to those who did not buy or for some reason had a negative experience - they give much more insight than laudatory reviews. That's why we always try to get feedback from those people who did not become buyers. Those who didn’t buy help to see doubts and objections in order to further work them out in the content and comments.

From the practice of the agency, I will cite Donskoy as an example. It is new, trees are being planted there, but our photos on social networks were not enough for subscribers to understand that there is a lot of greenery in the village. In the comments they wrote that the streets were bare and there were no trees, so we came to the client and asked to take photos that would show the greenery of the village. After that, they released a series of materials, where they talked about the work on landscaping the village, showed the streets and courtyards of people and got a client to view.

It turned out that the man was very doubtful, but the new posts worked out his doubts. As a result, after viewing, he bought a house. And there are many such examples. We are very careful about the negative experience of the audience, we work with it and derive our benefit.”

Negative customer experience is the fuel for new ideas and content and service improvements at all stages of the sales cycle. Unless, of course, this is adequate criticism with specific and justified claims. Satisfied buyers are much more impressed by the competent handling of objections in the comments and the development of the brand than the removal of constructive comments and bans of “undesirables”.

Interview customers who have not become buyers

People do not become buyers for many reasons: someone can’t afford it, someone is dissatisfied with the service, product or service, someone’s purchase is not included in the short-term plans. Instead of guessing and throwing resources at improving everything at once, conduct a survey of customers who did not become buyers. People love it when brands ask for their opinion. The answers will give you new insights, reveal negativity and previously unnoticed fears, objections, pains and desires of the target audience. You will be able to improve advertising campaigns and increase conversions.

We generate ideas: brainstorms, live conversations in a cafe and an idea cloud

In American TV series about doctors and policemen, a large white board often appears, where the characters write down diagnoses or, accordingly, unsolved cases. We also have one - we “upload” a cloud of ideas or a cloud of tags to it. It looks rather strange - we sit in a room and throw incoherent words, voicing everything that comes to mind. But then cool ideas emerge from this, which can be developed further.

Arrange team brainstorming. When you switch and step out of the box, new ideas immediately pop up. Sometimes completely delusional, but among them there will certainly be a few worthwhile ones. Creativity dies during hours of intense work on one task - at such moments the eye is blurred, and the brain, tired of monotonous work, does not see new ways.

But ideas don't just come from brainstorms and tag clouds. Sometimes it can be a conversation with an old school friend or a casual evening out with friends. In a relaxed state, you are able to look at the task from a different angle. And a person not from your professional environment can suggest an interesting non-standard solution. Collecting people's stories and impressions of the world around them is a useful practice for a marketer. How can one not remember about storytelling, which captured social networks and the hearts of users.

Testing New Ideas with Heidi Cycles

Heidi cycles help you test new ideas. Determine the objective of the test, the desired results, the time period, and decide how you will interpret the data.

Heidi cycles are an ideal tool for testing hypotheses. What is their essence: almost every action affects one of the metrics. If you formulate certain hypotheses, plan changes and calculate approximate totals, then you can control the process. With the help of heidi cycles, you will understand how actions affect the result, and quickly test all ideas. Discard non-working hypotheses and leave valuable ones.

In each test, follow the algorithm: hypothesis → action → analytics → conclusions. For example, what happens if instead of rational texts in advertising campaigns on social networks, emphasis is placed on emotional and figurative ones?

Hypothesis (hypothesis)

So, our hypothesis is: “emotional texts in a Facebook ad campaign will increase conversions.” Any one can be put here key indicator project to be changed or improved. And put forward a hypothesis according to the principle “if I change this, then I will get such and such a result at the output.”

Action (action)

Data (data collection)

After the completion of the advertising campaign, we collect all the data and count the leads. At this stage, you should have analytical tools that will help you control the process from beginning to end and clearly track the stages of the “action → result” chain.

Insights (conclusions)

Based on the data obtained, we conduct a detailed analysis and draw conclusions about whether our hypothesis worked. Did emotional texts really bring us more leads? How much more compared to the previous advertising campaign? Compared to all ad campaigns running before the experiment? Then we either refute or confirm the hypothesis, and start a new cycle.

Psychological triggers: we put pressure on explicit and implicit motives

Each person has their own motives for buying a product or service. Our task is to play them in advertising campaigns.

Implicit motives

Imagine an advertisement for an SUV. In the video, the car drives off-road, effectively passing difficult sections, and the voice-over talks about the huge engine power, all-wheel drive, stylish design and the fact that the car is suitable for any type of road. And now a potential client already imagines how he goes on a hike with friends or in the mountains on the weekends, and on weekdays he flaunts in the city. There is not a word about this in advertising, but the human brain thinks everything out on its own, reading the subtext.

Psychological trick: our subconscious mind clearly sees these encrypted messages and perceives them positively, without requiring substantiation and evidence. After all, in fact, we ourselves think everything out, which means we don’t analyze it.

Implicit information is suppliedimplicatures- ambiguous meanings (the author of the theory is the English philosopher and linguist Herbert Paul Grice). You give the target audience subtext, flavored with literal information, and create the illusion of independent decision-making.

