Are you creating content for machines or people? Drawing up a portrait of the target audience. Portrait of the target audience

Content marketing requires constant evaluation of quality based on whether it was made for search engines or for real people. If you write content based solely on technical criteria

: , etc. - this approach can no longer be called relevant and “human”. When creating your next article, you must have a portrait in front of you target audience, you should know his demographics, interests and hobbies.

Content is also a product; in traditional business, marketers and entrepreneurs already for a long time personify their typical buyer certain characteristics- this is called a consumer portrait.

In our online space, you can find out the demographic indicators of your users using web analytics, but this will not be enough. All we get are cold numbers and indicators like gender, age, social status and geographical location. Although these statistics help to determine the target audience of the site at the start, is there still something missing in it? - A human face!

Portrait of the target audience

<Личность>has become important over the past few years, and it implies the need to project a human face onto the cold statistics used by those creating content or product. . Thus, personality was introduced as a metric that helps marketers evaluate and utilize the human side of available statistics.

Individuals have their own problems, goals and aspirations, just like each of us. Newspaper publishers have been taking these factors into account for a long time at the most primitive level, and thus determining what will work best for the front page. Editors and journalists have long been guided by the principle “more content - more views.” Individuals have characteristics, fears, desires and needs. Demographics are age, gender or university year.

So, it doesn’t matter whether you are a blogger or an SMM specialist. You need to try on the portrait of the target audience using statistical data.

Example of a target audience portrait

Personas can be quite prescriptive or even provide you with a whole image of a typical reader or potential client. I offer you an example of the personality of the target audience for a humorous video portal, a portrait of someone who will not only consume content, but also create it themselves and enter into dialogue with other users.

What questions should you ask?

To develop own personality potential user, you should ask yourself a few questions.

• What are the most challenging problems and challenges in their work?
• Where do they get their information from? Blogs, magazines, books?
• What can stop them on your website/online store?
• What seminars or exhibitions do they attend?
• What media resources do they use? Youtube, newspapers, podcasts?

By answering these questions, you will be able to create at least some characteristics of the personality of your clients.

Creation personal characteristics is both an art and a science. Your task is to create material that will simultaneously touch both the heart and mind. The content should not only answer questions, but also be in the interests of the potential client. This could be a video, a blog post, or a presentation, or all three. If you can get those creating your content to put themselves in the shoes of buyers, then you can say that you are already halfway to success.

What should you do?

It is no secret that a product is sold to a specific consumer. Marketing agencies offer several techniques to identify ideal buyers for any product. We will share one that makes it easy to create a portrait of the target audience just for you.

General issues

To create a portrait of an ideal consumer, you need to answer a few basic questions:

• Who, first of all, represents the target audience for a particular company?
• How to develop a strategy specifically for these buyers?
• What should you do before identifying the right audience?
• What information will help you create your ideal buyer persona?
• What are the characteristics to describe this group of future customers?
• Is it worth going into detail about the description of the group?
• Does the general market and expected competition affect the sale of goods to my consumer?

By answering each question as fully as possible, marketers will improve conversion (that is, sales of the product itself).

Let's start with the basics

How to describe it? Initially, decide whose problem the proposed service or product solves. People buy absolutely everything, but the goods sold vary in cost, quality and many other parameters. This is exactly what a marketer should consider.

People buy absolutely everything, but the goods sold vary in cost, quality and many other parameters.

It is also worth determining how wide or narrow the audience for the product will be.

• Toothbrushes are necessary for a wide range of consumers.
• Diabetic products - for a narrow circle.
• Perfumes – for a wide target audience.
• South African spices are only for a narrow circle of lovers.

The larger the company, the more likely it is to appeal to a broad target group of consumers. But even in these conditions, the purchasing power, age limit and general values ​​of the intended customers are taken into account. A properly thought-out advertising campaign is based on an even more detailed and intimate understanding of the client:

• Age is taken into account.
• What are his preferences?
• What is his income level?
• The rate of product consumption (a yacht or a bottle of carbonated drink is purchased at different speeds and differs in price by several thousand times).
• Many other additional and highly specialized factors for sales.

