Target Audience

The attitudinal and demographic description of the core prospect or customer to whom the brand is intended to appeal, or to whom the marketing plan is directed.  

Criteria for evaluating the target audience description:

• Should balance size and relevance. Your target audience must be large enough for your efforts to be profitable, but not so large that it is generic. Don't make the mistake of trying to appeal to everyone; if you do, you will not be able to effectively differentiate your brand.
• Be inclusive of users and non-users - What are the opportunities to grow revenue by converting the most likely non-users of your brand into users? 
• Makes it clear who the target is, and who it is not
• Reinforces the essence of your brand by ensuring it is consistent with the characteristics of your target audience. For example, if the essence of your food brand is about being natural and 'pure', its unlikely that people who are uninterested in nutritional topics would be a good match for your brand.

Questions to consider as you develop target audience description:

• Who is your brand's best customer?
• How do you describe your best customers?

- Demographic
- Psychographic
- Technographic

• Are there opportunities to divide your target users into groups (segments) that will enable you to make your communications to them more relevant and effective? Using the natural foods brand as an example, dividing your target audience into athletes and moms may permit you to develop communications that are more relevant to each segment, than if you tried to market to the group as a whole.
• What is the value of each target user group to the company? Does the target user group contribute enough revenue to make it worthwhile to market to them? You may find, for example, that people who make their own soap love your natural food brand, but there aren't enough of them to market to efficiently.
• What’s the 'pain point' for each target user group? Does your brand solve a specific, important need or problem for the target user? Is it a need or problem that another brand is unable to solve?

  See also:
  brand defined
  captive brand
  store brand, private label
  national brand
  positioning statement
  point of difference
  pain point
  frame of reference
  reason to believe
  brand essence
  portfolio architecture
  brand architecture

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