A portrait of the target audience is an image of your real customer who finds a solution to their problem(s) in your product/service.
Let’s say, you specialize in yoga tutorials and want to sell group sessions. Naturally there are a few groups of people who would be interested in learning from you, and you need to find out exactly who those people are.
In 80% of the cases women aged 20-40 are interested in yoga tutorials. Their field of hobbies consists mostly of healthy diet, healthy lifestyle, environmental solutions etc. As you can see, it is quite a broad reach. In order to narrow it and make it simpler, we can divide this large group into three target audience subgroups:
1. Creative beings in search of their true selves. They tend to view yoga as a spiritual practice rather than a physical activity. In addition, yoga sessions help them socialize with like-minded people. Women who belong to this category rarely have a lot of money to spare, so group sessions will hit the right spot for them.
2. Women who do stressful jobs (middle managers, for example) and view yoga as a way to relax. They earn more than those who belong to the first subgroup, so you can offer them additional services such as individual classes or at-home yoga sessions.
3. Women who view yoga as a physical activity and do it in order to become flexible. In this case, the emphasis needs to be put on rationality and usefulness of yoga classes. Usually people who belong to this subgroup have enough financial resources to cover the extras (individual sessions, premium membership etc.).
Now, let’s create a portrait of the target audience based on the characteristics of the second subgroup:
Jessie, 31, human resources manager for a big company. Single, no kids. $80000 annual income. She works long hours and often overtime. This kind of schedule causes stress and anxiety. She is looking for yoga classes with a flexible timetable that can also be hosted online. Many of her friends do yoga, and she believes it will help her relax and take a break from daily routine.
What makes a portrait of the target audience?
In order to outline the most accurate portrait of your target audience, you need to take a number of characteristics into account.
Demographic characteristics:
- Age
- Sex
- Marital status
Example: Information on marital status can help you target parents when you advertise products/services for children.
Psychographic characteristics:
- Emotions
- Motivations
- Interests
- Problems
- Values
- Habits
Example: Your knowledge of customers’ interests and values can help you create a unique offer that will solve their problem(s) – “while being more convenient, performance-wise a gaming laptop is equal to its desktop counterpart”
Socio-economic data:
- Income level
- Education
- Occupation
- Workplace
- Living conditions
Example: Income level data can help you divide products into the following categories according to their price: economy, average, premium.
Where do I find information to create a portrait of my target audience?
There are quite a few ways of collecting information about your customers:
1. Analyze your customers
2. Analyze your customers’ social media pages
3. Make polls targeted at customers on your social media pages
4. Interview your target audience
Now, let’s try to create a portrait of your target audience based on the following questions:
- Name
- Sex
- Age
- Place of residence
- Education
- Occupation
- Income level
- Interests
- Habits
- Motivations
- Problems
- Reason for purchase
In most cases a single business has at least 3-4 different portraits of the target audience, so don’t be discouraged if you can’t put all of your customers into the same category. Instead, create separate unique ways to target each group of individuals.
Feel free to use these tips, grow your brand and monetize your passion with us.
See you in Salut University next time!
Leave a Reply