How to create a portrait of the target audience for your business. Target audience: examples, definition, portrait How to make a portrait of the target audience

Without a clear portrait of a potential client, it is impossible to correctly compile Commercial offer for the sale of a product or service and even more difficult to correctly address it. The portrait of a potential buyer is the target audience who is most likely to be interested in your offer. It is compiled using the maximum amount of information about consumer demand on the product.

Separation of business segments

It is worth starting the topic with the fact that there are two lines of business - b2b and b2c. The first option is business-to-business, and the second is for buyers. In the first case, as a rule, the question of drawing up a portrait of the target audience is not worth it, since the audience is known to everyone, it remains only to concentrate efforts on attracting customers. But the second case is what will be discussed further. For b2c, it is always important to correctly define the audience, regardless of whether it is a business online or offline.

In addition, it is important to know what the target audience for certain activities maybe not alone. Experienced specialists always single out a main group and several secondary ones for work.

Elements of a portrait of a potential client

Before proceeding to the instructions for drawing up a portrait of the consumer, it is necessary to understand the intricacies of the concept itself. A portrait of a potential client is a complex collective image of a person who is interested in your offer. When creating this image, you visually "draw" in the head of the target buyer, to whom the entire marketing activities your organization. The portrait of the target audience may have huge amount various characteristics, because the more there are, the more truthful the image will turn out.

Basic positions for describing the target audience

Any marketer who is faced with the task of describing the target audience for the first time asks himself a few questions:

1. How to determine who is the target audience of the organization?
2. In what period of strategy development should target audience be chosen?
3. Where to get data for compiling social portrait consumer?
4. What are the characteristics for creating a buyer persona?
5. How detailed should the description be?

Of course, these are not all questions, but certainly the most basic ones. Next, we will analyze each of the points in more detail. So let's get started.

The target audience

It can be wide - for example, all consumers of milk products, or narrow (only those who buy fat-free cottage cheese at a low cost). The wider this circle, the more fuzzy the description will be, since in this case it is difficult to determine the pronounced characteristics of the audience.

It is necessary to create a portrait of the target consumer based on the prototype of the brightest representatives, trying to outline the general character traits, which will distinguish your company's customers from the rest of the market audience. When forming the image of your buyer, it is necessary to describe not only regular consumers, but also those who have not yet purchased the goods.

At what stage of the strategy should target audience be chosen?

Starting to draw up a portrait of the consumer should be after the analysis and segmentation of the market, that is, at the stage of developing a positioning strategy. In practice, situations often occur when it is necessary to identify the target audience without marketing strategy, this is especially true for specialists who are just starting to work in new organization. In this case, you can do the following:

1. Identify the main competitors of the company.
2. Do comparative analysis your company's product and what your competitors offer.
3. Send a mystery shopper to a competitor.
4. Describe the value of the product.
5. Understand who is this moment is a consumer of the product and is loyal to it.
6. Describe your ideal buyer.
7. Create an image of the target client based on the data received.

Where to get information

In order to form an image of a potential consumer, it is necessary to answer some questions:

1. Who buys the product and who doesn't?
2. Why is it bought or not bought?
3. By what criteria are they chosen, how are they bought and applied?
4. How do consumers feel about other products of the organization?
5. Application experience.

The following sources will help you find answers to all these questions:

All the characteristics on the basis of which the image of the buyer is formed can be divided into several groups.

Geography

Here you will need to set the geographic area where the advertising message will be broadcast. Here it is necessary to determine in which part of the country/region/district they live and are potential clients. It makes no sense to advertise throughout the country when your product or service is only available in major cities, for example, Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Socio-demographic indicator

It can be divided into three components:

1. Gender of the client. Male and female representatives are guided different principles, respectively, and decisions they accept different. Therefore, in order to draw up a portrait of a consumer in marketing, it is necessary first of all to determine for whom the product is intended. Quite often it happens that it suits both, respectively, the target audience is men and women.
2. The age of the buyers. This is a rather extensive block, since each promotional offer has its own age category. It is impossible to give an unequivocal answer to this question, it will be necessary to establish some kind of framework, for example, the age of the consumer is young people from 25 to 35 years old. Marketing specialists have long divided human life into several stages (school time, students, the beginning of a career path, career flourishing and its growth, career ending, retirement). It is these stages that should be guided by when compiling a portrait of the target audience, since each service or product has its own age category, to which they will be sold better.
3. Education. This criterion helps to understand how the buyer is developed in professionally. A lot of targeted advertising campaigns make their division according to it, it can be split into those who have one or more educations and an average income level. Most often, this example of a consumer portrait is used by organizations that offer goods and services for wealthy people.

