Sales Loves MarketingA target audience is the specific group of people you want a message, campaign or piece of content to reach. Defining it tells you what to say, where to say it and how to measure whether it worked.
Target audience vs target market
Your target market is everyone who could buy from you. A target audience is the group one campaign or message is aimed at, so it is usually a slice of that market. A payroll software company might have one target market (small and mid-sized companies) and several target audiences: HR managers for one campaign, finance directors for another.
How do you describe a target audience?
Marketers usually combine four kinds of information:
- Demographics: age, income, education, occupation.
- Geography: country, region, city, time zone and language.
- Psychographics: interests, values and attitudes.
- Behaviour: how people buy, which channels they use, how they use the product.
In B2B, two more layers matter:
- Firmographics: facts about the organisation, such as industry, number of employees, revenue, ownership and location.
- Role in the buying group: business purchases usually involve several people. The person who uses the tool, the one who signs off the budget and the one who checks security each need a different message.
An example from B2B
A company selling expense software might write:
Finance managers at companies with 50 to 500 employees in the UK and Ireland, who still collect receipts by email and spend days on month-end close.
That one sentence sets the channels (finance communities, LinkedIn, accountancy events), the message (faster close, fewer lost receipts) and the offer (a month-end checklist or a demo).
What about generations?
Some marketers group audiences by generation. If you do, use accurate ranges. Pew Research Center defines Generation X as born 1965 to 1980, millennials as 1981 to 1996, and Generation Z as born from 1997 onward. Pew also notes the cutoffs aren't an exact science. Birth year says little about whether someone has the problem you solve, so treat it as a minor filter.
How do you find your target audience?
- Study your best customers. Look in your CRM for the accounts that bought fastest, pay most and stay longest. What do they have in common?
- Talk to them. Customer and sales call interviews show the problems and words people actually use.
- Check your analytics. See which segments visit, convert and return on your site.
- Listen in public. Read what people in your market say in communities, review sites and social media, about you and your competitors.
- Write it down and test it. Run a campaign for one clearly defined audience, measure the result, and refine.
Once defined, use it everywhere: list segmentation, ad targeting, content topics and sales outreach.
Related terms
Read more: how to find your target audience and market segmentation.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a target market and a target audience?
The target market is everyone you could sell to. The target audience is the group a particular campaign or message is written for, so it is usually a subset of the market. One company has one target market but many target audiences.
How do you describe a B2B target audience?
Combine facts about the company (firmographics such as industry, size and location) with facts about the people (job role, seniority, responsibilities and the problems they need to solve). B2B purchases usually involve several people, so many teams describe an audience for each role in the buying group.
Should I target by generation, such as millennials or Gen Z?
Rarely on its own. Generation labels describe very broad age bands, and Pew Research Center itself says the cutoffs aren't an exact science. In B2B especially, a person's role and the problem they need to solve tell you more about whether they will buy.