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Morning Consult
March 24, 2023 at 5:00 am ET
Effective marketing begins with an understanding of your target audience. Without a clear idea of who your customers are and their objectives, it’s difficult to create marketing campaigns that resonate with them. That’s where target audience profiles come in handy.
What is a target audience profile?
A target audience profile is a detailed description of a company’s ideal customer, including demographics, psychographics and behavior. By building effective target audience profiles, brands are better able to understand who they’re selling to and how to tailor their marketing strategies to connect with their audiences on a deeper level.
The benefits of building target audience profiles
From enabling marketing campaign personalization to driving loyalty among existing customers, the benefits of building target audience profiles stretch far and wide. Below, we’ll explore the advantages of each benefit.
Marketing campaign personalization
When brands build personalized marketing campaigns, it’s important that their strategies are tailored to their target customers’ interests, behaviors and preferences. This comes in the form of personalized emails, targeted social media advertisements and specific product recommendations.
By leveraging target audience profiles in marketing campaigns, brands can make customers feel more understood — and therefore valued. Further, when customers receive personalized messages that speak directly to their needs and preferences, they are more likely to engage with that brand and make a purchase. This leads to increased conversion rates and improved return on investment.
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Increased engagement and revenue
Personalized marketing campaigns are a powerful tool for brands that are looking to increase engagement and revenue. A more tailored experience demonstrates that a brand understands its audience’s needs and preferences, which improves the likelihood of a purchase. This also helps create a stronger relationship between the customer and the brand, leading to increased customer lifetime value and higher revenue over time.
Loyalty among existing customers
By leveraging target audience profiles, brands are able to tailor their messaging accordingly to individual customers, creating a more relevant experience. The more personalized an experience a customer receives, the more they feel valued, which can lead to increased loyalty and repeat business.
How to build target audience profiles
Now that we’ve explored the benefits of target audience profiles, let’s discuss how to build them.
Building target audience profiles involves a combination of market research, customer data analysis and continuous refinement. When incorporated in marketing campaigns, target audience profiles help create messaging that resonates with customers and drives conversions. Companies often use a brand intelligence platform to collect, combine and analyze this data all in one place, helping to efficiently and effectively build target audience profiles.
When thinking about how to build effective target audience profiles, consider the following.
Determine the goals of your upcoming campaign
Determining the goals of your upcoming campaign ensures that your efforts align with what motivates your audience and what they care about, which will help in creating a detailed description of your ideal customer.
Gather target audience data
There are several ways to gather target audience data, including surveys, interviews, focus groups, social media and Google Analytics. However, the most reliable way to gather accurate audience data is through custom research.
Morning Consult’s custom research approach is designed to meet the unique needs of organizations. Utilizing proprietary data collected through our platform, including our brand tracking, we provide our clients with insights and analyses that are tailored to their specific business goals. This includes:
Demographic information
Demographic information refers to statistical data that describes a particular population based on characteristics such as age, gender, race, education level, income, occupation, marital status and geographic location. Organizations need to understand and analyze different segments of the population to inform their marketing and overall business strategies.
Psychographic information
Psychographic information refers to data or insights about the attitudes, values, interests, lifestyles and personality traits of a particular group of people. Marketing and communication professionals can use this information to gain a deep understanding of their target audiences and create more effective content.
Goals, challenges and pain points
Identification and analysis of patterns within data sets can be leveraged to understand the goals, challenges and pain points of your target customers. The more you understand about your audience’s behaviors, the better positioned you are to tailor your products and services accordingly.
Values
Utilizing data to uncover the values of your potential and current customers helps inform your target audience profiles. The more the members of your audience feel valued and understood by your brand, the more likely they are to engage and remain loyal customers.
Preferred channels
When an organization understands the channels their target audience prefers to use for communication and interaction, they can create marketing campaigns that reach and resonate with that audience more effectively.
Preferred content type(s)
When a business understands the type of content their target audience prefers, they can create more effective marketing initiatives that resonate with that audience. For example, if a company’s target audience favors visual content, the brand may choose to create more visual content for their website, social media channels and other marketing materials.
Buying behavior
Buying behavior plays a significant role in shaping target audience data. When interpreting the purchasing behaviors of current and potential customers, companies gain valuable insights into their audiences’ needs, preferences and decision-making processes. These insights can then be used to create more accurate and effective target audience profiles.
Segment your target audience by persona
Segmenting your target audience by persona ensures you have the best understanding of your audience. By targeting specific persona groups with personalized messaging and campaigns, you can increase your ROI by reaching the right people with the right message.
Develop and test messaging
Testing messaging when developing audience profiles allows you to uncover what’s resonating with your target customers. When developing and testing messaging, be sure to:
- Identify what works and what doesn’t. Observe what messaging is clicking with your target audience and what isn’t. Refine accordingly.
- Optimize messaging for specific channels. Different messaging may work better on different channels, such as social media, email marketing or Google display ads. Testing allows you to optimize your messaging for each specific channel.
- Ensure consistency: Testing your messaging helps ensure consistency across all channels and touch points, and consistent messaging helps build brand recognition and trust.
By testing messaging, you can identify and address any issues early on, saving time and money in the long run.
Convert your target audience with Morning Consult
Building effective target audience profiles is a critical component of successful marketing. By leveraging Morning Consult Brand Intelligence to collect and analyze data, create buyer personas that represent your ideal customers, and inform your marketing strategies, you can better connect with your audience and increase conversion rates.
Ready to convert your target audience with Morning Consult? Get in touch with us today.