What is a target market?

A target market is a group of people who are most likely to buy your products. People within a single target market share common characteristics, such as:

  • Age
  • Location
  • Gender
  • Shopping behavior
  • Interests
  • Lifestyle

Identifying a target market is one of the most crucial steps in creating marketing strategies. Without a defined market and target audience, you can’t personalize messages or choose appropriate marketing channels.

How to find your target market

Here are some tips on identifying the target market for your initiatives:

1. Perform market research

Do market research to explore the demographics, shopping habits and behaviors, needs, interests, and potential challenges of the ideal target market. 

Gather information through customizable forms, competitive research, and polls and surveys you can share on social media to get valuable insights.

2. Gather data from current customers

Ask your current customers about their motivations, pain points, and their perception of your product’s value by relying on:

  • Polls and surveys: Customize and send polls and surveys to your existing customers to collect information.
  • Quizzes: Create interactive quizzes for your customer to investigate how your products match their unique needs.
  • Customer interviews: Set up interviews to get a glimpse of how your customers interact with your brand.

3. Perform competitive research

Researching competitors will help you gain insights into your market, identify areas of improvement in your strategies, and understand how to promote your brand’s value.

You may not have access to your competitors’ internal data, but you can:

  • Analyze their product pricing and placement
  • Explore their promotional strategies
  • Identify their target markets to narrow your focus
  • Test competitors’ customer service by contacting them with questions or issues

4. Create buyer personas

Create fictional profiles of your ideal customers based on the market, customer, and competitive research you’ve conducted to:

  • Guide proper product placement and marketing strategies
  • Reach the right people
  • Offer a personalized experience to customers

The components you’ll include in your buyer personas depend on the products you’re selling, but here are some suggestions:

  • Demographics
  • Lifestyle
  • Shopping behavior
  • Motivations
  • Goals
  • Pain points and concerns

Give every buyer persona a name and consider how you’ll cater to each one.

5. Test buyer persona hypotheses

Test and validate buyer persona hypotheses through:

  • Conducting interviews with your target audience
  • Observing the behavior of your target market to confirm your assumptions
  • Constantly analyzing existing data to adjust or confirm hypotheses

A marketing automation platform like Klaviyo helps you perform A/B testing for buyer personas to find which one best defines a particular customer segment. Klaviyo is also beneficial for:

  • Collecting customer data through forms
  • Dividing your target market into segments for better targeting
  • Visualizing data to understand performance

Ready to identify and cater to your target market? Sign up for Klaviyo.

Additional resources