Financial situation

One of the most important criteria when thinking through the image of the buyer - this is determining the level of income of your target buyers. Here it is important to understand what kind of check you are counting on, and what principles customers are guided by.

If potential buyers goods low income, it is not advisable to set a high cost for the goods. And also it is worth understanding that people with low incomes pay great attention to the price, more precisely, it is the cost that is the key point for them when choosing an offer.

Information channels

This is one of the most important questions in the formation of a portrait of a potential consumer. Here you need to establish from what specific sources your future customers receive information and answers to their questions. These can be completely different distribution channels:

1. Search engines on the Internet.
2. Social media.
3. Newspapers.
4. Magazines and more.

If you are going to engage in attracting customers to a store on an online resource, then you should pay attention to specialized sites where people with the same intentions gather and discuss issues that concern them. These sites can later be used for your advertising campaigns.

How detailed is it necessary to describe the target audience

When forming the image of a potential buyer, it is necessary to describe the brightest representative. In the process, try to use all the groups of parameters mentioned above. Only in this case the description will be truly portrait. After studying this information, a distinct image should form in a person’s head. Ideally, a collage of several photographs should be added to the description to complement the portrait. It is better to prepare two options: a short one, based on 4-5 criteria, allowing you to superficially separate the target audience from the entire market, and a complete one with the maximum detailed specifications, his habits, features, character and so on.

The picture will be complete and detailed if, during the creation process, you try to describe the development vector of the target audience in the existing format and in the way it should be perfect. Such a description will help to understand the key changes that need to be made in the development and promotion of the product.

Step-by-step instructions for drawing up the image of a potential buyer

Having found the answers to all the above questions and armed with the necessary amount of information, you can begin to build a portrait of a potential client step by step. This plan is suitable even for those who do not yet have a well-formed client base. In this case, the analysis can use the data of acquaintances who are most likely to be interested in your offer. And already when you have the first real buyers (at the first stage it is enough to analyze the first 10 people), you will need to repeat the procedure. So let's get started:

1. Consideration of a profile in a social network. From such popular resources as Vkontakte or Facebook it is very easy to get some information - gender, age and place of residence of a potential client. This is very necessary data that should be entered on a computer in a special plate.
2. Analysis of pages and groups in which clients are members and subscribers. This information should also be entered in the previously created table. Why is this required? After the portrait is drawn up, the pages and groups in social networks can be used as information platforms. This means advertising your product on saved pages.
3. Three of my favorite sites. Having information about which resources customers most often use, you will be able to place your offer on them in the same way. It always works very effectively.
4. Field of activity. This point can also most often be found out from the questionnaire, and the availability of such information allows you to understand the capabilities and needs of the consumer.
5. A record of questions and problems that the client encounters. This will help “tie” your proposal to their decision.
6. Making a portrait of the client based on the information received. All data are summarized in a separate questionnaire-table for each client. As a result, you will have a ready-made image of a potential buyer in your hands.

Working examples of a consumer portrait

This is how well-composed images of target audience look like:

1. An audience for a family psychologist in private practice. An example of a consumer portrait in this case looks like this:

• Female people aged 22 to 44 from major cities.
• Are interested in psychology and follow the news of groups in social networks on related topics.
• They have at least 3 interests.
• They are actively involved in sports.
• Passionate about philosophy, spiritual values ​​and personal growth.
• High or medium income.

2. An example of a consumer portrait for an online youth clothing store from designers.

• Female and male people aged 20 to 35 from metropolitan areas and medium-sized cities.
• Interested in fashion and its trends.
• All have stable employment or study at higher educational institutions, with active life beliefs.
• They are fond of several sports, participate in competitions, are members of the relevant groups on social networks.

The target audience(CA) is a set of people to whom advertising is directed; or a group of users interested in some information.

In other words, the definition of the target audience refers to those people whose needs are satisfied precisely by your product or service. These people certainly have something in common or similar: characteristics (demographic, geographical, economic, etc.), perception and attitude to the quality of the product / service, motivation to buy, methods of making and place of purchase.

Ignorance of the target audience usually leads to increased promotion costs or, even worse, to the failure of the product in the market.

Target audience of the site

This is a set of project visitors who benefit from its content. The web resource is focused on this segment of users.