Good timing

The target client is determined after a general analysis of the market and the one the future product represents. Perfect option– “diagnostics” of customers who already consume this or similar products, identifying potential buyers and determining the unique characteristics of a new product or its varieties. Don't forget about direct and indirect competitors.

1. Direct competitors. These are those who sell the same product (for example, Nike, Adidas, Ekko sneakers). The emphasis is on innovative approaches to creating a product or on lowering prices to compete.
2. Indirect. These are all the other sellers. For example: a buyer wanted to buy sneakers, but saw posters of his favorite actor and bought a ticket to his premiere show.

Features of real and potential clients

The format of the following study is a table or subject description. It contains the main characteristics and parameters of the target audience:

1. . Describe in detail psychological profile client, based on identifying his values. The product is sold through the emotional involvement of the buyer in the sales process.
2. . Based on the place of residence and cultural characteristics of the selected group of people.
3. . Reveal common features in buyer behavior and help advertisers build the right video and sound sequences.
4. Social. Mentioned above (income, age, social status).

The ideal option is if after such an analysis a visual portrait of the client emerges. This is almost a real character. The company clearly knows his lifestyle and social level. You also know how your customer differs from other people and what motivates them when choosing a product. What price is he willing to pay and how often will he purchase the product on offer?

We should not forget about brand admirers, who can be attracted through brand recognition, loyalty to a particular brand or manufacturer, opinions about the brand and its qualities, and the frequency of purchasing branded goods.

The target audience(TA) is the population of people to whom advertising is directed; or a group of users interested in some information.

In other words, the definition of target audience refers to those people whose needs are satisfied by your product or service. These people certainly have something in common or similar: characteristics (demographic, geographic, economic, etc.), perception and attitude towards the quality of the product/service, motivation for purchasing, methods of making and place of purchase.

Ignorance of the target audience usually leads to increased costs for product promotion or, even worse, to the failure of the product in the market.

Target audience of the site

This is a collection of project visitors who find its content useful. The web resource is aimed at this segment of users.

Based on the time frame, the site’s audience is:

• maximum - total visits;
• constant- visitors who periodically visit the site;
• irregular- visited several times, but did not become regular visitors;
• active- spend on the page more than an hour in Week;
• target.

Target audience is a fundamental concept in website promotion. The effectiveness of promotion and search engine optimization of a web project depends on the attracted consumers, since the promotion strategy is formed based on the preferences, capabilities and desires of the target audience.

This is a very important element, since the proposal that best suits the needs of the target audience directly depends on the amount of detail and quality of the portrait. The more characteristics it has, the greater the chances of success.

To compile it, the following scheme of similar features is used that you should pay attention to:

• Demographic - gender, age, Family status, profession, nationality;
• Geographical - location of the region and the dynamics of its development, population, climate, media availability, etc.;
• Economic - income level, employment;
• Psychographic - character traits, temperament, lifestyle, life position, etc.

There are also additional parameters for drawing up a portrait: favorite literature, film genres, car brands, favorite sport, cafe, possible problems with health, etc. Using additional parameters in the portrait description will allow you to reach exactly that narrow circle of buyers who will undoubtedly be interested in the offer.

TA happens narrow And wide. For example, ice cream lovers are a wide audience, and chocolate ice cream lovers with condensed milk are a narrow audience. The wider it is, the more vague the description of the portrait is, since it will be difficult to identify the pronounced characteristics of consumers.

Therefore, it is not entirely reasonable to focus exclusively on a wide target audience.

An exemplary portrait includes not only current consumers, but also potential ones.

How to determine your target audience

To obtain data about the target audience, the following is used:

• survey
• interviewing
• conducting surveys

Information can be found on the same social networks, blogs and forums. In this way, without wasting time, with minimal costs, you can easily segment your audience. However, it should be understood that the opinion of the so-called vocal minority may not coincide with the silent majority.

How to find your target audience

There is a technique based on finding answers to 5 questions: what, who, why, when and where? The answers to these questions provide a clear description of the target audience.

