Jimmy's Guide to.... Target Audiences

So, it’s Friday afternoon, which means it’s time for me to sit inside on a sweltering day, and write another blog.

Why do I never write these when it’s raining? Oh well.

This week, I want to talk about defining target audiences.

More specifically, I want to talk about two ways to define a target audience that I think are wrong, and one way which I believe is right.

Before I get into that though, just a few short words on WHY it’s important to define a target audience. After all, why should you care who buys your product/service? As long as they’re happy to pay money for it, it doesn’t really matter who they are, right?

Wrong. And the reason you need to define a target audience is very simple. We define a target audience so we can better refine our product/service and our marketing. Put even more simply, if your target audience want one thing, and you give them something else, you’re going to fail.

If your target audience want a product that tastes sweet, and you give them one that tastes dry – you’re going to fail.

If your target audience get most of their information from weekend supplements, and your marketing campaign is exclusively online – you’re going to fail.

But I’m sure you all knew all of that, so let’s crack on.

Option 1) You have one target audience, and you stick to it.

This is actually the way I was taught. And on the face of it, it’s attractively simple. Work out who your best prospects are, and they are your target.

So your target could be: Women, 35-54, ABC1, or it could be Men, 18-35, BC1… it doesn’t matter. What matters is that that once you have identified them, that’s it. Job done. They become the touchstone for all your endeavours from that point on.

Except.

Except the problem I have with this, is that things are rarely that simple. Most of the brands I’ve worked on have at least one, maybe even two, secondary audiences who are ALSO important to the brand. And by focusing on only one TA you often forget these other, also valuable groups.

Let me give you an example. At Cussons, in my first job as a Brand Manager, the business undertook the absolute mother of all Usage & Attitude studies. It cost a fortune, and was designed to be used by all the brands. And, as part of the following segmentation work, each brand was ‘given ‘ their TA. I was working on Carex at the time, and – due to it’s antibacterial properties – Carex was deemed to be the most ‘ masculine ‘ of all our brands. And, sure enough, the U&A bore this out, with a definite over-index for Carex amongst men of all ages except the over 55s ( What’s this newfangled liquid soap? I prefer my soap in a bar thank you ) and the under 18s ( What’s soap? )

Fine. So I was told that henceforth, Men, 18-54 would be my TA, and it was ever to be.

Except. Except I went back through the raw U&A data, and I found a distinct group of women ( 25-35, with families ) who ALSO over-indexed against Carex. My hypothesis ( and it was only a hypothesis as this time, as the U&A didn’t include qual data ) was that women became massively germ-conscious when they start a family, and for that reason, their propensity to buy Carex went up.

But what to do? I’d already been told that Men 18-54 were my TA. And, like Highlander, there could only be one.

So that’s the first approach. In a nutshell, it’s fine if you have a very simple product proposition, or if you don’t have the data to dig any deeper, but I do think it’s a bit limited.

Looking back, I think the problem might have been asking the question: Which is the best brand for each target audience? Rather than: Which is the best target audience for each brand? A subtle difference, but an important one.

Option 2) You don’t have a Target Audience. You have lots of different Personas.

Now, this is an interesting one. Because until quite recently, as I got more involved in digital marketing, I’d never heard of Personas at all. Is it a Digital only thing? Or is just some recent development in Marketing Theory that I’m not aware of? ( *Cough* Passed my CIM in 1994 *Cough* )

Either way, I think it’s quite a neat approach. Basically, you think of a type of person who might use your product/service, and then work to define them more clearly. Think about their goals and values, their challenges and pain points, their demographics, their sources of information etc.

When you’ve done that, give each of your defined Personas a name, and a nice picture that sums them up.

Done all that? Splendid. So now, you might have a piece of paper with Eric, Susan, Norma and Ali on it. You’ve got a fair idea of what each of them is looking for, and how best to market to them.

What you DON’T have – is any idea of who is most valuable to you. Which of those four Personas is actually your target?

I have another real-life example of this. When I was at Tesco, the Market Insights team did their own huge U&A, and came up with five segments – what they called the Five Families. ( All sounds a bit like the Mafia if you ask me, but then Tesco could be a bit sinister at times )

Anyway, the Five Families were: Roshini, The Wicks, The Mayers, Carol, Dawn.

Each was well defined, in just the way I outlined earlier. Hobbies, Newspaper readership, Demographics, Shopping habits, the works.

But Tesco had the same problem I just mentioned – they didn’t prioritise. Tesco being Tesco, they wanted EVERYONE in the UK to shop in their stores, so it was anathema to them to say that any one group was less important than the others.

Time after time, I saw this segmentation being presented to Suppliers, all of whom would say: “ Ok, fine, so which group are we going after? “

To be met with a shrug, and a vague “ Well, all of them, I suppose. “ from the Buyer.

Cue lots of puzzled expressions.

I even saw Buyers using the data to say “ Well, we’re strong with Roshini and The Wicks, so we need to improve what we offer The Mayers, Carol and Dawn. “

All of which somewhat undermines the point of targeting.

So, if the ultra-targeted approach ( Option 1 ) is a bit too precise, and the Persona approach ( Option 2 ) is a bit too broad, then what’s the answer?

I’m glad you asked.

Option 3) If it’s good enough for Jocky Wilson, it’s good enough for me.

