What Is Target Audiences? Definition of Target Audiences, Target Audiences Meaning and Concept

The target audience is the set of consumers, ideal customers or other buyers that a company addresses with the aim of seducing them with a specific product or service.


That is, the target audience is anyone who may have a need for the product or service offered by the company.


Determining the target audience of a product is key for the proposed proposal to be profitable and successful. A company needs to identify who the potential consumers of its services are in order to define the strategies and their implementation aimed at that specific sector.


Factors to identify the target audience


In addition to the product that is intended to be offered to a certain sector, it is useful to know their tastes and desires to reach them through relevant and interesting messages that arouse their curiosity and attraction. There are several factors to identify them, these are the main ones:


  • Demographic characteristics: They could be some such as age, purchasing power, gender, culture or religion.
  • Geographical area: Respond to the areas in which you reside or buy products. We usually refer to the geographical area as towns, cities, regions or countries.
  • Consumer behavior : It is about the final ideal with which the consumer buys, as well as the purchase process that they carry out. Depending on certain factors such as their self- esteem or what they intend to project to society, they will be governed by one product or another.
  • Psychological traits: Refers to belonging to a group, tastes, preferences, personality or different lifestyles.
  • Economic factors: Income level, type of contract, saver or consumer profile.

Example of some factors


We can find some examples of factors to select the target audience in the following:


  • Sex: There are products that are aimed at a certain sex and it is necessary to carry out a previous segmentation. For example: women's perfumes. Although many products claim to seek equality when targeting both sexes, some apply this distinction taking into account the characteristics of the products or services.
  • Purchasing power : It is another of the factors that are taken into account and investigated when it comes to meeting the target audience. Companies need to clearly know the economic level of the consumer they are targeting in order to ensure that they can purchase the products they produce.
  • Age: It is usually divided into certain ranges, for example from 12 to 18 adolescence. There are several stages throughout life. The levels of knowledge and practice in certain areas are taken into account, taking into account age. For example: adolescents will have a more advanced practical experience of new technologies than the elderly.

Importance of knowing the target audience


Knowing the target audience can generate more sales in a company. Here are some of the reasons why it will be useful to identify it:


  • Business strategic clarity: To create effective strategies, one of the factors that must be known is the consumer or people who may be interested in a particular product. An in-depth study of potential consumers will reveal what can be done to target them more effectively.
  • Optimization of resources and costs: There are budgets for marketing campaigns and communication strategies. If the profile of the public is known in a very defined way, it will allow knowing where to invest the money and what actions to avoid for an outlay that is not useful.
  • Improves teamwork: The company is made up of several departments, if everyone knows and is clear about the potential consumer, it will facilitate cohesion and centralize the objectives in that specific type of client that the company is targeting.

Relationship between target audience and target market


The terms target market and target audience are related to each other, but have differences in their application. A company's target market can also be its target audience, but this is not always the case.


Business experts Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong point out that the target market is a set of individuals who share common needs or characteristics that the company decides to serve. These individuals are usually the end of a product.


On the other hand, expert Tom Duncan defines a target audience as "a group that has great potential to respond positively to a brand message." These people constitute the target audience of the message.


Target markets affect and influence a company's overall market strategy. Target audiences are associated with a specific message.