In order to clearly understand why you need to look for your buyer, let's figure out what the target audience is. Central Asia is a group of people who are united by common needs, worries, and needs. It can be unmarried women from 25 years old, teenagers or people of mature age. Successful companies try to narrow the circle of potential buyers in order to create a clear and competent marketing message.

Any business, whether it is a huge company or a small enterprise, needs advertising. To determine your target audience, you must first answer the main question: “Who is my product intended for? Who is my potential buyer? There is a certain algorithm that allows you to identify your buyer. So if you need to study your audience, make a rough plan:

1. To begin with, you should clearly define who your product is designed for. First of all, determine the age of the potential buyer. Who will be interested in and purchase your product? The real age of the audience, for example, from 18 to 30 years, from 35 to 50 years. Frames can be changed depending on your offer.
2. It is important to know the gender of your audience and focus on it. Thus, you can conduct a consumer needs analysis. It will be easier for you to find the "pain points" of the buyer and thereby push him to buy.
3. Income level. The choice of target audience depends on the financial capabilities of the person. Suppose a product worth 50 thousand rubles is unlikely to be of interest to a single woman with an income of 20 thousand rubles a month.
4. What is your buyer doing? What are his hobbies, what stores does he supposedly visit, what does he watch on TV? You can highlight these aspects with the help of social networks. The Internet is a place where potential buyers themselves accumulate in groups.
5. CA problems. It is necessary to evaluate their pain points. What do they need for complete satisfaction, happiness? What specifically prevents your consumer from making their purchases?
6. Buyer dreams. What is your target audience dreaming about? What will your target audience listen to and what does it consider important?
7. Speak the language of the buyer. A study by marketers shows that the target audience loves to be spoken to in their “native” language. That is, if your buyer is a person 15-25 years old, you need to use special slang, the words that a person uses in life (“smiley”, “lol”, “like”, “mail”). If such words are in the lexicon of the buyer, it is better to use them in order to get closer to the consumer.
8. How does your target audience think? Men are practitioners. They need to accurately, concisely, concisely present information, as they have analytical thinking. Women are more creative thinkers. They need to present the storyline in the form of images and pictures.

Forming your target audience is a painstaking task. Creating your buyer will decide ad conversion.

What market segment are you in?

It is important to understand to whom and how you are selling. The market can be divided into two large groups:

• (business to business) - business business is more stable. Demand rarely changes. Working with companies is not that hard as they will be promoting your product on their own. In this case, your element is the sale of goods.
• (business to customer) - consumer business is most subject to change. If your business sells directly to the customer, keep your nose to the wind as demand can change on a daily basis. This is influenced by fashion trends, economic crises, seasonal fluctuations.

In the consumer business, the selection criteria for the target audience are very broad. It is important for a brand to identify a clear portrait of its customer. Otherwise, ads will not work. The B2C target audience parameters are always subject to external influence. Innovative products, novelties appear, so the buyer should always be kept in their ranks. What methods will help to do this?

As a country is obliged to know the heroes by sight, so the business must represent its target audience (CA) as specifically as possible. This representation will allow you to develop an effective advertising strategy and ensure the brand's success in the market.

From the target audience to the individual

The target audience can be defined as a group of people who share common characteristics and are interested in a particular product or service. The advertising impact directed at it allows you to increase loyalty to the brand and contribute to the decision to purchase.

The wider the target audience, the more difficult it is to highlight its significant characteristics and create a specific description necessary to promote the product. So, consumers of dairy products in general is a too vague category, since it may include:

- single men who prefer kefir;

- mothers who buy milk for children;

- girls fighting for a slim figure, etc.

On the contrary, a clear understanding of the target audience allows you to create an original product from its point of view and determine an adequate advertising message, effective brand promotion channels and measures to stimulate customers.

Ideally, marketers strive to achieve the most complete picture of the consumer, from what time he gets up in the morning and how he gets to work, and ending with how he spends his free time and dresses. But in practice, companies most often focus on fairly general characteristics of the target audience: gender, age, values ​​and needs, income level. Then the resulting population is divided into groups according to the model of purchasing behavior, and specific products and ways to promote them are already developed for them.

Types of target audience and methods of its segmentation

The target audience is determined at the stage of developing a positioning strategy, taking into account the analysis and segmentation of the market. First of all, its core is revealed - the most loyal and active consumers, who account for / will account for the largest volume of sales. Then it is divided into:

Main (primary) target audience- those who make the decision to buy;

Indirect (secondary) target audience- those who are passively involved in making a purchase decision, do not initiate it (for example, parents who follow the child's request to buy a toy).

