Best Practices for Defining Consumer Targets: Beyond Demographics

Defining Your Consumer Target is Critical to Success

In any business, consumers are foundational to driving growth. You can’t have a business without them. When a brand is out of touch with their consumer base, any strategies put in place may fall flat or, even worse, accelerate a sales decline. Consequently, the most successful brands understand their consumers and place them at the forefront of everything they do.

However, you can’t just randomly find a bunch of people and “get to know them.”  You have to be focused on who your consumer is.  You must be disciplined and spend the time clearly identifying your target audience.

But what is a target?  It’s a homogeneous group of consumers most valuable to your brand.  Great…but what does that really mean?  These are the people your brand needs to specifically identify to grow.  It is a subset of consumers similar to one another for whom your brand develops products and with whom it communicates.

So, why is this so important?  Defining consumer targets well drives product development, price point, effective marketing communication, and where to place your brand.  Brands should know who they’re talking to and what resonates with them.

Imagine Truly Understanding Your Consumer Target

Let’s say you need to purchase a gift for 2 different people - a close friend and an acquaintance. Selecting a gift for a close friend is effortless because you know their likes, dislikes, and preferences. You know exactly what to shop for, where to find it, and how much to spend. Best of all, there is a high probability your friend will appreciate it. Selecting a gift for an acquaintance, however, is more difficult. You may spend valuable time and resources casting a wider net - shopping at several stores, wavering between options and wrestling with how much to spend. And, despite efforts, there is no certainty this person will enjoy the gift.

Knowing and understanding the people your brand is gifting to will not only be more efficient, but it will also be easier to keep them engaged and interested.

Defining Consumer Targets: Who is Your Ideal Customer?

We all want to be liked, but it is impossible to appeal to everyone. Knowing your consumer on a detailed level will help your brand narrow its focus, making it easier to communicate and connect in a meaningful way.

Thus, the key to any successful brand is determining who the ideal consumer is. Defining your target audience is often the most important aspect of marketing and, coincidentally, often overlooked. Missing this step will yield ineffective messaging and waste a significant amount of money. Spending time upfront, getting to know your consumer, is critical to growth.

Often, though, brands take a simplistic approach and identify their consumers only by demographics.  Don’t shortchange it by taking a one-dimensional view by focusing on only one aspect of your consumer.  There are many things that go into a good target definition.

The 3 Essential Elements to Defining Good Consumer Targets

Having a clearly defined target makes marketing more effective. Everyone is unique. Each consumer has their own interests, passions, motivations, values and beliefs. Crafting a product for everyone won’t meet anyone’s needs because it will be inauthentic and watered down.

Take Cosmopolitan Yogurt, for example. In 1999, Cosmopolitan, a popular women’s magazine full of fashion advice, dating tips, and celebrity gossip, introduced their own brand of yogurt. Within 18 months, the product disappeared from the dairy aisle. This was a case of a brand reaching beyond their consumer area of interest without doing homework first. Knowing what women want in print is a far cry from understanding what they want in yogurt. More importantly, were the women who read the magazine the right target for a yogurt product?  Introducing a product based on one common denominator - Cosmopolitan magazine readers - resulted in a mismatch of product and target. And that mismatch negatively impacted how they priced it, formulated it and promoted it. Launching a product based on only a few general demographic points or behaviors is short-sighted and one-dimensional.

Here are the 3 most important elements in defining a good target:

🏠 DEMOGRAPHICS

🛒 BEHAVIORS

👤 ATTITUDES

A good consumer target should never be too broad. Remember…a brand can’t be everything to everyone. It needs FOCUS and decisions need to be made about who, exactly, to focus on. Does this mean all your sales will come from one target? No. You’ll get peripheral consumers hopping on here and there for other reasons. However, without focusing on a specific target, communication and delivery of your product will suffer. If you don’t understand what’s meaningful to your target, then messaging will be lost and irrelevant.  If you peel back each layer of the onion, only then will you truly understand your target. The trick is choosing the right onion.

🏠 DEMOGRAPHICS: The First Step in Defining Your Target

Demographics can be age, income, gender, geographic location, etc. This is general statistical data useful in narrowing down those who resonate with your brand.  For example, men ages 35-55 who live in the United States is a basic demographic description.

🛒 How Behaviors Strengthen Your Target Definition

Researching what people BUY NOW adds teeth to your demographics. Pinpointing current behaviors is key when uncovering relevant patterns that are instrumental in the positioning of your product. Do they buy certain brands or shop at certain retailers? Do they buy your brand or a competitive brand? It is important to note that researching existing behaviors is different from anticipating aspirational activities. Anticipating what consumers may or may not want or do is a bet you won’t want to put your money on.  Often, consumers may say they want certain things but, in reality, they’re not quite ready.

For example, imagine you sell premium golf gloves. There are plenty of people who love the idea of playing golf, but unless they’re actually buying golf balls and spending time on the course, they’re not likely to be interested in your gloves. Golf is more of a dream than a hobby for them. The audience you really want to reach are those already demonstrating golfing behaviors, so your focus should be on those who are already active golfers.