Based on the time frame, the audience of the site is:

• maximum- total number of visits;
• constant- visitors who visit the site periodically;
• irregular- visited several times, but did not become regular visitors;
• active- spend more than an hour a week on the page;
• target.

Target audience is a fundamental concept in website promotion. The effectiveness of promotion and search engine optimization of a web project depends on the attracted consumers, since the promotion strategy is formed on the basis of the preferences, capabilities and desires of the target audience.

This is a very important element, since the proposal that best suits the needs of the target audience directly depends on the amount of detail and quality of the portrait. The more characteristics it has, the greater the chance of success.

For its compilation, the following scheme of similar signs is used, which should be paid attention to:

• Demographics - gender, age, Family status, profession, nationality;
• Geographic - the location of the region and the dynamics of its development, population, climate, accessibility of the media, etc.;
• Economic - income level, employment;
• Psychographic - character traits, temperament, lifestyle, life position and etc.

There are also additional options for drawing up a portrait: favorite literature, film genres, car brands, favorite sport, cafes, possible problems with health, etc. The use of additional parameters in the description of the portrait will allow you to cover exactly that narrow circle of buyers who will undoubtedly be interested in the offer.

CA happens narrow And wide. For example, ice cream lovers are a wide audience, and chocolate ice cream lovers with condensed milk are a narrow audience. The wider it is, the more vague the description of the portrait, since it will be difficult to highlight the pronounced characteristics of consumers.

Therefore, it is not entirely reasonable to focus exclusively on a wide target audience.

An exemplary portrait includes not only current consumers, but also potential ones.

How to define the target audience

To obtain data on the target audience, the following is used:

• questioning
• interviewing
• surveys

Information can be found in the same social networks, blogs and forums. In this way, without wasting time, minimal cost, you can easily segment your audience. However, it should be understood that the opinion of the so-called vocal minority may not coincide with the silent majority.

How to find the target audience

There is a methodology based on finding answers to 5 questions: what, who, why, when and where? The answers to these questions provide a clear description of TA.

• Building a house
• Cosmetic home repairs
• Roof installation

• A family that wants to buy their own home
• A family that wants to live outside the city
• Family with a child

Why?

• The speed of construction work
• Opportunity to save budget
• Opportunity to receive comprehensive turnkey services
• Preparation of contract
• Possibility of obtaining a guarantee

When?

• During promotions and discounts
• After hearing positive feedback

• Landing page
• web project
• Social media

Target audience, examples

Example 1. The hostess of the visiting beauty salon invested a considerable budget for printing business cards and leaflets, which were simply handed out to passers-by. As a result, there were so few calls that advertising costs did not justify themselves.

There is only one way out of this situation - to determine who exactly needs cosmetology services on the road. Having made the analysis, the following portraits of clients were found out:

• brides;
• women caring for children (on maternity leave);
• people living on the outskirts or in remote areas of the city.

Salon employees left information in wedding salons, kindergartens, schools and created a group in one of the social networks.

Interaction with its target audience has borne fruit: a high-quality Feedback. After some time, it turned out that it was through the social network that the largest flow of customers was recorded, so all the emphasis was directed to this way of interacting with customers.

From this it follows that it is necessary to carry out segmentation and analysis of the target audience even in the process of the birth of an advertising campaign.

Example 2. A consumer profile based on specific parameters, i.e. demographic, geographic, economic and psychographic.

Designer clothing buyer:

1. Maria, 28 years old.
2. Lives in Kyiv.
3. Family status: Married.
4. Occupation, position, wage: manager, 10 thousand UAH.
5. Wants and needs: Maria likes to stand out, wants to wear exclusive and beautiful outfits. She loves designer items and doesn't mind showing them off to colleagues and friends.

Example 3. CA can be primary, indirect and peripheral.

The main consumer is the daughter, who asks her mother to buy an interactive doll. Mom agrees to buy a toy if the father gives the go-ahead. Dad and mom, in turn, run for advice to Aunt Lily, who has already purchased the same doll for her daughter.

Everyone in this chain in one way or another acts as a buyer, but each of them needs a different approach and different tools for conveying information about the product (doll).

Outcome

Knowing the desires of the audience is the key to successful promotion of a web page, reducing advertising costs and the opportunity to design further development.

The portrait of the target audience is changeable, so it must be created anew or amended before the next advertising campaign.

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If you ask a business owner, “Who do you sell your product to?”, in most cases, you can hear the answer: “Everyone.” And this is the wrong answer, because selling to everyone means not selling to anyone.

