Target audience portrait: how to make it

Target audience is one of the basic concepts of marketing. Without a clear understanding of the characteristics of the ideal buyer, it is impossible to create a successful marketing strategy and achieve a high level of sales. But what is it, and how to describe the portrait of your target audience? Let’s take a closer look.

What is a portrait of the target audience

The target audience portrait is a set of indicators of various segments of potential customers. The main goal of creating a portrait of the target audience is to minimize the number of ineffective marketing contacts and make advertising as effective as possible.

An example of a portrait of the target audience looks like this: women, 25-35 years old, have a husband and a child, buy an apartment for their family to move away from their husband’s relatives, and get a workspace.

After creating a portrait of the target audience, you can define a portrait of the client — a typical representative of the TA segment. In this case, an example of a client portrait looks like this:

• woman 25 years old;
• got married and gave birth to a child 2 years ago;
• works at home;
• does not meet the deadlines due to quarrels with her mother-in-law;
• wants to buy an apartment with enough space, where there will be a personal space for the child and her;
• wants to gain independence from her husband’s relatives.

Thanks to such detail, the goals, motivations, and problems of a potential buyer that a particular business must solve are clearly visible.

Why is it necessary to create a portrait of the target audience

A portrait of the target audience is an indispensable tool for business because it allows:

• Find new clients quickly. Having a portrait of the target buyer in hand, you can easily compare it with new buyers and understand who is already ready to buy the product and who is not sure about the need to purchase.
• Personalize your offers. When you know exactly what the customer is interested in, it is much easier to create a unique offer that will solve the pain of the potential buyer.
• Choose promotion channels. The TA portrait will help you understand what channels users come from and what devices they use. You can use this information in the future to strengthen existing promotion channels or launch new ones.
• Prioritization. When you know the characteristics of a potential customer, it is easier for sales managers to determine how hot their interlocutor is and what product is better to offer him.
• Create a development strategy. When you understand which product is of most interest to the target audience, it is easier to place emphasis and create an effective business promotion strategy.

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What does the portrait of the target audience consist of

To create a portrait of the target audience, you need to highlight a set of features, including:

• Geographical characteristics: location, climatic conditions of the region of residence, cultural and local features.
• Sociodemographic characteristics: age, gender, marital status, ethnicity, nationality, religious beliefs, education, profession, place of work, income level, and living conditions.
• Interests: hobbies and interests that attract their attention, intrigue, and do not leave them indifferent.
• Actual needs and pains and what worries the client most of all. This way, you will show that you share the potential buyer’s problem and know how to eliminate it.

How to make a portrait of the target audience

The following tools will help you create a portrait of the target audience:

1. Personal communication. If you have offline points of sale, ask the managers who most often buy products, who they come with, and what they look like. If you have an opportunity to conduct an in-depth interview with customers, don’t miss it. To get clients to agree to an interview, offer to take part in a raffle or get a discount on goods. If you can’t communicate in person, use an online survey. You can create them using special services and then place them on the website or in the email newsletter.
2. Social networks. It is an inexhaustible source of information, where you can get data about the profession, place of work, marital status, interests, and hobbies of users.
3. Analytics services. One of the most powerful analytics tools is Google Analytics. Let’s imagine that a person wants to order delivery of products from a supermarket. Where will she begin her search? That’s right, from the Google search engine. Thanks to Google Analytics, it is easy to track the entire process of the customer’s journey, to find out which city and country he is from and what device he uses to log in.

Mistakes in creating a client portrait

When compiling a target audience, it is easy to get confused. To avoid this, let’s consider a small checklist of the portrait of the target audience with the mistakes you should avoid. 

1. Create a general description. Vague phrases will not help to understand what the client needs. Be sure to include more personal information and try to describe the potential client in as much detail as possible.
2. Prepare many portraits. If you have two or three customer portraits for one segment, you’re likely to get confused. Try to combine similar characteristics, and ideally follow the formula: one portrait per segment.
3. Do not make portraits of customers. Without a portrait of the target audience, you will waste your advertising budget. To avoid this, analyze your target audience and enter this information into a separate file.
4. Don’t update the TA portrait. Everything changes over time, especially the market, companies, and customers. If you want to be on trend and prevent a sharp drop in sales, regularly update data about the target audience.
5. Ignore the people who influence the purchase decision. When creating a target audience, do not forget that each person has an environment that can affect their decisions. Therefore, when creating a portrait of the target audience, it is worth considering the environment of the potential client.

And most importantly: never forget to test different TA portraits. By changing one of the points, it is easy to find new sites for advertising, increase the level of sales, and attract more customers.

High-quality SEO is also impossible without a TA portrait. It affects the development of the design, structure, navigation elements of the site, selection of queries for the semantic core, and content for publication.