Gemma 0:24
Hello, everyone, and welcome to this Friday afternoon’s podcast. And as always a very, very, very happy bevvy o’clock to you, all.

I hope you’ve had an incredible week. And even if you haven’t, that’s okay, too, happens to all of us. But it’s now time to grab your bevvy of choice. Sit down, put your feet up. And please enjoy.

It’s marketing 101 time again, where you get to listen to my voice for the next little while. And I’m here to give you all the info you need about what actually is a target market and breaking it down into its steps.

Now I’m going to begin with a very, very, very favourite quote of mine from quite a famous marketer, Peter Drucker. And he says ‘the aim of marketing is to understand the customer so well, the product or service fits them, and sells itself.’ As I say on and on. And yes, I know I bang on about this, but it’s because it’s so important.

The most critical part of marketing is knowing your target audience defining your target audience really is the foundation which all elements of your marketing strategy get based on no matter what. And not only know, yeah, here and there know what they like little bit about them. Absolutely not, but being and digging so deep inside their brains, that you know exactly what they want, how to speak to them, and tell them why they want the thing.

So first of all, let’s begin then with what is a target market? Okay. So put in very simple terms, it really is the specific group of people you want to reach with your marketing message. Okay, so these are the people who are most likely to buy your product or service. They’re united usually by similar characteristics, like the demographics and behaviours. So if we think about this in a pie, in a circle, this is the whole pie, okay. So this is that large group of people. So for example, we can have female business owners 34 to 45, we can have 13 to 17 year old, male teenagers, we can have 18 to 38 year old, single mothers. Okay, so that is your very overall specific group of people that you want to reach that is your target market.

Okay. Now, from here, your broad target market gets dissected. Okay. And this is where we begin to create your target audience. So now we’re starting to segment the pie. Okay. So your target audience gets broken down into two main characteristics. First, you have your demographics, who they are, and then the psychographics, which are why they buy. So let’s look first at the demographics. Okay. So your sort of dictionary definition, if you will, of demographics is ‘the characteristics of human populations and population segments.’ Yes, I remember learning that in probably my first day of university, and these get broken down into all the population characteristics such as age, gender, people’s location, income, occupation, education level, their living status, marital status, nationality, religion, ethnicity, all of those demographics, give you that real breakdown of your audience.

Why do we do this? Or why do we refine our demographics? It’s actually really, really an empowering experience to understand people demographics because you then understand who exactly your customers or clients are, and what they want, and what they need from you. It helps you spend your marketing dollars wisely we all want to do that, of course, it’s going to help you increase your sales. And also, you’ll be really surprised that it can help you identify new marketing opportunities you may not have seen before with your product or service.

So now let’s delve into psychographics, which I find the juiciest part. Again, your definition, dictionary definition ‘psychographics is the classification of people according to attitudes, and aspirations and other psychological criterias. So what am I talking about here? The juicy part my favourite. So this is really, really, really what we delve into here, because this is what we’re going to be saying to them, what we’re going to be tapping into people about. These psychographics are people’s problems, wants, needs, who do they trust? Why do they trust them? Who do they not trust? What sets off that distrust? What are their fears? What do they object to? What are they interested in? What’s their lifestyle? What are their hobbies? What influences them? Is it media? Is it people? Where do they source their information, there’s so so many different characteristics and categories that make up psychographics. But if you can really tap into as many as you can possibly find all of these psychological criterias, are really, really going to help you.

Because deeply knowing the psychographics absolutely ensures you’ve jumped inside the heads of these people. And then you’re able to speak to their hearts, which means communicating with them based on these factors. Because it’s what they want. It’s what they’re searching for. Right?

So one thing, again, which is really, really common, we all know in marketing you lead by emotion, okay, you’re tapping into these psychographics you’re tapping into these psychological criterias, attitudes, fears, objections, aspirations, beliefs, you’re tapping into them, you’re leading with the emotion. And then you’re justifying your why with logic, okay, so lead by emotion, and justify with logic. So, by doing this, you’re really able to pull at their beliefs, their desires, their fears to absolutely, instantly connect with them. And why is this important? Because you’re grabbing them straight away, and they’re going to feel that you understand and resonate with them, and they’re going to do that back with you. So they’ll feel understood by your business, and they’ll feel resonated with by your business, it’s really, really, really is crucial.

So once you’ve understood all of these amazing psychographics, it really, really helps you then create your copy, create your marketing message, it really does make the process easier.

