What is Target Audience? – Definition, 3 Types of Target Audience

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Definition of Target Audience

Target audience, let’s start with the definition. What is the target audience? our potential customers. And the group of people to whom we address our products and services.

And it can describe by behavioral and demographic attributes, such as age, gender, income, education, and localization.

If we use audience groups, we focus not on websites where ads must display but on people who finally see our marketing messages.

Finding the right audience can crucial for our campaigns’ efficiency. According to a Yahoo study, 54% of customers find personalized ads extra engaging.

And McKinsey’s study shows that ads tailored to clients’ needs can significantly increase ROI – up to 8 times, and lift sales by at least 10%.

Online marketing consists of taking advantage of web channels to convey a message about a company’s brand, products, or services to its potential customers

Now we know the target audience and how it can help marketers achieve better results.

What are the Types of the Target Audience?

There is a portion of attributes that can use in finding the right audience. As we mention – age, income, education, gender are just a few examples.

Base on the IAB taxonomy, and we can sort all the attributes into three large categories, which are listed below:

1. Demography

The socio-economic data that describes that users. Its group includes attributes such as age, income, education, gender, and geographic location.
And using demographic data, we can target our campaign, for example at young people example, age 18-24, both females and males, from towns with a population larger than 20,000.

2. Interests

The data about users’ hobbies, passions, things that they are looking for and read about it. It can example, books, movies, music, cars, marketing, parenting, or dance. By knowing our customers’ passions, we gain powerful knowledge because we know how to engage our clients.
And what products are interesting for them. We can offer the new book for book lovers and the favorite music group’s new album.

3. Purchase Intentions

Data can become crucial, especially for e-commerce. And audiences are divided into groups of users who are recently looking for a specific product.
Example laptop, refrigerator, and car and did not look for it previously. It means that they want to buy the new thing.
But first, we need to gain extra knowledge about the demanded product. Examples of audience types in this group are women’s clothing, Skiing, Televisions, Tablets, or Vehicles.
For targeting purposes, marketers can use just one type of audience attributes example, demography, and mix them.
It creates the details target group and reaches out to them precisely. In other words, marketers can reach out to groups of users age 35-42 interest in cars, who will buy the new vehicle.
And those three categories are just examples of audiences’ types by using technological platforms for managing users’ data.
And marketers can also create new types built for a specific campaign or an upcoming event. It gives the ability to make small, often niche groups and send them an accurate message they expect.

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