There are nuances in the classification of the target audience, due to the direction of the business:

Target audience in the b2b segment– the market capacity and the size of the target audience are estimated quite easily, since information about them is available, and the demand in the market is quite stable;

CA b2c segment– demand in the market is subject to fluctuations due to the emergence of new products and trends, so information about the target audience needs to be updated in a timely manner.

In order to avoid a too general description of the target audience in the b2c segment, segmentation of the target audience is used - its division into groups with similar properties, the definition of group needs and the formation of an offer corresponding to them. In marketing, the “5 W” technique is widely known. by Mark Sherrington. It involves consistent responses to the following questions:

The advantage of the technique is that it can be used in an extended version, taking into account the segmentation methods used by competitors. Another advantage is the ability to target products and services to the behavior, lifestyle and needs of the target audience.

Ways to describe the target audience

Despite the fact that all markets are different and there is no universal recipe for describing the target audience, there are a number of characteristics that help to get a fairly clear and reliable portrait of the consumer:

• geographic (region and locality, climate, population);
• socio-demographic (sex, age, marital status, nationality, presence of children, education, specialty, source and amount of income, religious beliefs, environment, free amount of money);
• psychographic (life position and lifestyle, values ​​and interests, dreams and fears, idols, attitude to innovation);
• behavioral (does he like to make purchases, how often he uses this product and buys it, how he relates to brands, what he focuses on in choosing, etc.).

For the b2b market, the usual characteristics of the target audience turn out to be of little use. Here the size of companies, their mission and key tasks, solvency, as well as those persons who make the decision to purchase will matter.

There are a few more nuances. When describing the target audience, it is important to answer several questions for yourself:

How and where does your target audience spend their leisure time?

— What channels of obtaining information does she use (Internet and social networks, radio, television);

What needs of the target audience does your product/service satisfy? What associations and emotions does it evoke?

— Why does the target audience choose you and not your competitors and vice versa?

Some marketers literally draw a representative of their target audience, make collages or use photographs in order to visualize the consumer of the product. It is also possible to use such a technique as compiling two descriptions of Central Asia at the same time: a brief and as complete as possible, and the prospects for its development from the current state of affairs to the desired one.

There is a model for describing the target audience, which was proposed by Gerrit Antonides and Fred van Raem. It involves the division of all parameters into the following groups:

General level(drawing up a portrait according to standard characteristics);

Product group level(drawing up a portrait based on consumer behavior);

Brand level(when compiling a portrait, the degree of consumer loyalty to the brand, opinion about it, level of knowledge and intention to buy are taken into account).

Ways to describe target audience- this is a kind of arsenal of marketing tools that helps him see the consumer of the product and find an individual approach to him. This is of particular importance in today's market, when the abundance of similar products leaves customers complete freedom of choice.

Description of the main criteria of the target audience

The target audience

Core and types of target audience

Main target audience

Indirect target audience

Detailed classification

Description of segments

The target audience

The target audience of a product (from the English target audience, target group) is a specific group of people to whom all brand marketing communications are directed. The target audience includes not only existing buyers of the company's product, but also potential consumers, who are important to attract in order to gain a stable position in the industry.

Basic principles of working with the target audience

The target audience is an important aspect of any marketing activity, it allows the company to focus on a specific group of market consumers and create the perfect product for them, sell it in the right place with the right communication. The target audience defines the boundaries of the company's target market and is determined using special marketing research. In fact, the target audience is the group of people who need your product and who are interested in the benefits offered by the product.

The target audience is a specific consumer segment of the market or a group of such segments, respectively, any target audience is characterized by signs and characteristics that are common to each of its representatives. And it depends on you, by what criteria you combine consumers into the target audience:

by geographic: for example, the target audience is residents of Eastern Europe;

by socio-demographic: for example, the target audience is women aged 20-30 with an average income, holding the positions of an average statistical office employee

by psychographic: for example, the target audience is people who strive for self-expression and self-affirmation in society

by behavioral: for example, the target audience is people who buy a product 1 or less times

When determining the target audience, it is important to pay attention to its size and population dynamics, expressed in thousand people. The size of the target audience allows you to assess the potential market capacity and sales volume, and therefore assess the profitability of the business, the return on advertising investment and the long-term growth of the company.

Core and types of target audience

Each target audience has a core - a group of people who represent the most active and important consumers of the product. The core of the target audience usually includes consumers who bring a large share of profits and sales (or can bring), who use the product most often (or will use it), and also who have the highest need for the product and are ready to satisfy it by any means.