• Construction of a house
• Home renovation
• Roof installation

• A family who wants to buy their own home
• A family who wants to live outside the city
• Family with a child

Why?

• Speed ​​of construction work
• Opportunity to save your budget
• Possibility of obtaining comprehensive turnkey services
• Preparation of contract
• Possibility of obtaining a guarantee

When?

• During promotions and discounts
• After hearing positive feedback

• Landing page
• Web project
• Social media

Target audience, examples

Example 1. The owner of a mobile beauty salon invested a considerable budget on printing business cards and leaflets, which were simply handed out to passers-by. As a result, there were so few calls that advertising costs were not justified.

There is only one way out of this situation - to determine who exactly needs on-site cosmetology services. After performing the analysis, the following client profiles emerged:

• brides;
• women caring for children (on maternity leave);
• persons living on the outskirts or in remote areas cities.

Salon employees left information in wedding salons, kindergartens, schools and created a group on one of the social networks.

Interaction with your target audience has borne fruit: high-quality Feedback. After some time, it turned out that it was through the social network that the largest flow of clients was recorded, so all the emphasis was placed on this method of interaction with clients.

It follows that segmentation and analysis of the target audience should be carried out even in the process of initiating an advertising campaign.

Example 2. A consumer profile based on specific parameters, i.e. demographic, geographic, economic and psychographic.

Buyer of designer clothes:

1. Maria, 28 years old.
2. Lives in Kyiv.
3. Family status: Married.
4. Field of employment, position, wage: manager, 10 thousand UAH.
5. Desires and needs: Maria loves to stand out, wants to wear exclusive and beautiful outfits. She loves designer items and doesn't mind showing them off to colleagues and friends.

Example 3. TA can be primary, indirect and peripheral.

The main consumer is the daughter, who asks her mother to buy an interactive doll. Mom agrees to buy a toy if father gives the go-ahead. Dad and mom, in turn, run for advice to Aunt Lila, who has already purchased the same doll for her daughter.

Everyone in this chain in one way or another acts as a buyer, but each of them needs a different approach and different tools for conveying information about the product (doll).

Bottom line

Knowing the desires of the audience is the key to successful web page promotion, reducing advertising costs and the ability to design further development.

The portrait of the target audience is changeable, so it needs to be created anew or edits made before the next advertising campaign.

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Without a clear portrait of a potential client, it is impossible to correctly compile Commercial offer to sell a product or service and it is even more difficult to address it correctly. A portrait of a potential buyer is the target audience who will most likely be interested in your offer. It is compiled using the maximum amount of information about consumer demand for the product.

Separation of business segments

It’s worth starting the topic with the fact that there are two areas of business - b2b and b2c. The first option is business for business, and the second is for buyers. In the first case, as a rule, there is no question of drawing up a portrait of the target audience, since the audience is known to everyone, all that remains is to concentrate efforts on attracting clients. But the second case is what will be discussed further. For b2c, it is always important to correctly identify the audience, regardless of whether it is an online or offline business.

In addition, it is important to know that there may be more than one target audience for a particular activity. Experienced specialists always allocate a main group and several secondary ones for work.

Elements of a potential client portrait

Before moving on to the instructions for drawing up a consumer portrait, it is necessary to understand the intricacies of the concept itself. A portrait of a potential client is a complex collective image of a person interested in your offer. When creating this image, you visually “draw” in your head the target buyer who will be the focus of all your organization’s marketing activities. A portrait of the target audience can have a huge number of different characteristics, because the more there are, the more truthful the image will be.

Basic positions for describing the target audience

Any marketer who is faced with the task of describing the target audience for the first time asks himself several questions:

1. How to determine who the organization's target audience is?
2. At what period of strategy development should the target audience be selected?
3. Where to get data to compile a social portrait of a consumer?
4. What characteristics exist to create a buyer persona?
5. How detailed should the description be?

Of course, these are not all the questions, but certainly the most basic ones. Next, we will analyze each of the points in more detail. So let's get started.

