Choosing Your Target Audience: Capability – Desire – Willingness

Choosing your target audience is an essential component of any successful marketing campaign. Demographics such as age, gender, and location can be useful factors in defining your target audience. However, I personally feel they do not always provide a complete picture. Consider capability, desire, and willingness.

One Definition Of Target Audience

In online marketing, a "target audience" refers to a specific group of people who are identified as the ideal customers or users for a particular product or service. Online professionals, such as marketers, content creators, and web developers, often use this term to define and understand the characteristics of the audience they are trying to reach through their online channels.

To define a target audience, online professionals typically consider factors such as age, gender, location, interests, behaviors, and preferences of their potential customers or users. By understanding these characteristics, they can tailor their online content, messaging, and marketing strategies to better resonate with and attract the target audience.

Identifying and effectively targeting the right audience is crucial for the success of any online marketing or business effort, as it ensures that the efforts and resources are focused on the people who are most likely to engage with and benefit from the product or service being offered.

Typical contemporary wisdom is to select the target group you want to work with by selecting demographics considering age range, gender, financial status, geographic location, and other such factors. But does this find the people you should be serving?

I believe this is the wrong way to approach your target audience from a marketing perspective. Instead, you must consider capability, desire, and willingness to follow direction and take action above all else.

Instead, it is my opinion as a long-time guide, mentor, and successful business person, these common demographic factors are pretty much irrelevant in selecting the target audience your advice, your products and services, should be helping. It is, therefore, important to focus on three key factors when selecting your target audience:

• their capability,
• their desire, and
• their willingness to take action.

Sharp Enough - Capable Enough

The first factor to consider is whether your target audience is sharp enough or have the capability to benefit from your teaching, training, or mentoring. You must accept that you cannot help everyone.

This means you must consider their level of expertise, education, and experience in the area your services and products relate to, recognizing that certain capabilities may be required to understand and embrace the materials shared.

If your product is geared towards a highly specialized market, it is essential that your target audience has the necessary knowledge and experience to appreciate and utilize your product in a productive manner.

On the other hand, if your product is geared towards a broader audience, you may need to create marketing materials that appeal to both novices and those already experiencing a degree of success in the field.

For example, say you are marketing a new software program, and the necessary training, designed to help people manage their finances more efficiently. If your target audience is primarily made up of financial experts or people with a strong background in finance, you can use industry-specific language and technical terms in your marketing materials.

However, if your target audience is made up of people with little to no experience in finance, you will need to explain the benefits of your software in simpler terms and focus on the benefits that matter most to them.

The Right Desire

The second factor to consider is whether your target audience has the right desire for your product or service. It seems obvious that this will sort itself out. If they desire what you offer, you make a sale. If not, then no sale is made. However, understanding this factor will keep you from wasting time and resources on the wrong audience.

Desire refers to the motivation or interest that your target audience has in what you have to offer. For example, if you are marketing a new fitness program, your target audience should be people who are interested in getting fit or improving their health.

If your target audience does not have the right desire for your product, they are unlikely to engage with your marketing materials or make a purchase. This means you have wasted your time and money reaching out to them in the first place.

To identify your target audience's desires, you can conduct market research or surveys to better understand their needs, preferences, and pain points. This information can help you tailor your marketing materials to highlight the benefits of your product or service that matter most to your target audience.

For example, if you are marketing a new line of eco-friendly cleaning products, you can emphasize the environmental benefits of your products and how they can help your target audience reduce their carbon footprint. A phrase often used in marketing is, "Sell the sizzle, not the steak!"

Willingness To Do The Work

The third and final factor to consider when selecting your target audience is whether they are willing to do the necessary work. This refers to their willingness to take action and follow through on your product or service's stated requirments for successful outcomes.

For example, if you are marketing a new weight loss program, your target audience must be willing to put in the effort to follow the program's guidelines, exercise regularly, and make healthy food choices.

To identify whether your target audience is willing to do the necessary work, you can conduct surveys or interviews to gauge their motivation and commitment levels.

You can also provide free trials or samples of your product or service to encourage your target audience to try it out for themselves. By doing so, you can weed out those who are not genuinely interested in your product or service and focus your marketing efforts on those who are.

Overall: Follow Direction & Take Action

Online professionals, including marketers, content creators, and web developers, identify their target audience to tailor their online content and marketing strategies. Although demographic factors such as age, gender, and location can be useful in defining a target audience, they do not provide a complete picture. Instead, focusing on the capability, desire, and willingness of your target audience is crucial to your success.

When selecting your target audience, you must consider whether they are sharp enough to benefit from your product or service. Also, determine whether your target audience has the right desire for your product or service, which means that they must have the motivation or interest in what you offer.

Finally, determine whether your target audience is willing to do the necessary work required to benefit from your product or service, which means their willingness to take action and follow through on the product or service's stated requirements for successful outcomes.

Identifying and effectively targeting the right audience is crucial to your marketing efforts' success. By understanding your target audience's characteristics, you can tailor your marketing materials to better resonate with and attract your target audience.

By considering their capability, desire, and willingness to take action, you can create a focused and effective marketing campaign that drives results.

CLICK HERE to see what Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, has to say about target markets.