When creating a marketing campaign, you may be asked, “Who is your target audience?” If you’ve never heard the phrase before, you may be caught off guard, as it’s not commonly used outside of marketing and content writing. However, coming up with a concrete answer can make or break your campaign.

So what does the phrase mean and why is it important? Here are the basics.

What Is a Target Audience?

Your audience is anyone who comes across your content, whether you intended for them to find it or not. However, some audience members offer more value than others.

When you choose a target audience, you decide which members to address based on demographics such as age, location and purchase history. Your actual audience is much larger, but you’re putting your efforts into reaching this specific group.

Why Is Choosing an Audience Important?

It’s impossible to appeal to everyone who visits your site and it’s not worth it to try. Instead, you can make your resources work most effectively by appealing to certain members of your audience. These members may be more likely to make a purchase, more likely to spend a large amount or more likely to spread the word about your products. Their actions yield more value, so it’s in your best interest to cater to them.

How Should You Choose Your Audience?

To understand the most valuable users to target, you need to do a little research. If you’ve run digital marketing campaigns in the past, you can use that information. You should also look at industry trends.

This data will show connections between demographics and consumer decisions. For example, you may notice that users in certain areas are more likely to purchase certain products. You may also see trends related to age, social-economic status, martial status or education level. Taking all these factors into account gives you a good idea of who is most likely to be interested in your goods and services. These are the people you want to tailor your content to.

How Can You Reach Your Audience?

First and foremost, you want to understand where your audience goes for information. For example, if your audience is younger, you may want to use social media to deliver your message. If your audience is on the older end of the spectrum, you may want to use print marketing.

Knowing your audience is the key to marketing success. With concrete knowledge of who you’re addressing, you can create appealing campaigns and reap the rewards.