Target audience
A potential strategy to appeal to a target audience would be advertising toys during the morning children's TV programs, rather than during the evening news broadcast.
A successful marketing campaign connects with consumers on a personal dB level, which will help the business to develop long-term relationships with customers (Sherlock, 2014).
Determining the target audience is key to reaching the loyal and high-profit customers, in order to ensure a return on investment (Cahill, 1997, p. 10-11).
Demographic information involves statistical aspects of consumers such as gender, ethnicity, income, qualification and marital status (Sharma 2015).
Demographics is statistical information that does not require in-depth analysis to provide an answer, thus a business would use quantitative methods of data collection.
[citation needed] Psychographics is the use of sociological, psychological and anthropological factors, as well as consumer behavior, style of living and self-concept to determine how different market segment groups make decisions about a philosophy, person or product (Weinstein, 2014).
Their interests, hobbies and past purchase activity provide a platform on which the business can base their marketing campaign (Dowhan, 2013).
[citation needed] Once the business has gathered data from consumers about their demographic, psychographic, geographic and behavioral situations, they can analyze this and use it to identify a rough target audience.
If a marketer can conduct lifestyle research through previous purchasing behavior it gives an excellent understanding of AIOs enabling target audiences to be effectively determined (Hoyer, Macinnis, & Pieters, 2013, p. 401-403).
Often these characteristics can be segmented into four different marketing groups, geographic, demographic, psychographic or behavioral (Kotler, P., Burton, S., Deans, K., Brown, L., & Armstrong, G., 2013).
A successful appeal to a target audience requires a detailed media plan, which involves many factors in order to achieve an effective campaign.
[6] The effectiveness of a target audience campaign is dependent on how well the company knows their market; this can include details such as behaviours, incentives, cultural differences and societal expectations.
[8] Failure to identify these trends can lead to campaigns being targeted at the wrong audiences, and ultimately a loss of money or no change at all.
An example of this type of failure was Chef Boyardee, who planned a campaign to appeal to teenage boys, the largest consumers of their product.
Factors like these are considered at a more in-depth level with a detailed media plan, one that cannot be found in a simpler target market strategy.
[1] Therefore, ignoring any of the factors can lead to a miscommunication with consumers and ultimately a failure to fully reach the whole target audience effectively.
A business will typically design one product line and focus on what consumer demands are most frequent, in order to create a marketing program that will appeal to the greatest amount of purchases.
The narrow product line, undifferentiated advertising program and absence of segmented market research and planning, all contribute to keeping the costs down.
An example of this is V energy drinks who offer a large range of products including; V regular, V sugar free, V zero, V double espresso (V-Energy., n.d.).
Typically when using this marketing strategy, recognition of the company is widened and repeat purchasing is strengthened, with customers gaining products that are more tailored to their needs.
Target audiences are formed from different groups, for example: adults, teens, children, mid-teens, preschoolers, men, or women.
Knowledge of consumers' demographic, geographic, psychographic and behavioral variables can enable relevant marketing processes to reach the target audience directly.
This divides the market into demographic field such as age, life cycle, gender, income, occupation, education, religion, and nationality (Kotler et al., 2014).
Social class has a large effect on preferences for cars, clothes, home furnishings, leisure activities, reading habits, and retailers (Kotler et al., 2014).
It is also the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual customer and organisations (Galvin, 1998).
Marketing communications channels have undergone huge changes, shifting away from traditional mass-market type advertisements such as television and radio.
This is due to advancements in technology and the Internet era developing brand new communication channels such as web advertising, social media and blogs (Bruhn, Schoenmueller, & Schäfer, 2012, p. 770-772 ).
Traditional media vehicles such as television, radio and press have been utilised by marketers for many years but have limitations when trying to reach an individual target audience.
This community can provide new insights for the business, identifying problems and offering solutions through social interactions (Tsimonis & Dimitriadis, 2014, p. 328-330).
The specific conformity of the target audience to the desired supporting psychological operations objective is the product of assiduous work, mainly of the target audience analysis phase of influence process, this validates the importance of this role to the overall operation enabling decision makers, to gain substantial objectives in the information environment (Topolniski, 2013).