The target audience

It can be broad - for example, all consumers of milk products, or narrow (only those who buy skim cheese at low cost). The wider the circle, the more vague the description will be, since it is difficult to determine the distinct characteristics of the audience.

It is necessary to create a portrait of the target consumer based on the prototype of the most prominent representatives, trying to outline the general character traits, which will distinguish your company’s customers from the rest of the market audience. When forming the image of your buyer, it is necessary to describe not only regular consumers, but also those who have not yet purchased the product.

At what stage of the strategy should you choose your target audience?

You should start drawing up a consumer portrait after analyzing and segmenting the market, that is, at the stage of developing a positioning strategy. In practice, situations quite often occur when it is necessary to identify the target audience without a marketing strategy; this is especially true for specialists who are just starting to work in a new organization. In this case, you can do the following:

1. Identify the company's main competitors.
2. Do comparative analysis your company's product and what your competitors offer.
3. Send a mystery shopper to your competitors.
4. Describe the value of the product.
5. Understand who's on this moment is a consumer of the product and is loyal to it.
6. Describe your ideal buyer.
7. Create an image of the target client based on the data received.

Where to get information from

In order to form an image of a potential consumer, it is necessary to answer some questions:

1. Who buys the product and who doesn't?
2. Why do they buy it or not buy it?
3. What criteria are used to choose, how to buy and use?
4. How do consumers feel about the organization's other products?
5. Application experience.

The following sources will help you find answers to all these questions:

All characteristics on the basis of which the buyer’s image is formed can be divided into several groups.

Geography

Here you will need to install the geographical area, where the advertising message will be broadcast. Here it is necessary to determine in which part of the country/region/district potential clients live and are located. There is no point in advertising throughout the country when your product or service is only available in major cities, for example, Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Socio-demographic indicator

It can be divided into three components:

1. Gender of the client. Representatives of the female and male sexes are guided by different principles, respectively, and they make different decisions. Therefore, to draw up a portrait of a consumer in marketing, you must first determine for whom the product is intended. Quite often it happens that it suits both, respectively, the target audience is men and women.
2. Age of buyers. This is a fairly extensive block, since each promotional offer has its own age category. It is impossible to give an unambiguous answer to this question; it will be necessary to establish some kind of framework, for example, the age of the consumer is young people from 25 to 35 years old. Marketing specialists have long divided human life at several stages (school time, student life, beginning career path, career blossoming and growth, career end, retirement). It is these stages that you should focus on when drawing up a portrait of your target audience, since each service or product has its own age category to which it will sell better.
3. Education. This criterion helps to understand how professionally developed the buyer is. Many targeted advertising campaigns make their division according to this; this can be divided into those who have one or more educations and an average income level. Most often, this example of a consumer portrait is used by organizations that offer goods and services to wealthy people.

Financial situation

One of the most important criteria when developing a buyer persona is determining the income level of your target buyers. Here it is important to understand what kind of check you are counting on and what principles your clients are guided by.

If potential buyers of goods have a low income, then setting a high price for the product is inappropriate. It’s also worth understanding that people with low incomes pay great attention to price; more precisely, cost is the key point for them when choosing an offer.

Information channels

This is one of the most important issues when forming a portrait of a potential consumer. Here you need to establish from which specific sources your future clients receive information and answers to their questions. These can be completely different distribution channels:

1. Search engines in the Internet.
2. Social media.
3. Newspapers.
4. Magazines and stuff.

If you are going to attract customers to your store on an online resource, then you should pay attention to specialized sites where people with the same intentions gather and discuss issues that concern them. These same platforms can later be used for your own advertising campaigns.

How detailed should the target audience be described?

When forming the image of a potential buyer, it is necessary to describe the a bright representative. During the process, try to use all the groups of parameters mentioned above. Only in this case will the description be truly portrait. After studying this information, a person should have a clear image in his head. Ideally, you should add a collage of several photographs to the description that will complement the portrait. It is better to prepare two options: a short one, based on 4-5 criteria, allowing you to superficially separate the target audience from the entire market, and a complete one with the maximum detailed characteristics, his habits, characteristics, character and so on.