👤 Consumer Attitudes: Bringing Your Consumer to Life

Attitudes bring your consumer to life. Beliefs, feelings, emotions, values and motivations provide a deeper understanding of why your consumer behaves the way they do. Why do they eat or do certain things? What kind of lifestyles do they practice or aspire to have? Why do they follow certain diets or adhere to certain standards? What are their attitudes about work, friends, and family?

Get to know your audience and how they think and communicate. Where do they get their information? What challenges do they face? Can your product help them overcome these challenges?

In marketing, there’s no such thing as TMI (too much information). In depth knowledge of your target audience, as well as their wants and needs, will keep your brand relevant, competitive, and appealing. Knowing your consumer will keep them engaged.

Putting it All Together: A Complete Consumer Target Definition Example

In keeping with the golf theme mentioned before on behaviors – selling premium golf gloves - this is how you might express your ideal consumer:

People ages 30+ who currently play golf regularly and buy premium golf balls. They believe a good golf game comes, in part, from the quality equipment that they use.

You don’t have to keep it this short, in fact a longer definition can be stronger. The more information you have to describe your ideal consumer, the better off you’ll be.  But this description is an easy handle to remember and has all the needed components:

🏠 Demographics:  People ages 30+

🛒 Behaviors: currently play golf regularly and buy premium golf balls

👤 Attitude: believe a good golf game comes, in part, from the quality equipment that they use.

Tools and Resources for Defining Consumer Targets

Getting the data you need comes in many different forms - some at a cost and others for free.  What you end up using will be based on need and budget.  There are several resources and methodologies available to help define a consumer target.

SYNDICATED RETAILER DATA

If you’re a Consumer Products Goods (CPG) company and have access to IRI or NielsenIQ syndicated data, using their panel information is a great starting point.  It is rich in demographic and behavioral information.  Larger companies subscribe to this data as part of a contract, but smaller companies can purchase one-time access.  If you are just starting out or haven’t sold through a grocery retailer yet, then a syndicated data source may not work for you. 

CUSTOMER DATA COLLECTION

The check-out process is an excellent opportunity for capturing consumer data.  Collecting an email or survey response can be just as valuable as the purchase itself.  There are several free online survey tools available, so do your research before selecting the one most appropriate for your needs.  Another effective opportunity for engagement can be through a customer service call line or online chat tool.  These features provide a more personal interaction, helping you connect to and understand what customers like or dislike most about your product.

SEGMENTATION

Market segmentation divides your target into approachable groups based on demographics, needs, priorities, common interests, and behavioral criteria.  When studying and testing these segments you can see which one might be a good consumer for your brand.  You can use your own customer data, IRI, or NielsenIQ panel data to create a custom segmentation, or you can take advantage of available syndicated (already segmented) data for various categories.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Most likely your brand has a social media presence.  A great way to learn more about your target is to closely monitor comments and reviews. Study post engagement analytics. What time of day are your consumers most active?  Which marketing graphics or product images resonate with them?  Which platform drives the most sales or traffic to your website?  Can you glean anything about your consumers that might help shape your target profile?  You can also use this to ask them questions or send out polls to get more information.

EMAIL LIST

An email list is valuable because they are people who are interested in your brand or product.  Send surveys or questions out to this group to better understand who they are.  And if you can segment out your list by those that have purchased from you and those that have not, then you can compare the two results to see if there is something about your buyers.  That information can help you narrow in on your target definition.

INDUSTRY REPORTS

These reports provide market and industry insights usually for a small fee.  And while these are not custom to your category they can include helpful information on things like emerging trends and customer behaviors. Even just getting on Google and entering keywords or categories related to your product, can provide useful information.

FOCUS GROUP

The purpose of a focus group is to gain the perspectives and experiences of various consumers and can provide immediate feedback.  Participants can be recruited from an email list, social media post, busy mall, or grocery store.  Depending on how many people you recruit, interviews can be one-on-one, in small groups of 3, or larger groups of 6-8.  This is a chance to go deep and start understanding the behaviors and attitudes associated with your brand.

Bringing Your Defined Target to Life

Now that you’ve done your research and defined your target, it’s time to bring your consumer to life!  Internalize who they are.  Stop thinking of them as an amalgamation of facts and start thinking of them as real people who want to buy your product.  Many in the industry call this ‘creating a persona.’  Step into their shoes.  Think like them.  Why?  Because it helps unlock what your consumers want and will impact your marketing, product and price.

Create a visual image of your target.  Maybe it’s someone you know. Maybe it’s a cutout from a magazine. Maybe it’s a famous actor, TV character, or reality star.  Give them a name. 

THIS is your consumer. THEY are at the center of your business.

Key Takeaways for Defining Consumer Targets

Identifying and defining a solid target is the foundation of a strong brand.  Always include these 3 essential elements in any target definition:

• Demographics

• Behaviors

• Attitudes

This will give you a more complete picture of your ideal consumer target and set you up for success with your marketing, product development and pricing.  Continually check your target definition by revisiting their behaviors and attitudes once a year to ensure continued success and longevity.  Consumers change over time, so you want to make sure your business keeps up with them.