In modern marketing practice, there are 2 types of target audience: primary and secondary.

Main target audience

The primary or main (primary target audience) target audience is a priority in brand communication and means a group of people who directly decide on the need to purchase a product or service. The primary audience is the initiator of the purchase.

Indirect target audience

The secondary or indirect target audience (secondary target audience) plays a more passive role and even if it can participate in the purchase process, is not the initiator of the need to purchase a particular product or service. The secondary target audience has a lower priority for brand communication.

The difference between these types of target audience can be seen on the example of the market of children's toys. In this market, there are two types of target audience: parents (directly buying the product) and children (directly using the product). Children do not make the purchase of toys on their own, but very often they are the initiator of the purchase - they ask their parents to make a purchase. Therefore, children are the primary audience for the children's toys market, parents are the secondary target audience.

Socio-demographic characteristics in the description of the target audience

The following socio-demographic characteristics can be used to describe the target audience:

• education

  income level

  social and family status

  profession, place of work, occupation

  nationality or race

  geography of residence.

An example of a description of the target audience by socio-demographic characteristics

Women, 35-55, with an average and above average income, with higher or secondary specialized education, average office workers or middle managers living in large cities with more than 500 thousand people.

Psychographic characteristics

The following psychographic characteristics can be used to describe the target audience:

description of character traits (conservative, ambitious, cheerful, innovator, soul of the company, etc.);

values, life positions and attitudes towards important social issues (opinions about the environment, globalization, abortion, the standard of living of the population);

personal hobbies, hobbies, lifestyle;

model of purchasing behavior (description of how a consumer makes purchases from making a purchase decision to choosing on a shelf in a store);

a description of the places where the goods were purchased and the characteristics of the consumption of the goods (Where do they buy? How do they use them);

relation to the price of the product;

factors determining product choice or consumption drivers.

Description of the target audience in the B2B market

The following characteristics can be used to describe the target audience in the B2B market:

type of activity, range of goods

number of employees

annual sales

geography of distribution, activities - local, national, multinational

number of branches

who decides

seasonality of sales associated with the type of activity

price policy.

Socio-demographic signs of segmentation

Socio-demographic segmentation of the market is the process of dividing all buyers of the market into homogeneous groups according to sex-age criteria and social status in society. It is the most common method of market division, since the criteria for this segmentation method are easily measurable, and, therefore, the size of the segments is amenable to accurate mathematical calculation.

Socio-demographic segmentation is an integral part of any market segmentation process and has recently been increasingly combined with psychographic segmentation.

Criteria for socio-demographic segmentation

Segmentation according to the socio-demographic principle can be based on the following segmentation criteria:

Criteria for psychographic market segmentation

Psychographic market segmentation is the process of dividing all market buyers into homogeneous groups according to criteria such as: values, beliefs, motivation to buy a product and personality type. The theory of psychographic segmentation of consumers was born relatively recently, but has already managed to gain recognition in the field of marketing, as it is best able to explain the reason for the purchase of a product by different consumers.

The segments formed in the process of psychographic segmentation are very difficult to digitize, measure and quantify, so this type of market description is often grouped with socio-demographic segmentation.

In practice, there are 2 large examples of this kind of segmentation:

Psychographic segmentation of consumers according to the VALS methodology: a well-known American model of consumer market segmentation based on the motivation and resources that the consumer owns to make a purchase.

Generational psiographic segmentation: The second well-known and widely used model is based on the assumption that the behavior of people born around the same time is similar.

Basic Criteria for Psychographic Segmentation

The method of psychographic segmentation of consumers can be carried out according to any parameters that can characterize the type of personality and motivation of the buyer's behavior in the market, the most commonly used signs of market segmentation include:

Market Segmentation from A to Z: The Definitive Guide

Market segmentation is a term in marketing theory used to describe the process of dividing an entire market or industry into homogeneous parts (segments) according to certain characteristics.

The need to identify market segments and search for free niches is due to growing competition in all sectors of the economy, the need to increase the effectiveness of advertising investments in product development and strengthen loyalty to the company's product. In the article we will reveal the concept of market segmentation at 360 degrees. We will consider in detail each important stage of market segmentation, talk about modern criteria and methods of market segmentation, and describe a working methodology for choosing a segment for a business.

The article contains practical examples and links to additional sources of information. So we hope that after reading our material you will have no questions about how to find, evaluate and select the most profitable segment for the development of the company in the market.