There are no universal answers, no universal advice. There are no trousers that would fit well on you and on the woman Varya from the next entrance.

You buy your favorite Lakomka sausage (the name is fictitious) for lunch because you like its taste, and your earnings allow you to buy an elite sausage variety. And in general, it is considered natural, and you watch your diet. But the same woman Varya, the maximum that she can do is buy a ring of "liverka" once a week, and eat it in half with her beloved red cat.

Both you and Baba Varya are buyers in butcher shop. But you are completely different buyers, you are interested in different products, you have different buying opportunities. If the quality of sausage is important for you, then for a pensioner it is its price. Do you think an advertisement that talks about the taste and quality of a sausage that costs 5th of her pension will work for her? Hardly.

AND advertising campaign, messages in which you and Baba Varya will be rowed under the same brush, is doomed to failure. You are not attracted by the cheap, because you know that cheap is not of high quality, and you cannot buy a pensioner with healthy food - the availability of the product is important to her.

Therefore, it is very important to segment your audience. And in order to do this, you need to know it. Study and draw up portraits of your customers, understand what they need - then your advertising will hit right on target.

Why is it necessary to create a portrait of the target audience?

1. Having the right audience portrait in hand, you will be able to choose the right marketing channels and tools. For example, if your target audience is young girls, it is best to look for them on Instagram.

2. The correct portrait of the target audience will help you create such advertisements and messages that will hook exactly those you need.

3. By studying the needs of your audience, over time you will be able to improve the quality of your product or service based on this data.

Drawing a portrait is not so difficult, but for this you need to think a little, sit a little, study a little the “habitat” of your clients. It takes time and some effort. Because, as a rule, small companies don't bother like that. They create universal advertising campaigns and universal messages "for everyone". As a result, there are either no conversions, or there are few of them.

If you know your client, then you understand what he really needs.

How to create a portrait of the target audience?

Each specialist has his own methods, but there are some general algorithms. Let's take a look at them in this article.

From the very beginning, you should think about who your customers really are. Let's say you have an inexpensive barbershop. Men and women come to you for haircuts, and sometimes they also bring children for haircuts. It is important for them to keep their heads in order, but not to overpay - there is no extra money for expensive salons. Based on this, you have three categories of clients: men, women and mothers. It is mothers who choose where to take their child for a haircut. The child himself does not decide this yet, and will not respond to your advertisement. Since you are inexpensive, the income of your customers is average and below average.

This is very general.

Before you start drawing up a portrait of the target audience, you still need to understand yourself and your product / service.

Tell yourself or your marketer (hired specialist, freelancer, other contractor):

1.What problem does your product or service solve?? In the case of a hairdresser, it is to stay beautiful or beautiful for little money. Remember that your goal is not to sell a service, but a solution to a customer's problem. Nobody buys a vacuum cleaner for the sake of a vacuum cleaner. A person buys cleanliness in the house, not an appliance.

2.Who are your customers? Let's return to the paragraph about an inexpensive hairdressing salon. This is the answer to this question.

3.Where to find your customers? Do they live on forums, social networks? If yes, in what groups? Or maybe they live in the houses closest to your barbershop? In the latter case, outdoor advertising will help.

4.What problems does your client have to solve on a regular basis?? And how will you help solve them with your product or service?

In fact, to create a client profile, you need to work through many more questions. For convenience, they can be placed in a table:

Already such, basic portraits will help you compose general idea about the people you are trying to sell your product to You will begin to better understand how to present yourself, your company, your product so that the client really understands what he needs and decides to buy.

You can group customers into separate segments based on similar problems, similar desires or fears.

What does customer data give you? How to use it?

It is clear, you say, - for example, knowing the problems or dreams of the target audience, I can address them or “put pressure on the sick” in advertising messages. But what gives me gender, age, geography?

Men and women react differently to advertising. If men rely more on logic and compare different offers, then women are highly emotional, their purchases are more impulsive.

Age data is also important. Different age categories different values different ways interaction with advertising, different decision-making processes. For example, in the business of one of my clients, the main category of clients are women aged 45-55. Guess from which device we have the most visitors to the site? That's right, from a computer.

Who should draw up a portrait of the target audience?

Ideally, your marketer, if your company has one; if this is not the case, then the hired specialist to whom you entrusted the conduct of the advertising campaign. If he does not do this, already think about whether he will drain your budget by chance.

