Ecommerce has opened new markets to businesses. However, this has also brought about certain challenges. For one you need to know to whom you are selling otherwise your marketing efforts will not amount to much.

But how do you define your target market? Well, one way is to create a target audience profile. This lets you identify the needs of your customers, what products they are searching for and what content and messages will best resonate with them.

What is a target audience profile?

Before we understand what a target audience profile is, let’s first define a target audience. This is a group of potential customers who display similar characteristics in terms of buying behavior and product interest.

A target market profile is a list of their characteristics and demographics such as age, gender, or location.

By creating a target market profile, you are better able to develop marketing campaigns that are best suited to their needs. Instead of just marketing your products or services wildly, you can create content and promotions that best appeals to the target market.

This will help boost conversions

How to profile your target market

Contrary to what most people think, creating a target market profile is quite simple. This is how:

1. Start by broadly describing your customers

The first step is to start with a broad classification of your customers. Ask yourself who your customers are and why they may be interested in your products.

What problems does your product solve for your customers?

Having understood this, you now have an idea of who your customers are and where they may be located. Another way to gather information is to use customer reviews.

You may also use the data that you’ve collected from previous buying behaviors.

2. Define demographics

So you’ve broadly classified your audience as those who would find your products helpful and useful. The next step now becomes identifying their demographics. This will make it much easier for you to pinpoint exactly what they need.

Some demographics such as gender-based on the type of products that you sell are easy to identify. For instance, if you sell hair products then your customers are more likely to be women.

You will require a bit more research and data evaluation to find out demographics such as location, preferred social media sites, and age.

3. Identify their needs and pain points

Having defined their demographics, it is now time to take a look at your product or service. Put yourself in their shoes like you were buying the products.

 What about the product do you like for you to choose to solve a particular problem?

Also, what about the product don’t you like and would discourage you from buying it again?

Find out the pain points that customers buying such a product are experiencing and how would they wish to solve the problem.

With this information, you can not only market your products correctly, but you are also able to develop and make changes to the product to best solve the customer’s problems.

4. How will customers reach you?

At this point, you have made the necessary steps to only identify your target market but also create products that customers will need.

However, it will all account for nothing if you have a great product yet customers do not know about it.

So how do you help customers find you and your products easily?

Firstly find out where they spend most of their time. i.e. which social media platform do they mostly use.

Also, consider which website they visit and which blogs they like to read.

This will enable you to find them and grab their attention.

Conclusion

It is critical to profile your target markets. In this way, you can create tailored marketing campaigns that appeal to the needs of the customers. Without identifying your target market, promotions and ads are likely to fall on deaf ears.