Target Market & Audience: The rapid demographic changes force brands to revise their segmentation strategies

Indeed, marketers today face the significant challenge of understanding, enticing, and engaging with new demographic groups as crucial profiles in the consumer economy.  Their consumer expectations, market conditions, and hungry competitors require brands to dig deeper into their market segmentation, with a greater emphasis on behavioral and psychographic characteristics.  

Furthermore, the considerable increase in the Hispanic population, which represents 68 million people living in the US, is influencing media consumption, pushing companies to review and leverage their market segmentation strategies.

Tips to boost your Target Market

First, it’s essential to understand the difference between the target market vs. target audience to define your target market statement.  Often, we tend to misunderstand both terms. To be more specific: “your target market is the end consumer, while your target audience is to whom your company advertises”.

Let’s use the Once Upon a Farm brand as an example to clarify it. Their target market: Babies & Kids. However, babies & kids don’t buy their food, their parents do. Therefore, this childhood nutrition company must focus its advertising on parents (their target audience) to sell food for babies & kids (their target market).

1. Depth in market research

Data is King & Queen. The undeniable demographics shift demands that companies put more emphasis on thorough research.  To capture valuable insights that can help you leverage your market target, consider conducting surveys, focus groups, panel data analysis, and other research methods.  As a very successful task, I recommend scheduling periodic meetings with a trimestral frequency, with your marketing & sales staff (your major players), to discuss, learn, and gather actionable insights to improve your brand strategy.

2. Know your audience through buyer personas

Buyer personas help personalize your marketing efforts; they are the ideal representation of your audience. To build a strong buyer persona, dig deeper into your target audience's preferences, motivations & lifestyle, and later compare and tailor that research with customer interviews to create an accurate audience profile.

A couple of years ago, while working with RIVA Spain, a luxury hardwood flooring company, we had the challenge of rebranding and refreshing the brand.  And, of course, one of the tasks was to rebuild their buyer persona.  We analyzed their market target in depth, as well as their target market audience, which includes hardwood flooring retailers, designers, architects, and industry opinion leaders. Additionally, we noticed something interesting during the process, that according to the demographic profile changes, we needed to add new buyer personas to capture the attention of all potential clients.  The takeaway here is not to take for granted that you know everything about your target, so take the time to research them again.

71% of customers expect content personalized according to their needs and interests, and 76% are frustrated if that doesn't happen.

3. Gather social media insights, consumer feedback & track competitor strategies

Social media is an “online party”, where our role as marketers is to be the “host” and the guests, the audience. To ensure an unforgettable experience, you must offer the best entertainment and engaging content.  Therefore, to achieve the “What a party!" experience and capture consumer attention, focus on personalization.  As recently mentioned in a past article, McKinsey & Company reported that  71% of customers expect content personalized according to their needs and interests, and 76% are frustrated if that doesn't happen.  Analyze data and metrics from your social media platforms, such as engagement rates and audience responses, to gather invaluable insights into audience interaction with your brand.

Since customer reviews gained popularity through Google & Yelp platforms, today’s consumers understand the value of their insights and promote a review ecosystem culture as a key factor in their purchase decisions.  Innovative and leading companies, such as Amazon, strongly emphasize customer feedback, highlighted reviews & ratings, as a powerful way to enhance your marketing strategies through customer satisfaction.

And ultimately, but very, very important, track competitors' strategies. Monitoring the competitor strategies is an essential task to include in your periodic meetings. Investigate and analyze their social media campaigns & audience interactions, stay informed about their events, and identify opportunities that may improve your strategy through best practices.

4. Segment your audience

One of the arduous jobs for marketers and advertisers is effectively engaging through a detailed segmentation (demographics, geographic, behavioral, and psychographics).  For instance, Netflix is a fantastic example of exploiting data to optimize its segmentation through personalized content.  However, if you want to know more about exploding your “party data,” review other articles from our Insight Station blog.

For a better understanding, examine the following case from Olympusat, a broadcast media company. A couple of years ago, I led a social media campaign for their OTT streaming platform, targeting the US Hispanic audience, to capture new subscribers.  We worked on accurate demographic and geographic segmentation to effectively connect with the audience using Meta sources.

Still, the crucial process to guarantee "an arrow direct to the target" was to dig deeper into their behavioral characteristics (such as the frequency of watching streaming content) & psychographic characteristics (lifestyle & personal values; what motivates them).  Furthermore, after investigating the matter and reviewing the OTT platform's content, as well as the content of their main competitors, such as Netflix and Pantaya, I noticed that the VEMOX platform offered a variety of Spanish content but lacked new & fresh content to attract its target market. That was the year of the Spanish titles' booming, and the audience was starving for content featuring their favorite characters, the Money Heist actors.  With that finding in mind, I returned to the table to suggest postponing the campaign until the platform could provide the right content that meets the audience's demands.

In short, to achieve an accurate target audience, focus on segmentation and then refine your target market statement.

Sorces by: Nielsen, HubSpot, WIX , TRIVIUM & Forbes

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