What is a target customer? How to identify a target customer in marketing?

Index

Focusing on your target customer group is crucial for any business to ensure the success of its marketing campaign. This allows your products and services to reach the right audience, increasing conversion rates, boosting sales, and improving overall business performance. 

What is the target customer?

Target customers are the group of customers that businesses need to clearly identify from the outset in order to find ways to attract them to use the products/services they offer. At the same time, this is also the group of customers that businesses must focus all their resources on serving.

To attract target customers, you can use video or image content containing compelling messages or suggesting related products. This is a modern form of marketing that is rapidly developing on digital platforms.

The target customers are the group of business customers that require focused resources to serve and encourage them to use the product.

To accurately identify their target customer group, businesses can analyze the behavior, preferences, and characteristics of each individual to personalize marketing campaigns for maximum effectiveness.

Differentiate between target customers and potential customers.

To clearly define your target customer group, you need to distinguish this term from related terms, such as potential customers, to avoid negatively impacting the success and effectiveness of your marketing campaign.

Target customers

  • This is the target group for the company, focusing its resources and developing products and services to provide to them.
  • They are knowledgeable and enjoy taking the time to proactively learn about products/services.
  • Always willing to make purchases and provide positive feedback on products/services.

Potential customers

  • This group of people is highly likely to become customers of the business, using the products/services provided by the business in the near future.
  • Having little or no thorough understanding of the product/service, and only passively receiving information from advertising and PR.
  • There is no real need to buy the product, or one might need to be persuaded by the company's marketing campaigns before considering a purchase.

Why do businesses need to identify their target customer group?

In marketing, and business in general, identifying your target customer group is crucial. It determines the success rate of your product/service marketing campaign.

Some benefits of identifying your target customers from the outset include:

  • Resource optimizationResources here include human resources, time, costs, etc. By clearly identifying your target customer group, your business can focus all its resources on serving this group, optimizing resources, increasing sales, and minimizing waste.
  • Leveraging customer insightsInstead of trying to understand and reach out to all customer groups, by focusing on a single target group, you can learn about their needs, desires, preferences, etc., and produce and provide better products and services that cater to this specific group.
  • Increase competitive advantageOnce the target customer group has been identified, the business will have a clear understanding of the customers and the relevant market segment. Combining this with competitor analysis to identify their strengths and weaknesses, the business can then create a competitive advantage by highlighting the superiority of its products and services.
  • Increase brand awarenessTargeted marketing campaigns that effectively reach the right customer group are also highly effective in building and increasing brand awareness. Through videos, images, and audio containing clear and relatable messages, they evoke emotions and strengthen the connection between customers and businesses.

A guide on how to identify your target customers in marketing.

To identify the target customer, businesses need to carry out a detailed and comprehensive analysis process, including the following steps:

Step 1: Unify customer data

Before successfully targeting your ideal customer group, you need to ensure that all relevant customer data is comprehensively collected on a single platform. This is crucial for knowing everything about your customers without missing any important details.

Step 2: Identify customer segments

Once you have customer data, segment your audience for easier targeting. The goal is to break down your target customer group into even smaller subgroups, each primarily consisting of customers with similar interests, needs, and behaviors. Based on this, businesses can develop appropriate marketing campaigns.

Identifying customer segments is a crucial step in the process of determining the target customer group.

The checklist for each specific section is as follows:

Behavior segmentation

Analyzing customer behavior is extremely important in driving effective customer purchasing decisions. Ask yourself and answer the following questions:

  • What steps need to be taken to effectively influence customers' purchasing decisions?
  • What kind of information are customers looking for? Is it related to the product?
  • When making a purchase, do customers consult anyone?
  • What are the reasons why customers buy something?
  • Quantity of goods, frequency of purchases, time of purchase, place of purchase...?

Psychological segmentation

The focus is primarily on analyzing customer psychology, including personality, preferences, beliefs, and lifestyle. Based on this, businesses can propose clear value propositions between quality and price. Additionally, related issues such as payment terms and delivery schedules also play a significant role in attracting the target customer group.

Demographic segmentation

  • Which gender and age group are most interested in the product/service?
  • Educational background, marital status, family situation, married or single, do you have children or grandchildren?
  • What is the income level of the target customer group?
  • Do the target customers in this group have any specific interests, preferences, or needs?

Step 3: Communicate and gather customer feedback

To enrich your customer data, conduct numerous online and offline surveys, focus group interviews, or individual or organizational interviews, through various channels such as email, phone, or social media platforms. Choose the method that best suits your company's strengths and resources for your target customer group.

To conduct an effective survey that yields useful data, please keep the following in mind:

  • Design a questionnaire that facilitates the survey and gathers as much necessary information as possible. Ideally, use specific question types, multiple-choice questions, or questions that encourage customers to express their personal opinions.
  • Organize the feedback collection process in a suitable and convenient way so that customers can easily participate and share their opinions.
  • The collected data is processed and analyzed based on factors such as accuracy, objectivity, integrity, and comprehensibility.

Step 4: Develop appropriate marketing content.

There are many forms of content marketing, such as images, videos, short videos, etc. Simply use the characteristics and benefits of the information and data you collect to create suitable content that contains a clear message and provides valuable information to attract and retain customers, encouraging them to watch the entire video and ultimately make a purchase.

Step 5: Build a Customer Journey Map

The final step is to build a Customer Journey Map (CJM) – a diagram encompassing all the stages a customer goes through, from learning about the brand to making a purchase and becoming a loyal customer who actively and regularly uses the product/service.

For businesses, building and using this diagram effectively will provide an overall view, helping you easily visualize the consumer shopping experience. From there, you can develop marketing campaigns that are tailored to customer needs and preferences.

In summary, understanding and identifying the target customer group is a crucial task for businesses. This helps businesses focus their approach and service development in the best way possible. However, it's also important to note that focusing on the target customer needs to be flexible and constantly evolving to achieve the best business results.

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