The picture will be complete and detailed if, during the creation process, you try to describe the vector of development of the target audience in the existing format and as it should be perfectly. This description will help you understand key changes that need to be done in the development and promotion of the product.

Step-by-step instructions for creating a potential buyer persona

Having found the answers to all the above questions and armed with the necessary amount of information, you can begin to build a portrait of a potential client step by step. This plan is suitable even for those who do not yet have an established client base. In this case, when analyzing, you can use the data of friends who are most likely to be interested in your offer. And only when you have your first real customers (at the first stage it is enough to analyze the first 10 people), you will need to repeat the procedure. So let's get started:

1. Reviewing a profile on a social network. From such popular resources as Vkontakte or Facebook it is very easy to obtain some information - gender, age and place of residence of a potential client. This is very necessary data that should be entered on the computer in a special plate.
2. Analysis of pages and groups in which clients are members and subscribers. This information should also be entered into the previously created table. What is this for? After a portrait has been drawn up, pages and groups on social networks can be used as information platforms. This means advertising your product on saved pages.
3. Three favorite sites. Having information about which resources clients use most often, you can also place your offer on them. This always works very effectively.
4. Field of activity. This point can also most often be found out from a questionnaire, and the presence of such information allows you to understand the capabilities and needs of the consumer.
5. Recording questions and problems encountered by the client. This will help “tie” your proposal to their decision.
6. Drawing up a client portrait based on the information received. All data is summarized in a separate questionnaire-table for each client. As a result, you will have a ready-made image of a potential buyer in your hands.

Working examples of consumer personas

This is what well-composed target audience images look like:

1. Audience for a family psychologist carrying out private practice. An example of a consumer portrait in this case looks like this:

• Female people aged 22 to 44 years from major cities.
• They are interested in psychology and follow news from groups on social networks. similar topics.
• Have at least 3 circles of interests.
• Actively involved in sports.
• They are passionate about philosophy, spiritual values ​​and personal growth.
• High or average level of earnings.

2. An example of a consumer portrait for an online store of youth clothing from designers.

• Female and male people aged 20 to 35 years from megacities and medium-sized cities.
• They are interested in fashion and its trends.
• Everyone has stable employment or is studying at higher education institutions. educational institutions, with active life beliefs.
• They are interested in several sports, participate in competitions, and are members of relevant groups on social networks.

Hello dear readers.

Meet the enchanting arrangement of all the dots over the definition of “Target Audience”. I didn’t begin the introduction to the article with banal phrases that every business, project, company should focus on its target audience and always understand who these people are. All this is obvious and worn down to holes. Besides, you are already great with us - you know all this!

In this article we will look at what the target audience is, how to create a portrait of it, and how to identify and segment the target audience.

Why is it important to know your target audience?

A clear and simple example.

Let's imagine that you are selling football shoes. You have the opportunity to hang a billboard in the city center. How effective is this advertising placement?

Essentially, you are showing your product - football shoes - to all people, even those who definitely cannot be your buyer. Because not everyone loves football or sports in general, but prefer passive recreation - reading and feature films.

But you show your ads to everyone, which means you paid for non-target people. After all, it is obvious that advertising in the city center costs more than, for example, advertising in a sports school, sports stadium and other places where football players train. In addition, advertising in the places I mentioned is of higher quality and targeted, because there are athletes there, many of whom are potential clients.

Getting into the target audience ensures prosperity and success for business. When you know about all the habits and needs of your client, when you know him by sight, then it will not be difficult for you to develop a high-quality advertising campaign strategy.

And the inability to identify the target audience or a vague, incorrect definition of it dooms the business and entrepreneur to failure. After all, all this leads to a significant reduction in product margins through an inflated advertising budget.

What is a target audience?

I hope you and I understand the concept of “target audience” correctly. If not, let's give a definition:

"The target audience- a group of people united common features, or united for some purpose, who are more likely to buy the product."

or

« The target audience(in English - target audience, target group) is a set of real and potential consumers of a product or service who are ready to change their preferences in favor of this product or service under the influence of marketing measures.”

