After analyzing the market potential, it is important to analyze your target audience.

Why the target audience is important

If you do not know who you are addressing, you will not know how to properly communicate your products or services. How do you plan to impress him? How do you know what kind of language, tone of voice, to use and what aspects to leverage?

Let’s imagine that we have two footwear ecommerces, one for soccer shoes and one for handcrafted leather shoes, maybe they will also have similar prices. If we did not consider the target audience, we would be targeting everyone who is interested in shoes and footwear, going to intercept targets that are not in line with our offer. It is important to focus on who the target audience is and what the target audience wants. In fact, the customer of these ecommerces does not care about the product itself, but they care about the benefits your product offers.

So if we were to sell soccer shoes, we know that our target audience is interested in increasing their performance during games, so we would need to focus on aspects such as the lightness of the shoe, its durability and precision in ball control. In contrast, people interested in handcrafted leather shoes will be more interested in style or communicating their social status.

STEP 1: general overview

It is important to define the main characteristics of your potential customers at the aggregate level.

At this stage you define all the main characteristics such as age, location, language, occupation and main interests.

By doing this exercise you can begin to notice that people with the same interests, location, language, etcc. could differ greatly if only in age difference. It is not hard to imagine that a 14-year-old boy interested in soccer shoes could dream of one day playing in Serie A, while a 35-year-old man is unlikely to aspire to play at a competitive level.

STEP 2: Buyer persona

If we first defined the target audience at a general level, it is important to delve into the specifics of this target audience by going on to create a sketch of the ideal customer.

First, give this person an accurate first and last name and age. Start documenting online by finding quantitative data to find out your target audience’s interests, behavior, and main problems.

Remember: don’t rely on yourself or a single client of yours; it could lead you down the wrong path.

Within your target audience there is not just one buyer person. In fact, within the target audience interested in soccer shoes, the 14-year-old boy will not have the same interests, dreams, behaviors, and spending possibilities equal to a 35-year-old man interested in the same soccer shoes.

I could then create a Buyer Person to identify all 13- to 17-year-olds who aspire to play in a professional category, a 26-year-old Buyer Person to identify all 20- to 30-year-olds, and so on. You can create 2, 3 or 4, depending on how broad your audience is.

What the Buyer Persona is for.

The Buyer Persona is used to outline your offer and strategy. Depending on the Buyer Persona you are addressing, her desires and needs will be different. You will then be able to be more precise in your communication and have many more aspects to leverage.

It is also essential for doing Google Ads. In fact, what kinds of keywor might you be looking for? How many searches do you do per month? When are you most likely to buy? What is he really interested in regarding your product? What language to use?

What to analyze about the Buyer Persona

Analyze his age, gender, family situation, job, spending capacity, what language he uses, why he buys, what objections he might have about your product or service, what levers you can use to convince him.