REBECCA COUGHLIN

Critical Approaches

What is A Target Audience?

A target audience is a company's potential demographic consumers who are most likely to buy/watch or show interest in a product, which is why a business decided to aim its marketing and advertising strategies at them.They can be found by often segmenting them into age, gender or income. Location is often key too, such as local customers or how wealthy the area is.

Qualitative Research

Qualitative Research is used to create a hypotheses. This can help companies identify customer needs as well as be able to get a clearer understanding of what they could use marketing wise to relate more to their target audience. This research can also be used to generate more ideas or improvement of products, lines or brands.

This type of research is primarily exploratory and it is used as a way to understand reasons, opinions and motivations of a target audience.

After finding this information, an in-depth study of a small focus group can be used to support a hypotheses made from the range of behaviors the target audience showed earlier, such as their social behavior.

The dynamic nature of this technique is appropriate to engage with more of the audience and could be used to get even more depth and detail in the answers than what would be possible with just a survey or questionnaire. Also, by focusing on one or a small group of people, they can be more open to expand in their responses.

Although, this technique is more time consuming and it can only reach a slim number of people unlike a survey which could reach hundreds of people. It is also not as easy to generalize because fewer people are studied which can’t be used to generalize results. By having such a small number of people, it can make it hard to fit their responses into data as their responses may be wildly different to each other.

Quantitative Research

This type of research includes researchers collecting numerical data. It involves measuring or counting attributes to what the researcher is focusing, such as ‘how many’.

Quantitative is used to either support of contradicts an idea or hypothesis a researcher may have, such as ‘my target audience is mostly male’, so they use this technique to find out if this statement is true or false. We can use this research to see where responses are similar or if there are differences between them.

There are a few ways to do this research, such as questionnaires which is a series of questions sent to gather information. There

is also interviews but it would have to be more structured to collect the right data.

The advantages of quantitative research is that it allows the researchers to make a broader study with larger numbers of respondents which enhances the generalization of the results. As well as this, using this technique, you can allow for a greater objectivity and accuracy of the results which means the results found will have few variables and it will avoid personal bias as the technique can be more distant than qualitative research.

However, the results are limited as they only collect numerical descriptions as well as the answers not always showing how people really feel about a subject.

When Are They Used?

Qualitative Research is used to generate new ideas/developments and improvements by listening to their target audience more to see what they want and what would attract them more to the product. This type of research can also be used to understand the strength and weaknesses of a that product. It can also be used to assess different aspects of a company, such as the branding, the marketing, the company website and the actual product being sold. However, qualitative research does not act as a process to count, measure of offer statistical numbers to validate from.

Quantitative Research is used to see audience’s preferences and to test hypotheses. It’s used as an assumption of the findings representing the population. It’s a practical and quick way of gathering information, and the information can be collected widely from a large amount of people in only a short period of time which can sometimes be really inexpensive. It can be used to measure change and different people’s opinions to find a majority. As well as comparing old research to new, which is good when creating an upgrade of an already popular product.However, it’s a lot less detailed than qualitative data. It can’t be used to understand audiences emotions or feelings very well, and there is no way to tell if the respondent is being truthful.

Demographic Information

This type of information involves finding the aspects of consumers the business needs to aim at to sell their product as successfully as they can.

This is done by collecting information of:GenderAgeEthnicityIncomeQualificationsMarital Status

This type of information is important to a business as it gives a vague background of the customers they are intending to target. It’s the businesses' way of getting to know their market more. By doing this, they can understand how to aim at them and how to communicate with them better.

Demographic information is the best way to collect statistical data.

 Behavioural Information

This is the consumers decision process, what type of things influence their purchases. Once a business knows this, it can be simpler to aim the right campaigns at their target consumers.

This information can be monitored through examining consumer online purchasing. This way they know about what their target consumers like, and demand in products they like.

To get a better understanding of the consumers behavior, you can look at their:HobbiesPast PurchasesInterests

After doing this research, businesses can base their marketing campaign more around these people to get the best possible profit and interest from consumers.

Why is A Target Audience Important?

Knowing your target audience as a company or business is very important as they need to find out what their target audience’s general age is, their gender, education level, interests and/or income to really understand who they are aiming at. By finding all this out, the company can create common or safe ground between themselves and the audience to make them more comfortable with a brand/product. This makes it easier to sell this said brand or product to the audience which will gain the company more profit. Also, by doing this, the company can also use their current target audience to find out even more about them, such as what they like about the product/brand and what they don’t like.

By having a clear understanding of their target audience, they can aim all their money and marketing at that section of audience so they save money and prioritize resources better.

Socia-economic status

Psychographics

Geodemographics

Age

Gender

Mainstream and niche

What Categories Could Publishers Use To Define A Target Audience?

Socio-Economic Status

Here, you need to use this type of research to know your target audience’s status in terms of class, income and education. By knowing this, the higher the class of a certain audience, then that means there can be a higher asking price as they have the income and perhaps personality type to be able to spend more money on a product.

Advantages of this is that the company will be able to know the price range and quality of their product better when aiming it at their target audience. Such as selling at a higher class means the price can be higher.

Disadvantages of this is that depending on the price, it can only be bought or aimed at a specific audience. Therefore leaving a large section of audience out, creating a potential loss of profit. Plius, the higher the price, then perhaps that would lead to less sales, unlike selling something at a lower price which would attract more people and generate more sales.

Psychographic Information

This type of research is used to understand consumer behavior, their style of living and self concept.

This type of information can be used to gain a deeper understanding of the consumers by understanding their:Interests Personality typesThinking processFinancialsHobbiesLifestyle

This way, it’s easier for the business to connect with the consumers through their marketing campaigns.

Age

By finding out the age of a target audience, it can make marketing to them a lot easier. Such as a young audience are aimed in a completely different way to an older audience, like the font, colours and information.By having an average aim for the age, companies have a better understanding of the market they are aiming at. It can help the company understand personality traits, hobbies, interests and income, all with only knowing the age of the target audience.

The advantages to this is that a company can get a lot of general information from only knowing one thing which helps them when it comes to aiming their resources at their target audience.

However, the disadvantage of this is that the age only gives the company general information that might not help when marketing the product/brand.

Gender

Knowing the gender of your target audience is very important as it can change the whole way a company or business markets their product/brand. This is because the two genders can have very different personality traits which can make it difficult to aim one thing at both. But it’s not as easy as girls like pink, boys like blue, as there can be different personalities that like un-stereotypical things.

The advantage to knowing the target audience’s gender is that there are a lot of serotypes that go

with a gender which can make it a lot easier to outline ways to market a product better.

Although, the disadvantages of it is that sometimes the stereotype is too large and doesn’t actually appeal to anyone, it can even offend people due the stereotype. Such as girls liking flowers and boys liking cars, when in actual fact it can be the other way around.

Mainstream

The mainstream media, or as it’s also known, the mass media, is what is known to a wide range of people, such as X-Factor or the news. It is publicized on social media a lot so a lot of people know about it.

The advantage of a mainstream audience is that there is a clear understanding of what the audience likes as well as what appeals to them.

The disadvantage of this though is that sometimes mainstream interests change, such as fashion and it can be hard to keep up with that mainstream to keep target audiences happy.

Niche

A niche audience is a lot smaller and only aimed at specific interests. This makes it easier to sell unique products as that specific audience would be very likely to buy it.

Advantage is that you don't have to aim at a big audience.

Disadvantage is that it only reaches a small audience.