How to determine your target audience?

When we ask clients in the studio: “Who is your target audience?”, then in 90% of cases we get the answer - “Well... These are those who are interested in our products, with an active life position. They most likely have children, although they may not. Age from 15 to 70 years".

Such a description of the target audience will never allow you to personalize the advertising message, since it does not highlight any features and traits of potential clients. And targeting this audience is the same as pointing your finger at the sky.

Therefore, the choice of target audience must be approached responsibly - this is not such a simple undertaking as it seems at first glance.

It is better to determine the target audience from the main form - primary target audience - the main target group. This category includes people who personally make purchasing decisions.

In addition to the main group, there is an indirect one - the secondary target audience, which also takes part in the purchase, but is not its “engine”. Best example: children and parents.

Children are the main (main) target group, since they are the ones who initiate the process, parents are indirect, since they perform an indirect function - they pay for the purchase.

After determining the target audience, it needs to be segmented.

Target audience segmentation with examples

To segment target audiences, MEDIOL studio uses the 5W method from Sherrington. The essence of this technique is to answer 5 questions about the target audience:

1. What? (What?) – product type

In order to fully and accurately answer all the questions, we will go through each of them.

What? (What?) – product type

What kind of product do you have? What price? Why are they buying it? What are its properties? How is it built? What is the principle of its operation? What parts does it consist of?

Example: We sell mid-price football boots that are universal, studless and suitable for most surfaces.

Who? (Who?) – type of consumer

Gender and age? What kind of education? What is your income level? What is your social and family status? What profession, place of work, type of activity? What is your nationality or race? Geographical location? What interests, habits, values, beliefs?

Example: Who buys universal boots, mid-price segment, without spikes?

Men from 20 to 50 years old, married with children, middle class, stable income from office work, interested in football, watching football matches, free time sometimes spent with friends or colleagues on football fields. They need a mid-range price solution as there is no point in buying expensive boots.

When? (When?) – purchase situation, time

• Is it used at a certain moment or constantly?
• Term of use?
• Frequency - how often people buy New Product to replace the old one?

Example: boots are used during training and matches; replace them every 1-3 years after wear.

Why? (Why?) – motivation to buy

What problem does your product or service solve? What emotions does it evoke? What is it associated with? Compare the product or service with analogues. Be honest about the advantages and disadvantages. What exactly in your offer attracts customers the most? Why should customers choose it?

Example: The desire to increase the comfort of the game; Expectation upper class games after purchase; Provided free shipping 3 sizes of shoes for the office or home, so you can choose the ones that suit you.

Where? (Where?) – place of purchase

Example: Our audience visits sports grounds and fitness clubs. On the Internet they monitor sports portals, groups on social networks dedicated to football and sports, YouTube channels sports theme.

Thus, the main advantage of segmenting the target audience is the ability to create personalized advertising for potential buyers, based on their requests, desires, behavior and lifestyle.

An example of a complete description of the target audience

We segmented the target audience and highlighted small descriptions, answering Sherrington’s questions using the 5W method. What we got:

Product - football boots of the middle price segment.

Correct description of the target audience:

Men from 20 to 50 years old, married, with children, middle class, with a stable income, office work, are interested in football, watch football matches, and sometimes spend their free time with friends or colleagues on football fields. They need an average price solution, since there is no point in buying expensive boots. Football shoes are changed according to wear and tear at intervals of 1-3 years. They often search for information on the Internet. From social networks prefer VKontakte.

However, if you look closely, you can create 2 more portraits of the target audience:

1. Children from 8 to 16 years old who attend football schools or simply play football in the yard. The purchase is made by parents (indirect target audience) at the beginning school year when registering children for football sections. Children's boots are changed every season, as the child's body is actively growing, and after a season the shoes most likely will not fit.
2. Young people aged 16 to 25 who play in amateur or semi-professional football teams. This target audience definitely understands boots and knows how one type differs from another. Shoes are changed when worn out, usually before the new season.