Explicit motives

Explicit information is specific and direct - it does not need to be thought out, disclosed and interpreted depending on life experience, character and preferences. It could be a call to action, a promotion, or a free product sample.

Specificity reinforces implicit information. With its help, we deceive the brain - it sees a clear message and thinks that it makes a rational decision.

Mix explicit and implicit motifs in the right proportions

Then the client's brain will do everything for you - it will see the literal message and unconsciously consider it hidden. Put the most important information into this hidden message: put pressure on emotions and pains, add triggers - the subconscious mind will believe in the image you need and will not require proof. A person will “get hooked” on new sensations without buying anything yet, and the brain will begin to produce dopamine from the anticipation of pleasure. Under the influence of this hormone, the client will make a purchase decision. Rational criteria again lost out to emotions.

A good example is Nike's powerful campaigns, which never encourage girls to play sports, but appeal to their desire to be strong, beautiful and independent. Nike woman is a confident woman who knows her worth, does not depend on a man and lives the way she wants. This image resonates with many girls.

The same video “What are our girls made of”, which received a huge response:

Sell ​​not a product or service, but a dream

Knowing the dreams, desires, values ​​and inner motives of your target audience, you influence it right images. Indeed, in fact, we do not need a perfume, but a feeling of being beautiful and sexy; not a car, but status, comfort and mobility.

By launching an advertising campaign, you are selling customers the fulfillment of their dreams. And how to fulfill a person's dream, not knowing what he wants, how he lives and what kind of lifestyle he strives for? Therefore, a complete analysis of the target audience goes far beyond the soulless “woman, 25-40 years old, married, two children, average income, Moscow". These are mannequins, and we focus on living people. Don't be afraid to spend a few days creating avatars, custom scenarios and segmentation and try on the role of covert agents. It will pay off, the client will definitely choose you.

And finally: a checklist for launching successful advertising campaigns from 5 o'click

We have combined all the information from the article into a small extract. Use this checklist and launch successful advertising campaigns that will increase your sales!

1. Collect data about your target audience using surveys and analytical services for websites and social networks.
2. Turn your data set into real people: create brand avatars and customer personas.
3. Analyze your competitors and your business and enter all data into a comparison table.
4. Write user scenarios and follow the path of customers from the first interaction to the purchase.
5. Divide a wide target audience into narrow segments and make a mental map of the target audience. In the mind map, you should have the motives, pains and desires of potential customers that you will use in advertising creatives.
6. Determine the behavior of your audience in in social networks and search engines and create several different ads for contextual and targeted advertising.
7. Brainstorm regularly, generate new ideas and test them with Heidi Cycles.
8. Work with insights from negative comments and surveys of customers who did not become buyers.
9. Strengthen your advertising campaigns with triggers, implicit and explicit information.

How to define your target audience?

Every business simply must know who it is. the target audience who buys from him and why they do it. In this article, I will analyze for you how to define the target audience, as clearly, concisely as possible, and without unnecessary water, however, as always!

Target audience (CA)

In order to identify your audience as accurately as possible, you need to disclose the following points:

1. Basic Criteria
2. Interests
3. Solvency
4. Tasks

And so, let's start in order:

Step #1 Basic Criteria

This paragraph provides clear answers to the questions:

1. Age
2. Geography

Example: Men aged 21-33 from Moscow

Step #2 Interests

A detailed study of the target audience and identification of interests will allow you to become one step with your audience.

How to identify? You can do this by:

2. Communities
Find target communities for yourself and find out what your audience “pecks” with more, what they like and comment on, which posts are most active and why. By identifying communities with your Ts.A.- you killed 2 birds with one stone, because in the near future you will need quality traffic, which you can get from the sites you choose.

Step #3 Solvency

You must understand social status your audience, because if your target is students, and you sell gold, then most likely you didn’t hit, you need to re-identify the audience, because hitting the top 10 is a green light for sales. Be careful when identifying Ts.A.

Step #4 Challenges/Problems

What tasks/problems does your audience want to solve? In winter, dress warmly? Or more stylish? Or maybe it's a business? Rather, he needs sales, automation and delegation.

Simulate the situation, tie it to your product!

Answer yourself the question: “What problems / tasks of a person will your product help solve?”, and everything will become clear.

An example of the correct definition of the target audience:

“Men aged 18-33 from Moscow, are engaged in an active sport (snowboarding), love speed and extreme sports, are members of groups and publics dedicated to snowboarding, winter, extreme sports (listing which ones), income level is average, they face problems: boards are quickly erased, fasteners fly off, tight clothing (reduces maneuverability) "

A few tips:

• Try to more clearly/deeperly define/select your audience, your result depends on it.
• Find in your product or service that highlight that solves the problem / task of a person.
• Constantly study your audience, do not stop there. Stay up to date with everything new - this will always stay on the wave with your audience.
• Check out the new Target Audience Checklist.

Regards,
Kir Ulanov.