A target audience is the people whose problem your product solves and who are ready to pay for it. Age and gender explain almost nothing here. What matters is the job they need done, the moment they take it on and the criteria they choose by. The answers sit in your CRM, analytics, search queries, reviews and customer calls.
01What a target audience is, and why «everyone» is not an answer
The most common line at a first meeting: our target audience is everyone who needs our product. With a description like that you cannot choose a channel, write an offer or design a site structure — any text fits everyone, and none of them works.
A useful description of an audience answers three questions: what job the person is trying to get done, at what moment they start dealing with it, and by what criteria they choose a supplier or a product. Age and city remain refinements, not the foundation.
Below is the working order: where to get the data, how to split the audience into segments, what belongs in a customer profile and how to tie all of it to specific pages of the site.
02Where to get the data: six sources
I start target audience analysis by collecting what the company already has. A downloaded template will not help here: half the answers usually sit in correspondence with customers and in reports nobody has ever opened.
Search demand stands apart on that list: it records the person's own words at the moment the problem appears. «What is», «how much does it cost» and «who is better» are three different stages of readiness. Mixing them into one offer does not work.
- CRM and correspondence: who bought, what question they arrived with, what they asked before paying and why they walked away.
- Web analytics: which pages the enquiries come from and which sections people read before getting in touch.
- Search demand: the wording of queries reveals the language of the audience and the stage of readiness to buy.
- Customer interviews: five to eight conversations are enough to hear the motives that repeat.
- Reviews and questions, both yours and your competitors': that is where objections and choice criteria are visible.
- The sales team, or the owner in person: reasons for refusal and the usual doubts are audible on calls.
03Segmentation: which criterion to split on
Segmenting a target audience serves one purpose: every segment should get its own argument and its own page. A neat diagram in a deck gives you nothing on its own. The criterion for the split is chosen by one question — does it change the buying decision?
The check is simple. If, after the split, the offer for both segments stays the same, the split is redundant. Age and gender are usually exactly that: they change the picture in the deck but not the copy, the price or the channel.
| Criterion | Example of a split | When it works |
|---|---|---|
| The customer's job | «We need more enquiries» and «we need order in our reporting» | Almost always: different jobs mean different offers |
| Stage of demand | Still researching the topic, or already choosing a supplier | When the sales cycle is long |
| Role in the company | Owner, marketer, head of department | In B2B: each of them has their own criteria and fears |
| Trigger for getting in touch | Planned growth, or numbers falling | When the trigger changes urgency and budget |
| Geography | One city, or the whole country | For local services and offline locations |
| Demographics | Age, gender, income | As a refinement, not as the basis of the split |
04The customer profile: what has to be in it
A customer profile with a name, a stock photo and a list of hobbies looks convincing and helps with almost nothing. A useful profile is built from how the person makes the decision. A biography has no place in it.
The test is simple: if the profile does not let you write the first screen of a page and three arguments for someone who is hesitating, the profile is empty.
- The job, and the way the person puts it into their own words.
- The trigger: what happened that made them start looking for a solution right now.
- Alternatives: what else they are considering, including doing nothing at all.
- Choice criteria and their order: price, timing, experience in the niche, way of working.
- Objections and fears: what stops them from sending an enquiry.
- Where they look: search, recommendations, industry chats, maps, marketplaces.
- What has to happen after the purchase for them to consider the result achieved.
05Questions for customer interviews
An interview gives you the thing no report holds: the wording. Ask about past behaviour rather than future intentions — «what did you do» instead of «would you».
A conversation takes twenty to thirty minutes, and ten questions are plenty.
- What was going on in the company before you started looking for a solution?
- How did you word the query the first time you searched?
- Which options did you consider besides us, and why did you rule them out?
- What made you wary on our site or in our proposal?
- Who else was involved in the decision, and what mattered to them?
- Which argument turned out to be the decisive one?
- What nearly stopped the deal from happening?
- How did you know the result had been achieved?
- What would you advise us to change in the way we work?
- Which of your contacts would you recommend us to, and in what words?
06Tying segments to the site and the channels
A segment with no landing page stays a tidy table in a deck. It starts working when it has its own set of queries, its own page and its own offer on that page.
My own site is arranged the same way: the enquiry form has two segments, business and expert, because their jobs and their language differ, while the services only partly overlap.
| Segment | How they search | Where to send them | What the page has to carry |
|---|---|---|---|
| Already choosing a supplier | Queries with «order» and «cost» | A service page | Price, scope of work, timing, how the start is arranged |
| Researching the topic | Queries like «what is» and «how it works» | A blog article | An explanation with no selling, plus a link to the service |
| Comparing formats | «Agency or a single specialist» | The services hub and the cases | A comparison of the options and the limits of the offer |
| Local customer | Queries with a city name, and maps | Local pages and business listings | Address, opening hours, reviews, directions |
07Common mistakes in target audience analysis
The mistakes repeat from project to project. Every one of them saves time at the start and comes back later as a bill for advertising and for rebuilding the site.
- Describing the audience from the owner's impressions and never testing a single hypothesis on customers.
- Copying a competitor's segments, along with their mistakes and their product.
- Producing ten segments with no pages, no budget and no resource to maintain them.
- Confusing the target audience with the buyer: in B2B the decision is often made by three people, each with their own criteria.
- Forgetting the segment that brings money but is not enjoyable to serve — it stays in the revenue anyway.
- Describing the audience once and never revisiting it after the product or the price has changed.
08In short: where to start with audience analysis
Start with what already exists: export the last year of deals, mark the jobs and triggers that repeat, cross-check them against search demand and run five interviews. Then assemble two or three working segments, write a customer profile for each and check whether pages and offers exist for them.
In my diagnostics the audience is one of five areas, alongside market, product, funnel and processes: segments almost always explain why there is traffic but no enquiries. In the price list, target audience analysis costs $490 and positioning and offer costs $730. If you are unsure that this is what you need, describe the situation in an enquiry and I will say where it makes more sense to begin.