Ok, so this is what I do. I use a dartboard.

Not in real life, obviously. I’m rubbish at most hand/eye co-ordination stuff, and couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo. ( Which, incidentally, is what led to me being thrown out of the World Indoor Darts Championships )

No, come back. It’s simple, I promise.

Start by defining your ‘ Core ‘ TA, much like we did in Option 1. Who are your most valuable customers? Either because they spend more with you, or more often with you, or are your biggest advocates – however you want to do it.

They go in the middle of the dartboard. They’re your bullseye. Your Primary TA.

Ok, now think of the next most important group. Often they’ll be a larger, broader version of the first group, but sometimes ( remember the Carex example ) they’ll be a totally different demographic altogether.

The best way to think about this group, is to feel a nagging sense of worry in the pit of your stomach at the prospect of losing them from your brand. If they’re important to you, then you should capture that somewhere.

This group becomes the second ring of the dartboard.

And finally ( you don’t have to do three, but I normally do ) think about the third most important group. These are the ‘ nice to have ‘ group. They like your brand, and you like that they buy it, but you’re not going to design your marketing campaign around them, and if they all switched to a competitor, it wouldn’t kill you or your brand.

This group goes on the third ( outermost ) ring of the dartboard.

And voila! There you have it, a method of targeting that isn’t a) as rigid as Option 1, but b) has more of a clear sense of priority than Option 2.

Works every time, I promise. And no, you can’t have a fourth ring. Because a) three is enough, and b) when did you ever see a dartboard with four rings? Behave.

So, what I SHOULD have done at Carex was this:

Primary Audience: Men, 18-54.

Secondary Audience: Women, 25-35.

Tertiary Audience: All other Men and Women, 18-54.

Actually, I’m still far from convinced that we shouldn’t have put the Primary and Secondary audiences the other way round, but at least this approach allows you to have a debate about it – whereas the Option 1 approach doesn’t.

Let me give you another example. This is from when I worked on Quorn. Clearly our primary target audience were Vegetarians, but it was more complicated than that. Actually, our primary target audience split into two types of Vegetarian – 1) those who used to eat meat/missed eating meat, and wanted their vegetarian food to resemble/remind them of meat, and 2) those who hated the whole idea of animals being used for meat, and objected to the whole idea of vegetarian ‘ sausages ‘ or ‘ bacon ‘ or anything that reminded them of meat.

The first group was bigger, and more loyal to Quorn, but the second group was noisier/more vocal on social media, which is why we often ended up feeling pulled in lots of different directions.  They also had a higher tendency to switch in and out with brands like Cauldron, which made no reference to meat products in their packaging at all. ( after all, tofu is just tofu* )

So we defined our Brand Dartboard like this:

Primary Audience: Vegetarians who used to eat meat / missed eating meat.

Secondary Audience: Vegetarians who never ate meat / hate the idea of animals being used to meat.

Finally ( and after much debate ) we added a Tertiary Audience: People who aren’t Vegetarian, but want to eat more healthily.

In time, we actually learned that the Tertiary Audience was MUCH bigger and had more potential than either of the first two – so we decided to switch them round. Big success. But that’s another story.

Clearly, as you can see, there’s sometimes a tension between what your Primary Audience and your Secondary Audience want from your brand. That’s good, it keeps life interesting. And at least having a clear definition of who is Primary and who is Secondary gives you a startpoint on how to make those tricky decisions.

One last point from me, and then I’ll go. And this is more of a tangent than anything else – but as it’s related to the subject of Target Audiences I feel compelled to include it.

And the point is this: always make sure your Target Audience decision is rooted in data, not wishful thinking.

This is from one of my more recent roles. It was a good solid brand, sold in mainstream grocery, nice little ecommerce business as well, all growing nicely, doing very well thank you.

Problem was – the Founder was convinced that we should be an edgy, hipster-focused, millennial brand.

You see, he was confusing the kind of brand we were, with the kind of brand he wanted us to be. He loved the world of late night London cocktail bars and clever guerrilla advertising techniques, and he hated seeing other brands doing well in that space. So he was always on at me to take our brand in that direction.

He was also very much an alpha male, already a successful entrepreneur at the age of 35, and very definitely AB social class. And – his reasoning went – if he had created a brand, then the people who bought it should be people like him, no?

It didn’t matter how much Kantar data I put under his nose, showing that the key purchasers of our brand were men and women 45+, and mostly B or C1, he didn’t want to know.

Matters came to a head one day when he decided to close the Customer Service Helpline. It was costing us money, and – anyway, don’t all edgy hipster millennials live their whole lives online? Surely just having an email address for the helpdesk would be fine.

It was only when the angry letters – letters! – started to pour in from people who couldn’t call us about their order, and who didn’t have email ( imagine that! ) that he relented.

So, in summary:

·        It’s important ( for many reasons ! ) to define a Target Audience for your brand.

·        There are a variety of different approaches, but I prefer a dartboard style approach – as it gives you clear Primary and Secondary ( and Tertiary if you wish ) Audiences.

·        Sometimes there is tension between what your different Target Audiences want from your brand. Having a clear definition of which audience is most important to you makes it easier to resolve those tensions.

·        Make sure your thinking is rooted in the data of who actually buys your brand – not who you want to buy your brand!

See you next time. Take care.

J

*By which I mean, it’s the work of the Devil.