Is it really that important to choose a segment?

Detailed classification

What should be the market segment?

Universal Process Sequence

Is it really that important to choose a segment?

In today's world, a loyal customer is most valued, who will not switch to competitors at the slightest opportunity, who will tell his friends about the product and bring new customers, for whom it will not be necessary to conduct large-scale advertising campaigns to increase knowledge. This kind of loyalty can only be acquired if the company is able to determine the needs of the audience well and satisfy them by 130% with the help of its product.

But how can you please everyone? That's right - you can't. An individual approach is important. This is where market segmentation can help. The essence of market segmentation is to combine all market consumers into homogeneous groups according to certain criteria, select the most stable and profitable customer groups and create a separate product for each group, conduct a separate advertising campaign, offer different services and working conditions, in other words, develop separate marketing -mix for each segment.

The importance and role of the market segmentation process for a company cannot be underestimated: optimization of company resources by concentrating on high-performance markets, unification of work with consumers and increasing their level of satisfaction by better matching the product to market needs, increasing the competitiveness of the product and business as a whole by following a clearly chosen strategy work.

Thus, the global goal of the market segmentation process is the long-term growth of sales and profits of the company, therefore, when starting to develop a marketing strategy for a product, planning a business expansion or creating an advertising campaign, check whether your target segment is defined.

Detailed classification

Marketing is the science of universal methods. The market segmentation methodology can be used not only for dividing into homogeneous groups of consumers and searching for the target audience. In his daily activities, a marketing manager uses at least 4 segmentation models: buyers, products, competitors and customers of the B2B sector.

Segmentation of market demand (buyers) allows you to describe the target audience of the company according to geographical, behavioral, socio-demographic and psychographic criteria. Segmentation of business markets helps to identify promising customers who can provide the company with a stable income in the future. Product segmentation (analysis of the entire range in the industry) helps to globally assess the structure of the market, identify free functional niches for creating new products. And segmentation of competitors gives an idea of ​​the threats and sources of growth for the business.

What should be the market segment?

Before starting to study the process of market segmentation, let's unequivocally define what a market segment should be in order to be convenient to work with. In global practice, it is generally accepted that the right market segment has the following characteristics: homogeneity, distinctive features, completeness of description, measurability, sustainability in the long run and access to communication channels. A detailed description of the segmentation conditions is given in the table:

If the segments obtained during segmentation do not meet the criteria described above, think about whether it will be convenient for your company to work with them.

Universal Process Sequence

The market segmentation process is the first step in developing a market positioning strategy. The process begins with the selection of segmentation criteria (or principles) and ends with the approval of product positioning and the development of a marketing plan for each target segment.

The model shown in the figure is called target marketing and is a modern concept of doing business in the market.

Read more: Target Marketing Strategy: A Practical Guide to Choosing a Marketplace Strategy.

Search for segments and market niches

After the segmentation criteria are defined, the longest stage begins: the process of dividing the market into segments. At this stage, do not spare time and effort. The more accurately you analyze, the more free market niches you will find, the higher the probability of building a strong stable company on the market. Details on how to search for segments and conduct market segmentation are described in our examples:

Product market segmentation methodology: a practical guide (with a good example) for product segmentation.

Segmentation of the consumer market from scratch: a practical guide to finding free niches in a highly competitive product market.

Description of segments

The description of the segment helps to choose the right marketing strategy for product development.

In practice, 6 main descriptive characteristics are used: characteristics of the audience of the segment according to the selected criteria; the number of players in each segment, indicating the manufacturers; a description of the buyer's behavior model at the time of choosing, buying and using the product, as well as the formed habits of using the product; assessment of the level of advertising support in the segment; determination of price sensitivity and indication of the existing price limits of the segment; assessment of the overall level of satisfaction with the product on the market; description of the key requirements for the quality and functional characteristics of the product.

Determining the boundaries of the company's functioning and setting goals

It is important to avoid mistakes during the target market segment selection stage, so take the time to collect additional information and accurate data. Segment size can be determined by one of three options for calculating market size, and the attractiveness and potential of the segment will help evaluate business analysis techniques used in marketing on a regular basis. In practice, there are many criteria for choosing a target segment, you need to choose only those that best help to describe: sales potential in the segment, demand potential in the market, competitive conditions and the presence of entry barriers, market threats, competitiveness of the company's product.

Read more: Strategic segment attractiveness: five groups of factors that will help you assess the potential of the market and the attractiveness of the segment in terms of resources and capabilities of the company.