But how do you identify your target audience? Here are answers from some of the best business plan writers.
What type of customer would you like to serve?
The first step is to determine the type of clientele you want to reach. To do this, you have to ask yourself who your offer is for? Is your company mainly aimed at;
- Companies (B2B)
- Consumers (B2C)
- Employees (B2E)
- Media (B2P)
- People (P2P)
How to categorize the target audience for your business plan?
Concentrate on the following factors by researching the customer profiles or performing market analysis to address the user segment you wish to reach:
- Age or more precisely age category
- The level of education (post-secondary education or not)
- The job
- Family situation (presence of children in the home or not, number of individuals in the home)
- Genre
- Marital status (single, married, etc.)
- Annual income
- The mode of purchase (impulsive or thoughtful)
- The best time to contact them
- The ideal way to reach them (the ideal communication channel such as telephone, email, social networks, etc.)
Any detail would help you to better understand the traditional customer image, which belongs to the target audience of your business. You have more leverage as an organization with this data which can boost the communication strategy.
What are the characteristics of your target audience?
Once you have defined your target customers globally, you will have to define them more precisely by listing their characteristics as much as possible. Of course, the type of characteristics that you will have to define naturally depends on the sector that you are going to invest in.
For example, the characteristics of businesses will be different from those of consumers.
If your company is B2B (a company that offers its services to other companies), you can detail your target audience by defining:
- The sector of activity (communication, events, online business, etc.)
- The number of employees (less than ten employees, between 10 and 50, more than 100, etc.)
- The size of the company
- Turnover (35K per year, between 50 and 75K per year, etc.)
- Legal status (sole proprietorship, company, association, etc.)
If your business is B2C (a business that offers a product to consumers), then you can focus on the characteristics of the type
- Age (18-35, teens, young adults, parents, etc.)
- Gender (male, female)
- School-level (secondary, DEC, BAC, etc.)
- Profession,
- Income (high, medium, low)
- Marital status (married, divorced, common-law, etc.)
- Composition of the household (number of children, collocations, etc.)
What is the lifestyle of your target audience?
Then you have to try to get to know your market in more depth in order to better understand them. It will allow your company to cleverly adapt its offer, its speech, and its marketing strategy. Here is information that could help you get to know the clientele that you hope to reach:
- B2B: What is their equipment, their budget reserved for, who is the contact person, who makes the decisions, etc.
- B2C: what are their habits, hobbies, type of housing, household equipment, car, etc.
Obviously, the questions also adapt to the proposal you offer. However, no information is useless. Even the minutest detail can make all the difference between you and your competitor.
What is your target customer looking for?
Your company will offer a specific product or service to a defined clientele for a particular purpose: To meet a need. It is, therefore, necessary to highlight this need that your company promises to fill with its commercial offer. Do you want to:
- Satisfy the basic needs of your target customers? (eat, sleep, clean, transport)
- Bring a solution to a specific problem (how to publicize your company, how to reduce your invoices, how to develop your knowledge)
- Improve the well-being of your target customers? (Improve comfort, reduce efforts, automate recurring tasks, etc.)
What is the purchase of your target audience?
In order to encourage transactions, you have to define their purchasing method to eliminate as much as possible the reasons that could cause you to lose a sale. For this, it is relevant to know, for example:
- Who makes the final decision? (man, woman, marketing manager, etc.)
- What is the average budget? (between $ 200 and $ 300, etc.)
- Where do they buy? (online, in-store, at a reseller, etc.)
- What are their means of payment? (cash, credit card, debit, etc.)
- What is the purchase period? (Summer, winter, fixed period, evening, etc.)
- What type of buyer are they? (thoughtful, spontaneous, ask for opinions)
- What motivates them to buy? (Quality, value, price, proximity, etc.)
Where is your target audience?
It’s great to know who your target audience is, but you still need to know where to get it. Are the customers you are targeting local, regional, national, or international?
In addition, your strategy may be different depending on the place, since words, expression, connotation, speech, etc., can have a completely different meaning from place to place.
What do your target customers represent?
Among the population present in your sector of activity, what percentage would be potentially interested in your offer?
If the target population is 1000 individuals, and 200 of them have the typical characteristics that suggest that your offer will seduce them, then your target client represents 20% of the global market. It will also help you to know if the market share is financially attractive.
And now you have to know who is buying!
After gathering this information, you will be able to determine the expectations of your target customers and the nature of their daily consumption habits.
How will you meet these expectations, and how will you be able to provide your customers with a quick way to get the desired good or service?
Since the goal of your ambition is always to generate as much revenue as possible, you must, therefore, focus all your attention on the buyer.
The key is to acclimatize to your customers!
Identifying a target demographic is part of the reasoning because each community of people has their own desires to react specifically to their preferences.
It is essential never to approach this approach while believing to be able to shape the habits and the mode of operation of the public which one wishes to reach.
This idea is the cornerstone of the significance of designing an efficient marketing campaign. It is often your job to change.
Research is important!
With this information, given above, you will be able to do research and targeting work. It will allow you to understand better the needs of the companies and people with whom you collaborate or wish to collaborate.
The selection of a target public is critical for a company’s growth. Without reference to this material, it is not necessary to change organization strategies accordingly. This is why the analysis discussed in the research is so important. Learn more about how the business plan consultants work on strategies and plans of the businesses
