How to create a portrait of the target audience

Identifying the target audience (TA) is one of the key processes before launching an ad. After all, it determines the work with creatives, text, and the traffic source in general. If you correctly draw up a portrait of your target audience and understand all their pain, you can increase conversion rates many times over. How to do it, what aspects to pay attention to, and how to avoid making a portrait of the target audience – read the new text from Affhub.

What is the target audience and how to define it

Let’s start with the definition. The target audience is a group of people who may be interested in your product or service. It is the core of the target audience that usually brings the most profit.

In fact, the target audience is the ideal customer for your product, for whom it is actually produced. Very often in affiliate marketing, the target audience is defined as a conditional “male, 25-40 years old”. This is a start, and setting at least these parameters is better than nothing. However, you can’t call it a professional portrait of the target audience, because you don’t actually know anything about your client.

There is a classic formula for creating a portrait of the target audience – it is called the “5W” rule and consists of the following five questions:

• What? What product the potential buyer wants to buy;
• Who? Who is your client – what are their hobbies, how do they spend their day?;
• Why? Why should the customer buy your product?;
• When? When the customer will be ready to pay for the goods – it will be a fast or slow sale;
• Where? Which sales channel the customer will choose – where it will be more convenient for him to make a purchase.

At this point, you may wonder why you need to know the target audience profile at all. If you have unlimited budgets and can launch a targeting campaign for the entire country without any problems, you don’t need to create such a profile. In other, more realistic cases, a portrait of the target audience is needed to develop a marketing strategy for the following reasons:

• Traffic source. A target audience of even the same age can use both X (Twitter) and Instagram or Facebook. It all depends on what they do, who surrounds them, etc. You might logically think that young people don’t use Facebook. However, if we are talking about Western youth, which is usually considered elite (conventional students of prestigious universities or the like), they use Facebook more actively to build their own brand. Accordingly, if they are your target audience, you can find them on Instagram, of course. However, the number of audience members will be limited;
• Understanding the customer’s pain. Let’s take a banal example that is familiar to all arbitrageurs – weight loss products. For some, the goal of losing weight is to attract the attention of men, for others it is to get back a beautiful body after losing weight, for others it is to take care of their health. The strategy for losing weight will be very different in each case. You need to understand what hurts your client and put pressure on it;
• Setting priorities. This allows you to understand the customer’s readiness to buy your product. If he is a potential customer, the sales team can get to work right away. If it’s just interested, marketers need to warm it up first.

How to create a portrait of the target audience

Well, we’ve dealt with the theory – now let’s move on to practice. It’s important to understand that the broader the target audience, the less detailed the portrait you can create. In order to create a high-quality portrait, you need to take into account the following key indicators:

• Geography;
• Demographics;
• Financial capabilities;

Let’s analyze each of these indicators separately.

Geography.

There are usually no problems with this aspect. After all, even novice marketers understand that the target audience is different in each country. Moreover, it usually differs even within several cities in the same country. Some people are wealthier, some poorer. By country, the difference is even greater and lies in traditions, faith, and mentality. So the first thing to determine is the geography of your target audience.

Demographics.

This is even easier. You should consider the following aspects:

• Gender. The previously mentioned weight loss products are more suitable for women, and potency drugs… Well, you know;
• Age. Again, using the example of slimming products, it becomes clear that even the same product can serve different purposes for different age groups. The format of product or service promotion also depends on this;
• Personal interests. Some people prefer to spend time in nature, others – in clubs. Some people want to earn money to reinvest, while others want to enjoy life. You should immediately determine what interests and goals your audience has;
• Religion. A point that is also worth paying attention to. For example, a lot of classic creatives are not suitable for Muslim countries – naked women or a piece of pork – and consider the campaign a waste.

Socio-economic aspect

Even within the same city, some people can have higher education and high-paying jobs, while others live in poverty. For each of them, the creatives for a conditional gambling game will be different. Therefore, you need to understand what kind of education your target audience has, what field they work in, how much they earn, etc.

At the same time, these are not all the indicators that can be used to create a portrait of the target audience. Some also advise paying attention to customer behavior – what motivates them to make a purchase, how they will benefit from it, what aspects they primarily consider when buying a product, etc.

Now that we’ve dealt with this, let’s move on to the question of how to create a portrait of the target audience. First, we need to find out the database of the ideal buyer: place of residence, age, gender, and financial capabilities. This information can usually be provided by the advertiser.

Next, we need to move on to interests, hobbies, and needs. In particular, determine what hurts your client and how your product can solve their problem. Next, you need to create a portrait of the target audience.

An example of a target audience portrait

Here are some examples of target audiences depending on GEO, age, and other important indicators.

Example 1

• Mykola, 19 years old;
• Lives in Kyiv, moved from Zhmerynka;
• Marital status – single;
• Economic capacity – student, works as a bartender, earns $500 per month;
• Faith – atheist;
• Hobbies – gym, books;
• Fears – not being realized in life;
• Goals – to become financially independent, to buy a car and an apartment as soon as possible.

In fact, Mykola is an ideal audience for the “successful success” direction. He works and studies, tries to improve himself. The standard of living in Zhmerynka has taught him to save money and he has a certain budget. It is easy for Mykola to sell investments, crypto, etc. Also, given his passion for the gym, which he regularly goes to even though he is studying and working, he will gladly buy various means to improve his physical condition to visually show the results of his work. Nikolai should be praised for his achievements and shown how to get more.

Example 2

• Maria, 43 years old;
• Lives in Lviv;
• Marital status – married;
• Economic capacity – works as a realtor, her husband is a private entrepreneur. Family income – $4000;
• Faith – Catholicism, liberal;
• Hobbies – traveling, books, gardening, stretching;
• Fears – problems with work, remoteness of her husband, aging;
• Goals – to set an example of an ideal family, to keep a good appearance.

Maria is a person for whom everything should be perfect. A perfect family, job, body. Her whole life should look like it does on Instagram. Maria would benefit from self-care products – she already looks irresistible, but age is taking its toll. In addition, Maria actively takes care of her garden – another complex of an excellent student that you can tap into and sell her products for this. Maria has money and trusts social institutions, which can be used in her creativity.

To summarize

A portrait of the target audience is a necessary thing for any marketer to create effective campaigns. This approach makes it clear what hurts your audience. And if you use it correctly, you can not only save your budget on the bay, but also significantly increase your profits. So, study, test, and enjoy the ROI!