Localizing for Your Target Audience: "Everyone" Is Not Your Customer

Here's a surprising statistic: 80% of consumers don't believe that brands understand them as people. Customers look for brands that understand their challenges and provide solutions.

As a marketer, it may seem logical to want to market your product and sell to as many customers as possible. However, this approach is a sure-fire way to quickly blow through your marketing budget. This post explores why it's important to identify your ideal target audience.

What Is A Target Audience?

Think of your target audience as the ideal customers who want to purchase your product or service. Targeting a specific audience helps you focus your message and dollars on the people who are most likely to purchase from you. This is the best way to make the most of your marketing budget. The old saying holds true: When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one.

Importance of a Target Audience

Focusing on your target audience provides you with numerous benefits, including the following:

Strong Relationships

• To build the best and strongest relationships with your target audience, you need to know as much about them as possible. You can't provide them with solutions unless you first understand their needs.

A Standout Brand

• Many consumers believe brands bombard them with too much irrelevant content. You can quickly frustrate your customers by sending them content they are not interested in. However, with focused messaging and support, you can make your brand stand out from the competition.

Higher Customer Satisfaction

• 80% of consumers say they are more likely to do business with a brand that offers personalized interactions. Today's customers expect unique experiences. Your customers will feel more valued if you demonstrate that you understand them.

Budget Efficiency

• Targeting your audience means you're not wasting time and resources. You'll be more efficient and effective with your spending.

Increased Conversions

• When you target a specific audience, you improve your chance of making sales.

Target Market vs. Target Audience

A target market is a large group of potential customers that you want to reach. On the other hand, a target audience consists of ideal customers in that target market who are most likely to want your product or service. To get a firm hold on your target audience, you need to identify who influences the decision to buy. This might be obvious, or you may discover there are unique circumstances that will impact how you pitch your product.

Example One:

• You make car seats that help provide safety for newborns to toddlers. Your target market is, therefore, newborns to toddlers. However, newborns and toddlers are not your target audience – their parents are. This is an instance of where your target market and target audience differ widely.

Example Two:

• You determine that your target market consists of digital marketing experts. However, your target audience consists of specialists in SEO who have web coding expertise. In this example, the target market and target audience are very similar, but the target audience is more detailed.

How to Analyze Your Target Market for Localization

If you don't focus on the right target audience in a local market, your international launches can go wrong.

Here's an example from Proctor and Gamble. P&G was struggling to sell its Swiffer Wet Mop in Italy because it thought the target audience was women who wanted convenient products. After all, the product eliminated the need to drag around a clunky bucket of water. It turned out that Italian women wanted products that are tough cleaners, not timesavers. After P&G completely reworked its messaging, Swiffer became a huge success story in Italy.

Every target market you want to expand into is unique. Your first step is to set up some parameters, define your actual target audience, and collect as much information as possible before proceeding to localize your content. Here are some pointers to help you:

• Look at Your Current CustomersThink about your current customers. Do you see any common threads? Are they all from a particular industry or group? Ask your current customers to provide some feedback on what drew them to your product.
• Survey the CompetitionWhen planning to enter a new market, analyze what your competition is doing. Which niche(s) are they targeting? Where are they failing or succeeding?
• Examine Your Product or ServiceDefine the benefits that your product or service brings to different groups of people.
• Choose Your DemographicThere may be certain demographic groups that you want to target. Think about your audience's age, location, gender, income level, education level, occupation, marital status, occupation, and background.
• Do Your ResearchYou need to understand as much as possible about your target audience. In-depth market research identifies potential problems and possible changes you need to make to your content.
  • What type of products and services does your group mainly purchase online?
  • What do they value the most when purchasing products and services online?

Additional Resources

• For more tips on effectively localizing for your target audience, read our guide: 8 Localization Tips to Reach Your Target Audience.
• If you're looking for a user-friendly tool to create target audience personas, check out these free persona generators.
• For additional insight into how to approach the exploration of target audiences, read Robert Bloom's The Inside Advantage.

Conclusion

The power of your brand relies on your ability to focused on the right market. So, pay attention to separating your ideal target audience from your target market. This will strengthen your brand and transform your business. If you can identify your target audience, it will be easier to capture someone's attention because you have placed their needs front and center.

Let Localize Help You Reach Your Target Audience

Pinpointing your target audience is the first step to doing well in a new market. Once you know exactly who you are trying to reach, only then should you proceed to localize your content; otherwise, you will be flying blind.

The Localize TMS has all the tools you need for your new marketing campaign in your chosen country. Let us help you on your way to marketing success.