Example of a target audience

You already know who you want to sell to, but how specific can you be? Do you know the education level or income of your average customer? All good marketing strategies must include a detailed look at your potential customers.

One way to get such a detailed view of your customers is to create a buyer persona. These are basically fictional customer profiles that represent your target audience as a whole. Humans are constructed from demographic and psychographic data averaged together. The idea is that by marketing to a few fictional people, you can effectively market your entire customer base.

To create a buyer persona for your business, you need to research the two types of statistics I mentioned earlier: demographics and psychographics.

Demographics tell you who your target audience is. You’ll find stats like age group, location, education level, income, family information.

Psychographic data tells you why your target audience wants to buy products. Reasons so you can update your marketing strategy to better attract them.

This is a quick way to get some basic demographic and psychographic data. Use Google Analytics (GA), a simple analytics tool that even savvy marketers use.

Where do you fit into the market, who are you trying to reach? A market profile shows exactly where your product fits if there is room for growth and how big your market is. Before doing a situational analysis, you might think, I’m selling greeting cards. After some analysis of the situation, you can say, I sell birthday cards and all major holidays that appeal to single professional males aged 25-40 and I sell them to two major retail chains.

A target market profile drives your marketing communications and sales activities. If you sell teen clothes, advertise in Seventeen, not The New Yorker. Likewise, he sells his clothes at The Gap instead of Nieman Marcus.

While you can sell your product in other markets, most of your profits will come from customers in your target market, and you can always leverage more of them. Twenty percent of all customers generate eighty percent of the demand. It makes sense to conduct your marketing efforts in profitable and financial clients.

Profile Your Customers

To create a customer profile, study the people in your target market. If you’re selling clothes to teenagers, look at what they’re wearing, what kind of music they listen to, where they’re getting money for what they enjoy doing in their free time. In an ad, feature a musical group that teenage girls love or reference a line from a song.

Your goal may be to become a market leader in your segment, or you may be content with a stable share of a large market. For example, some supermarkets sell their own brand of cola. Coke and Pepsi would be tough to beat, but the supermarket brands are grabbing a steady chunk of the market.

When defining your market segment, look at who your customers are, what types of products they buy, and when they buy those products. Sources such as industry analysis, census reports, and trade journal studies will help you define and understand your market segment.

Some market segments are so small that they are considered “niche markets”. Smaller companies can occupy niches that larger companies do not enter because the returns are too low. For example, if you are a baker and your segment is healthy whole-grain bread, you can define your niche by targeting customers who only want organic ingredients. A large bread manufacturer may find the organic bread market too small to enter.

The traditional variables that can be used for market segmentation can be grouped into five main categories: (i) demographic; (ii) geographical (iii) psychographic; (iv) factors related to the conduct and/or (v) the product.

Demographic Segmentation

Demographic segmentation divides the market into groups that are identifiable by physical and factual data. Demographic variables may include age, gender, income, occupation, marital status, family size, race, religion, and national origin.

These segmentation methods are a popular way to segment customer markets because demographic variables are relatively easy to measure.

For example, the age range for business travelers can generally be from late 20s to mid-50s. According to Skift (2017), younger employees travel for business and have completely different shopping behaviors than their older colleagues. On average, Millennials took 7.4 business trips last year, compared to 6.4 for Gen Xers and 6.3 for Baby Boomers. At the other end of the scale, we have those who are retired, in relatively good health, and in a good financial position to travel.

In the past, middle-aged men dominated the business travel market. This market controls 60% of US wealth and influences 85% of purchasing decisions. The female gender is high-tech, networked and social. It accounts for 58% of online sales.

To maintain their competitive edge, travel brands need to start targeting their campaigns more towards women. The holiday travel market is much more balanced in terms of gender.

The ability to travel for leisure depends largely on a person’s income. Holiday travel is a luxury that you can do without in difficult economic times. In general, as personal income increases, so does the demand for air travel. Recession, the money belt is tightening and fewer pleasure trips can be taken. years old.

