Imagine that you are in a very competitive sport, and you don’t know where the goal post is. You will waste energy doing activities that don’t work and eventually lose. This is the type of situation many new and existing eCommerce businesses find themselves in.
Your target market and target audience, which go hand in hand, are significant to the success of your eCommerce business. However, having them undefined puts you in a situation where you don’t know appropriate strategies to implement, achieve no goals, and lose out to competitors. Having a loyal customer base is very important to the scalability of your Shopify store.
Our article presents you with all you need to know about the terms “target audience” and “target market” as well as how you appropriately identify them for your eCommerce business. Let’s get to it.
What Is A Target Market?
A target market is the general group of individuals you direct all your eCommerce marketing and promotional campaigns towards. They are the individuals you intend to attract towards your brand to purchase your products and services.
Every decision you make is generally determined by your target market as you create specific marketing and promotional campaigns that appeal to it.
What Is A Target Audience?
Although the terms “target market” and “target audience” are frequently used interchangeably, they are differentiated on very thin lines. Your target audience is a more specific group that you direct more specific campaigns towards within your target market. For instance, where your target market is children between the ages of 3 – 7, your target audience for a more specific campaign may be children between the ages of 3 – 7 who speak English.
Target Market Example
Showing you a vivid example of these is necessary. According to the definitions, one brand with a distinguishable target market and target audience is Nike. Everyone shows interest in wearing sports apparel, both athletes and casual individuals. However, there is an identified target audience.
As an example of a target market audience in marketing campaigns, Nike's “Toughest Athlete” program focuses on mothers passionately involved in fitness programs, while its YouTube series focuses on individuals in the Black and LGBTQ+ demographics. These are target audiences defined as specific groups in the target market and acting as the focus for specific marketing campaigns.
Importance of identifying your target market and target audience
Generally, appropriate and comprehensive knowledge of your target market helps you achieve all your eCommerce goals. More specifically, it helps you with the following.
You Make Smarter Decisions
Knowing exactly who you are to relate with allows you to make better decisions on your campaigns. You make more relevant offers and identify the language and images to use, how content is delivered, and the most appropriate communication channels, among others.
More Efficient Product Management
Your product management operations yield better results if you have a detailed idea of who your target audience is. You know who to target information gathering campaigns towards and make appropriate improvements on your products based on feedback. You create products that are appealing to relevant customers.
More Revenue For You
Eventually, creating better campaigns to draw attention as well as better products to ensure retention leads to more revenue for your eCommerce brand. More relevant individuals are led towards your eCommerce business and you stand a higher chance at selling your products.
How To Identify Your Target Market
Identifying your target market involves recognizing certain defining factors. You use these factors to segment individuals and pinpoint who you want to focus on. What are they?
- Demography: Individuals are defined by demographic factors, such as age, income, gender, occupation, and ethnicity, among a lot of others. Your target market and target audience may be defined using one of these.
- Location: Location also divides individuals in your pool of customers. The location you choose defines factors like culture, weather, and population, which you consider in your marketing campaigns. It also affects business operations such as logistics.
- Interest: Defining your target audience by interest means identifying individuals that share the same psychographics. You channel marketing campaigns through activities that satisfy these interests.
Now, how do you identify the most appropriate target audience distinguished by these factors for your eCommerce business?
Analyze Your Product And Services
The most straightforward method of getting your target audience is identifying the individuals which your product and service offerings ordinarily appeal to. This is based on general knowledge of your offerings.
For instance, if you sell action figures, you know that children ordinarily define your target market. If you offer property management services, you know your target market is individuals with high income who don’t have the time to oversee multiple properties simultaneously. Analyzing your products and services helps you quickly identify the types of individuals expected to deal with your brand.
Conduct Focus Groups
Here is a peculiar tip if you are just starting with their eCommerce business. You host group discussions by inviting various individuals and engaging them in exciting discussions on your brand and their preferences. You make choices on participants regardless of demography or identified interests, as you don’t want to make assumptions that turn out to be inaccurate.
The goal here is to get feedback about their interest in your product. You also get suggestions on who they think the product is most appropriate for if they do not intend to use it. You filter out feedback and identify the most common demography or traits shared by individuals interested in your product or services.
In case you want a more inclusive host group, you hold discussions through video conference mediums and screen individuals from additional locations.
Analyze Existing Customers
Just like individuals in your focus group, analyzing existing customers helps you identify the common demography and traits of individuals interested in your products or services. However, this time feedback is collected from individuals who already have an actual use for your product.
You use this feedback to create a general customer profile and properly segment your market into relevant individuals.
Conduct Relevant Competitive Analysis
This is only actionable where you have your competitors identified. You study the audience they reach out to and understand the individuals you are likely to target. For some industries or niches, however, rather than getting information on your potential target market, competitive analysis helps you to identify the market area that competitors don’t exploit; nonetheless, you know just where to direct your marketing campaigns towards.
Is That All?
In addition to all these, we want you to understand that we don’t make your definitions too broad or specific. While identifying your target audience, you also understand that your market audience changes based on product development and fluctuations in consumer behavior trends. Nonetheless, a complete and continuous analysis of your market helps you take care of all these.
Your target market is a fundamental block in your eCommerce business. You need to identify one thing by engaging in general and more specific research into your product, market, and even customers. Additionally, segmenting your target market and campaigns into target audiences helps you achieve more. You should also check out this article on how to build customer loyalty to cater to your target audience once figured.