So from here, how do we then really, really niche down on that? So we’re understanding all these beliefs, desires, fears, objections? How do you make a way where it’s easier for you to speak to them? So what we do from here is one of my favourite things in the world, creating your customer or client, avatar. So this is your ideal client. It’s the client or customer who’s happy to do business with you, who you love doing business with, who sees you at exactly what it is they’re looking for, because you’re going to precisely solve the problem that they need solved. Now, understanding your avatar really gives you the opportunity to easily capture their attention. So why do we want to do this? Because it makes it easier for you to resonate and connect with them. Makes them feel heard and understood.

You’re solving their problems, you’re meeting their needs, you’re making them feel they’re in the right place. Because you’ve met their needs, you’ve stolen their heart. You give them what they want. You give them what they need, and you connect with them in a way that they are going to keep coming back for more. So ultimately, creating a customer avatar is absolutely critical for all businesses.

So how do we sort of help identify the intimate feelings of your target audience? Like I said, above, we’re looking at all of those questions. We want to find their problems, their needs, their wants, who do they trust, what sets off their distrust, fears, objections, etc, etc? So why don’t we create a customer avatar? If you’re at a point where, you might be struggling with your marketing communication, you might be struggling to write your copy. Creating one person who’s your ideal client helps you to write specifically to them, it’s going to make your communication easier, it’s going to make what you’re saying easier. If you’re speaking to one person, rather than trying to capture everyone within your target audience. If you focus at one person, it’s going to make your writing more succinct, and it’s going to tell them exactly what they want. Now, don’t fear this, I have many, many clients say to me, ‘oh Gemma, I don’t know if I’m speaking to one person it’s going to lose and extract all the others,’ it’s actually certainly not true, you’re going to capture these specific people, your customer avatar, but that never ever means you’re not going to have more of the pie float in. So if you create a customer avatar, give him or her a name, you can create two, that’s fine as well. Give them a name, write down exactly who they are, what they do in the morning, what they’re looking for, for example, and that’s really, really going to help you do everything easier. It’s going to help all your communications. It’s going to help everything that you write and it’s going to make you feel so much more in control over your copy.

Now, to give you an idea of what an avatar is. I’ll read you an example avatar, meet Nikki. She’s a 39 year old mum with two children who lives in Tasmania in a three bedroom home with her husband and runs her business from there. She owns her own business providing automation and tech solutions to other women in service businesses. She’s dedicated, ambitious, looking to grow and level up her business. She doesn’t like salesy selling, and she prefers to work with other female business owners who are true to their brand and know their stuff, just like her. She wants to create more time in her business to dedicate to her personal life, but minimise her marketing spend.

She wants to attract, retain a loyal client base, who provide excellent word of mouth about her services. Long term business relationships offer a value to her business and her clients. She’s heard of SEO, using a brand tone of voice, but doesn’t quite understand. She wants to implement email marketing and conduct more market research but doesn’t have the time and fears if she changes what she’s doing, her lead generation will drop.

She doesn’t have experience in marketing, and wants to understand more to do it herself where she can. She really enjoys online courses and consuming information online. She prefers real people and courses which are short, results driven and actions she can take herself. She reads about marketing and business strategy through blogs in her spare time on the weekends. And if she likes something and connects with a brand, she’ll make fast purchasing decisions.

So that is a client avatar, so there you can really really understand what she likes, what she fears, who she likes working with. And that is going to make it so so easy for you to then create your own Avatar and create some amazing copy.

So what’s next after this? You’ve got your target market, that piece of the pie. You’ve got your target audience the segments, you’ve now created a personal avatar of their deepest desires, fears and beliefs that you can speak to.

So what’s next? You, right? Let’s not forget you, you’re the most important here, your business, you are the you in your business. Which means you’re the one who’s going to connect with your avatar. So from here, this is the part where owning your branding, who you are and what you believe, comes into play. You want your target audience to feel they already know you, they can resonate with you, they can trust you. So the most important part here is now properly understanding you and how you’re going to speak to this avatar, to speak to this target audience that you know so well, and connect with them on an intimate level. Now, this sets up the foundations of how you will connect with your audience throughout all touchpoints of your marketing and communication with them.

So put simply, where your tone of voice and your words come into play is through everything, your website, your social media platforms, all your blogs, lead magnets, funnels, newsletters, ebooks, guides, tutorials, videos, you need to make sure that you’re connecting with them in the same way in a tone of voice, which is you, and also resonates with your avatar.

So there you have it, ladies, that is my recap of what’s a target market, what’s a target audience, the breakdown into demographics and psychographics, then the break down into the creation of an avatar. And then all of that finally gets to you. And communicating all of that in a way using your tone of voice.

And that is a wrap for this wonderful Friday afternoon. I hope you enjoyed it. And as always, all of you amazing kick butt women, fellow work wives, female entrepreneurs. Remember, you’re not alone, because collaboration is power. We’ve got each other, and most importantly, we all get it.