But remember - the business owner must take part in drawing up a portrait of the target audience. Answer the questions of a specialist, or "give" him someone who will help with this - for example, your sales manager. Someone who, and he knows your customers for sure. The better the contractor understands the specifics of your business and your customers, the better he will be able to set up advertising. And it doesn't matter if it's a context, SMM or SEO.

How to create a portrait of the target audience using social networks

If you do not trust anyone and want to do everything yourself (or you, my reader, a novice advertising specialist), then for you there is a simple algorithm for studying the target audience through pages on social networks.

Social networks are a storehouse of useful information about a person. Without suspecting anything bad, we post everything about ourselves here. And if you know where to look, you can learn a lot right from the user profile.

Choose a few people from your client base - ten will do. And get started:

2. Write down the position, place of work, age, place of residence, marital status, children in the table.

3.Choose 3-5 groups they belong to.

4. See what sites they visit, where they repost from.

5. Analyze the profile and messages on the wall - what problems a person worries about, what he dreams about, what he most often encounters.

It remains to enter all this into the table above - and the portrait of the client is ready.

The client profile will help you craft accurate ads, choose the right promotional tools, and even create blog and social media content. If you attach a portrait of the target audience to the terms of reference for a copywriter or designer, they will only thank you. Because it is much easier to write text or draw a design when you know exactly who and how exactly should react to it.

It's no secret that a product is sold to a specific consumer. Marketing agencies offer several techniques to identify the ideal buyers for any product. We will share one with which it is easy to create a portrait of the target audience just for you.

General issues

To create a portrait of the ideal consumer, you need to answer a few basic questions:

• Who, first of all, represents the target audience for a single company?
• How to develop a strategy specifically for these buyers?
• What should be done before determining the desired audience?
• What information will help create the image of the ideal buyer?
• What are the characteristics to describe this group of future customers?
• Is it worth dwelling on the description of the group?
• Does Common Market and anticipated competition to sell the product to my consumer?

By answering each question as completely as possible, marketers will improve the conversion (that is, the sale of the product itself).

Let's start with the basics

How to describe? Initially, decide whose problem the proposed service or product solves. People buy absolutely everything, but the goods sold vary in cost, quality, and many other parameters. This is exactly what a marketer should consider.

People buy absolutely everything, but the goods sold vary in cost, quality, and many other parameters.

It is also worth determining how wide or narrow the audience of the product will be.

• Toothbrushes are necessary for a wide range of consumers.
• Diabetic products - to a narrow circle.
• Perfumes - for a wide target audience.
• South African spices - only for a narrow circle of lovers.

The larger the company, the more likely it is to seek broad target group consumers. But even in these conditions, the purchasing power, the age limit and the general values ​​​​of the intended customers are taken into account. A well-thought-out advertising campaign is based on an even more detailed and close view of the client:

• Age is taken into account.
• What are his preferences.
• What is his income level.
• Consumption rate of the product (a yacht or a bottle of carbonated drink is purchased with different speed, differ in price by several thousand times).
• Many other additional and highly specialized factors for sales.

good time

The target customer is determined after a general analysis of the market and the one that represents the future product. The ideal option is to “diagnose” customers who already consume this or similar products, identify potential buyers and determine unique characteristics new product or its varieties. Do not forget about direct and indirect competitors.

1. Direct competitors. These are those who sell the same product (for example, Nike, Adidas, Ekko sneakers). The emphasis is on innovative approach to create a product or to reduce the price for competitiveness.
2. Indirect. These are all other vendors. For example: a buyer wanted to buy sneakers, but he saw posters with his favorite actor and bought a ticket for his premiere show.

Features of real and potential customers

The format of the next study is a table or subject description. It contains the main characteristics and parameters of the target audience:

1. . Describe in detail the psychological profile of the client, based on the identification of his values. The product is sold through the emotional involvement of the buyer in the sales process.
2. . Based on the place of residence and cultural characteristics of the selected group of people.
3. . They reveal common features in the behavior of buyers and help advertisers build the right video and sound sequence.
4. Social. Mentioned above (income, age, social status).

The ideal option is if after such an analysis a visual portrait of the client arises. It's almost real character. The company clearly knows his lifestyle and social level. You also know how your customer differs from other people and what drives them when choosing a product. What price he is willing to pay and how often he will purchase the offered product.

Do not forget about brand fans, who can be attracted through brand awareness, loyalty to a particular brand or manufacturer, opinion about the brand and its qualities, frequency of purchases of branded goods.