Till now you have decided your idea and completed market research etc. But now you have to define your target audience. You have to decide who are suffering from the problem for which you are going to provide a solution. For any business to succeed, a clear and fair understanding is required for their target audience.

Please note that, not everyone will be interested in buying your product. Marketing to everyone and anyone will be surely waste of time, effort and money. The truth of the matter is “if you are talking to everyone, in reality you are not connecting with everyone.” So, it is core part of the strategy to target the audience and convert them into patrons. Generally, companies waste their valuable advertising space and efforts talking about what is important to them, not their customers. Targeting makes it possible to have your customer listen to you. For e.g.

• When your product is “2 minutes noodles”, your target audience will be bachelors, students who are not living at their home, working couples, people between age from 10 years to 40 years.
• When your product is “Air-conditioner”, your target audience would be having income higher than certain limit. Because people having low income don’t generally afford Air-conditioner.

You can identify your target audience by doing research of your competitors in the market. By visiting their sites, their target customer etc. Today, 55.5% population of the world is active on social media, it will be simpler to target your audience based on digital marketing. The information can be easily accessible on sites like, Google Analytics, Facebook, YouTube and Quora etc. You have to decide your target audience will be B2B or B2C, based on which your strategy will change.

For e.g. Wefarm, it’s a free digital knowledge sharing platform, who has targeted world’s 500 million small scale farmers by SMS who have no internet facility. They have targeted 45% are offline user which is huge number. The crux of the whole story is identifying your target audience decide your way to approach them. Categorize your customers based on their location, preferences, psychology, buying pattern and spending habits. Analyse all these factors this help you in providing attractive offers which your customer cannot deny.

To conclude, I would say this is not a one time activity as markets and consumer preferences are changing constantly. If your marketing messages and content seem generic and you become another face in the crowd. You have to stand out in the market so that your business can survive in the long run.

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