As service providers we may start out thinking our services can have a target market and target audience of everyone or have reservations around niching so not exclude anyone. Or we may have multiple, different target markets and target audiences aligned with various services and not sure how to bring it all together–especially on the website. This can lead to siloing our offerings across separate social media channels or websites. The messaging in social media may not speaking to anybody or possibly calling in people who don’t appreciate the value of our services. Or potential clients that come across your marketing efforts, such as a google ad, be confused if the services are for them.
When it comes to aligning the brand and services with your marketing efforts, identifying and refining the target market(s) and target audience is a key component. It’s an essential ingredient for crafting tailored marketing messages that resonate—leading to higher engagement and conversion. Understanding your target market and target audience for each of your services can also enhance brand positioning as well as help inform the creation of new services or the delivery of existing.
Let’s dive into how to find target market and target audience with your brand and service offerings for more impactful messaging.
Define broad target market category and audience
As a foundational step, begin to identify your target market based on the services you provide and who generally (one or two broad target audiences) it’s for that is most likely to be interested in your overall business brand and to buy.
Consider this from the point of view of how broader target market is commonly identified by professionals and ideal clients and how the market categorizes this ideal audience. At this stage, try not to color it with how you would like to redefine the target market, your level of comfort with being identified in that category, or names or titles you’ve created for your audience based on demographics or buyer personas. Be as straightforward as possible when identifying your target market and target audience. If your business has two different target markets, identify them at their higher level and see if there is any overarching markets that could be categorized. If not, keep them separate.
To use Stargazer as an target audience example: we provide digital marketing services for service providers. The target market is ‘digital marketing services’ and the general audience is ‘service providers’.
Refine target market and target audiences
Once you have your broad market category and general target market, it’s time to start defining and refining (aka niching). When it comes to segmenting your market, this is where you’ll want to subcategorize services you provide within the broader market category. This can go from broad category to subcategory to speciality within a subcategory. Depending on how many services you offer you may have several subcategories or specialities.
Segmenting your target audience can be as broad or specific as you feel moved to make it. Many folks start with demographics and customer personas. However, the more segments you can pull together by service offering the better. By getting more specific with and within segments, including personas, you may start to see the connective overlaps and find ways to tap into deeper insights on who your ideal customers are, what they care about when it comes to the particular service, and what challenges they may be experiencing. You may also identify several groups of audiences, including potential referrers, for any one service that may help inform how you communicate and deliver your services.
Below are several segments to help further refine your target market and target audiences.
Demographics
- Age: Children, teenagers, young adults, middle-aged adults, seniors.
- Gender: Male, female, non-binary, gender-fluid.
- Income Level: Low-income, middle-income, high-income.
- Education Level: High school, college, postgraduate.
- Occupation: Students, professionals, retirees.
Psychographics
- Lifestyle: Health-conscious, eco-friendly, tech-savvy, luxury-oriented.
- Personality Traits: Introverts, extroverts, risk-takers, traditionalists.
- Values: Family-oriented, socially responsible, status-seeking.
- Interests/Hobbies: Sports enthusiasts, art lovers, gamers, travelers.
Behavioral
- Purchase Behavior: First-time buyers, repeat customers, brand loyalists, discount seekers.
- Usage Rate: Light users, moderate users, heavy users.
- Loyalty Status: Brand advocates, switchers, indifferent customers.
- Occasions: Regular use, special occasions, seasonal buyers.
Geographic
- Location: Urban, suburban, rural.
- Region: Local, regional, national, international.
- Climate: Hot, cold, temperate, tropical.
Firmographics (B2B Audience)
- Industry: Technology, healthcare, finance, education, legal, marketing
- Company Size: Small business, medium-sized enterprise, large corporation.
- Job Role: Executives, managers, IT professionals, HR departments.
- Revenue: Start-ups, growing companies, established corporations.
Technographics
- Technology Usage: Early adopters, mainstream users, late adopters.
- Platform Preferences: Mobile users, desktop users, omnichannel users.
- Software/Tool Usage: Specific CRM users, cloud service users, marketing automation users.
Benefits
- What the Customer Seeks: Convenience, quality, value for money, customer service.
- Problem-Solving: Looking for a solution to a specific problem, enhancing an experience, simplifying a process.
Cultural
- Ethnicity: Targeting specific cultural or ethnic groups.
- Religion: Products or services tailored to religious beliefs or practices.
- Language: Content or services in specific languages for linguistic groups.
To continue the Stargazer example with the target market segmentation: Our primary ‘digital marketing service’ is website design and secondary service is marketing consulting. Website design is still a large subcategory of the digital marketing space, so we’ve further refined by platform speciality (technographic) in WordPress, Squarespace and Wix website design.
Our audience ‘service provider’ ideal client is a small business owners. Further ‘service provider, small business owner’ audience segmentation includes solopreneurs and small businesses with teams. We also segment based on business phase of start-up or established (firmographic), have a desire for help in clarifying their brand and messaging during the website creation process (benefit), and tend to have a people-over-profit values alignment (psychographic).
Prioritize the target audiences
We may have multiple target audiences for the brand and the service offerings that have varying degrees of influence into the buying process. Taking it one step further and outlining primary, secondary, and tertiary target audiences may be beneficial so you remain aligned in messaging and calls to action with your target market. When it comes to your main marketing strategy and messaging focus on your primary target audiences as these are the ultimate purchasers. By identifying secondary or even hierarchy target audiences, it may help factor in who may have a voice in the purchasing process, strongly refer, inspire new service offerings or ways to sell (ex. affiliate programs), or ways to network for possible promotion, referrals and collaborations.
Primary: this group is most likely to take the desired action—such as purchasing the service and product, or engaging with content.
Secondary: this group may hold interest and influence over the primary audience, and be affected by your messaging or offering, but are not not necessarily the central focus or direct purchasers.
Tertiary: this group is even further removed from the primary focus but may still have some level of interest or influence.
For Stargazer website design services target audience:
Primary: founders of service-based, small businesses (including solopreneurs)
Secondary: team members and collaborators of service-oriented small businesses, partners to solopreneuers who may have budgetary voice
Tertiary: digital marketing specialists (ex. SEO, social media and email specialists + copywriters)
Getting clear on your target audience, can empower you so you work with ideal clients who are most aligned with your services, approach, and values. Understanding target markets, audience segments and tiers at the brand level (overall business) and the individual services will help in crafting more tailored and impactful marketing strategy and messages. It may also help inspire new or varied service offerings or ways to expand your network to drive referrals and sales.
If you would like support in helping clarifying your target audience, we offer one-on-one marketing mentorship for solopreneurs and brand and marketing strategy for small businesses with teams.