This is an example of a concept known as income elasticity. Income elasticity can be defined as the relationship between changes in consumers’ income levels and the demand for a particular item.

Geographic segmentation

Geographical segmentation involves selecting potential markets based on their location. This segmentation approach can consider variables such as climate, terrain, natural resources, and population density, among other geographic variables.

Markets can be divided into regions as one or more of these variables could differentiate customers from one region to another. For example, people who live in humid and cold climates prefer hot and sunny destinations for their vacations.

This issue could severely affect competition among airlines serving certain destinations, particularly during peak holiday periods.

Today’s business travelers may also include merchants traveling to different parts of the world, including developing countries where growth prospects exist. In this case, convenient opening hours and luxury onboard are relatively unimportant compared to excess baggage policies and low fares.

Psychographic Segmentation

Psychographic segmentation could be used to segment markets based on personality traits, values, motives, interests, and lifestyles. A psychographic dimension can be used alone to segment a market, or it can be combined with other segmentation variables.

Psychographic variables are used when correlating purchasing behavior with consumer personality or lifestyle. Different consumers may react differently to companies’ marketing efforts.

The lifestyle one leads and hopes to lead depends largely on a person’s social status, which is generally influenced by occupation.

The social grades (status grades) can be subdivided as follows: A: executive, administrative specialist or higher specialist; B: Manager, Administrator or Intermediate Professional; C1: Supervisor, Clerk and Junior Manager, Administrator or Professional; C2: skilled labor force; D: Semi-skilled or unskilled workers; E: Retirees or widows, casual or marginal employees.

Most business class passengers come from social classes A, B, and C1. These people have high professional status. They can earn a high income and are usually used to a good lifestyle. Therefore, they can demand a very high level of service.

Marketing managers should carefully consider additional facilities for these passengers as they must ensure their comfort at all times. Examples of additional facilities that could be made available to these people (particularly those in Class A) include separate cabin for business class, separate check-in counters, use of a private lounge, etc. Low-cost airlines are increasingly targeting the lower social classes C2, D, and E to exploit the market.

Behavioral Segmentation

Behavioral segmentation is defined as market segmentation based on individual purchasing behavior.

Behavioral segmentation manifests itself in product benefits, identifying specific purchasing behaviors, in terms of purchase frequency and volume, etc.

For example, a customer relationship management system could profile frequent flyer customers and reveal valuable information about their past transactions. How often people travel often depends on their job. The higher the standard of living of people, the more often it allows them to travel.

These issues need to be considered by airline marketers. However, business passengers (as mentioned above) can differ from each other in terms of purchasing power.

Independent travelers tend to travel alone, so expect value for money. Business travelers are subsidized by their company so they may be more interested in the standard of service as well as other luxuries.

Product-related Segmentation

These variables depend on the product or service to be marketed. In the airline industry, such variables include the purpose of the trip, the duration of the trip, the country of origin of the passengers.

For example, passengers may be traveling for business reasons and therefore may need to book their short itinerary at the last minute. When talking about business travelers, it is necessary to break them down into segments, namely business travelers, individual travelers, incentives, or conference travelers. As mentioned above, there are a fairly large number of market segments that represent good sources of revenue for the aviation industry.

However, business passengers (as mentioned above) can differ from each other in terms of purchasing power.

Independent travelers tend to travel alone, so expect value for money. Business travelers are subsidized by their company, so they may be more interested in the standard of service, as well as other luxuries available to them. Conference and incentive segments have different requirements. This last segment consists of people traveling in groups. Their arrangements are usually made well in advance, either by companies or specialist travel agents. As a means of offering cheap group fares, airlines might be able to organize group travel at odd times.

The duration of the trip can also determine the needs, wishes, and expectations of customers. For example, the needs of customers on a long-haul flight from London to Singapore would differ from those of other travelers on a short-haul flight. Flight from London to Paris. Long-haul travelers require very comfortable seats, in-flight entertainment, in-flight meals, etc.