Research of the target audience, how to find out your customer "in person”

Knowing your target audience helps you grow your business and increase sales. The better you know your customer, the more likely you are to be able to solve their problems and respond to demand. Knowledge of the target audience is an aspect that represents a number of studies that help you learn about the needs, interests, and pains of a potential buyer. Knowing the geographical location of your audience, its approximate age and Hobbies, you can build your online store offers in such a way that each potential buyer does not leave your site with an empty basket, but makes purchases, thereby stimulating the development of your business.

But how do you know your target audience and what information is needed to promote your products? In this article, we will try to answer all your questions, as well as tell you how to simplify the task of segmentation of the target audience and identify the most profitable audience. Let's start!

Segmentation of the target audience, how to conduct it and why it is needed

Society is divided into certain segments. Segments of society consist of people who have some kind of connection with each other. This relationship can be geographical location, shared interests, age, and needs. A segment may consist of people who have the same work schedule, or they are online at the same time. In General, segments of society are your potential customers who, for one reason or another, have something in common. Often, it is the General parameters that help online store owners determine which segment of society they are interested in, depending on how these links in the segment overlap with the products and offers of the Internet resource.

Segmentation of potential customers of an online store can be carried out by the following parameters:

• Geographical location
• Belonging to a particular social group
• Hobbies and interests
• Seasonal needs and interests

In fact, there can be dozens of such criteria, it all depends on the specifics of your product, as well as the information that you have. Having sales statistics for a country or a specific region, knowing the most popular product positions in a particular segment, having Google Analytics data and basic search queries, you can choose by which criteria to segment your target audience.

Segmentation gives you an idea of the number of potential customers. With this information, you can adjust your business plan, review costs for items with low demand, or generally review your catalog. Segmentation gives owners of online stores an understanding of what the market needs at the moment and which specific segment should be paid attention to at the moment in order to increase the number of sales and revenue from the business.

How to correctly segment your target audience

In order to correctly segment the target audience of your online store, you need to determine the main criteria, such as:

1. Age
It affects many parameters of your future customers, including their interest in a particular product. This is due to the different needs and desires of different age groups.

2. Goals and interests
You should understand what your potential customers are looking for and what they want from life. If you sell laptops or IT courses, then your target audience should be interested in such a product. Such interest is usually accompanied by a certain age range, from which you should start

3. Geographical location
Knowing where your target audience lives, you can provide them with products that can solve their main problems. For example, if you make and sell winter clothing, warm jackets, and coats, your target audience should be located geographically in cooler areas. If you are engaged in the production and sale of swimwear - your target audience, these are residents of warm regions and countries in need of fashionable beach new clothes.

When creating a segmented target audience, you should also consider:
network

• Time

How much time a particular segment of your audience spends on the Internet directly depends on the probability that they will visit your site and make a purchase.

• The device used

What device does your site use to access certain segments of the target audience? By answering this question, you can better adapt your resource for the convenience of the client and thus increase the chances of selling the product.

To select the main segment of the target audience that all changes on your resource will be directed to, you should study the market capacity. Market capacity is the number of users in a particular segment who are ready to make a purchase in your online store. After you know at least the approximate numbers of all the segments you are interested in, you can choose one of them and work on its hobby. This development of the online store will allow you to work only with interested customers.

How to determine the segment capacity

There are several tools that you can use to get information about the capacity of segments of your potential target audience, for example:

• Google Trends

You can use this tool to find out if a particular product is popular. This service takes into account the number of search queries, and with their help provides you with data on the demand for the position you are interested in.

• Google Ads and Yandex Wordstat

Both resources will help you find out which key queries are currently popular. With this information, you can not only find out what a potential buyer needs at the moment, but also use key queries on your site and in the product description in order to conduct seo adaptation of your online store

• Serpstat

This service will help you not only review popular search queries in more detail, but also give you the opportunity to get acquainted with detailed statistics of both your site and the site of your competitors.

We study the needs of each segment and make our own choice

Segmentation of your potential target audience is complete, but what to do with all this data? With their help, you can study the needs of your potential customers in a particular segment and make a choice that contributes to the growth of sales on your resource. To find out which segment or segments will be more profitable for you, you need to:

1. Find out user needs
Your potential buyer may have many needs and you need to find out if your product covers part or at least one of them. Customer needs can be divided into two groups, designated as mandatory and optional

• Mandatory needs include food, medicine, and everything that a person can't live comfortably without.
• Optional needs include branded clothing, jewelry, entertainment, and everything that almost anyone can want without reference to a specific geographical location or social status.

2. Examine consumer expectations
When offering an expensive product to your potential buyer, remember that the higher the cost of your product , the higher the expectations from the buyer.

3. Explore possible reasons for rejecting your product

Do not think that every potential customer will make a purchase from you. Even the most interested buyer may have a number of reasons not to buy a certain product item in your catalog, or not to cooperate with your online store at all. There can be many such reasons, and here are some of them:

• The potential buyer is not interested in the advantage of your product
• The buyer has already received the advantage you offer by purchasing the product at a lower price from your competitor
• The buyer does not trust the brand you offer or is not sure of the brand's integrity regarding the benefits offered
• It is difficult for a potential buyer to start using products of a new brand after long-term use of products of another company
• A potential buyer does not know how to use the advantages of products offered by you and it is difficult for them to imagine a specific working case

4. Select the target segment or segments that you will work with later

Owning such an amount of information you will be able to choose for themselves the most profitable segment or segments with which subsequently you have to work with. This is an extremely important choice, because if you make a mistake, you have every chance to focus your business on a segment that is not interested in your products. Pay special attention to the process of selecting your target audience, make your choice based on:

• Number of interested buyers in one or more segments

Convenience of delivering your products directly to the customer. This applies to the geographical location of your buyer. if the delivery of your product is too expensive for the customer, they are unlikely to purchase it

• Prospects

Prospects, whether there is a probability of growth in this particular segment or segments, whether you will have the opportunity to develop and increase your income later by working with this segment

• If the level of competition

If the level of competition for your chosen segment is too high, consider paying attention to other segments. A lot of competition promises high costs for additional advertising and discount offers, and this adversely affects the financial stability of your business

Results

Research of the target audience and search for profitable segments is a time-consuming process that requires full commitment and a considerable amount of time. Not all online shopping is carried out such studies, but it has a direct impact on their profitability and development. If you want to take a serious approach to planning possible revenues, studying the profitability and profitability of your future business, we recommend that you study your potential target audience, select the most profitable segments from it and use them as a basis for further development of the site. By focusing on your potential customers, you can quickly earn their trust, and this can later affect both the development of your online store and its revenue.