Greetings once again.

What’s a Target Group?

Sounds like a bunch of innocent people at the wrong end of a shooting gallery.

In truth it may seem we are taking shots- unfairly- at our audiences wherever they are, but therein is the dilemma – Exactly where are they?

Not too long ago, I heard someone describe their target group as anyone with a credit card. Goodness you’ll have a long and expense campaign reaching the estimated five billion credit card holders around the globe. If you can pull it off- more power too you.

Genuinely, very few products have such a global demand. And if they do, someone might already be harvesting all these consumers. Perhaps consider constructing your target group so you can better qualify their attributes and quantify how big a market they are.

One major Canadian client I worked with a number of years back suggested they wanted to be ‘National’.

A noble sentiment, if somewhat unattainable given the scope of their budget. But it was a starting platform and allowed us to have a ‘base’ audience from which we could refine our ideal target group.


So how do you determine who you’re trying to reach?

I defined this as my Target Group Editing. This is an arena which your media team should be able to help you. Logically, and methodically, reducing that huge universe to a more manageable size.

Some of these steps you saw already in the Spike of Angels Media Briefing Template which you first downloaded when you signed up.  Let’s start by eliminating who we don’t want. If this can be done in bigger chunks, (Ie: we want to reach only men for this brand of Scotch product- this eliminates women and children), then you can more quickly trim your target to manageable sizes.

Some preliminary questions:

• Are you targeting men or women? Both?
• What age group are you trying to influence?
• Is there a particular geography you need to cover - national, regional, provincial, local?
• Do they have the income, personal or household to support buying your product?
• Are they living in major urban centres or rural areas?
• Do you have an idea of their media habits?
  Ie: typically which media in their geography are they most exposed to ?

A sample target group follows. For this client, we wanted to reach the most appropriate audience who would be interested in purchasing a computer printer.

Sample Target Audience: For Computer Printers (circa 1999). From our 31 Million Canadians at that time, we edited our universe as follows:

Our primary candidate audience is defined as: A well educated male, living in a major urban centre, who enjoys an above average income, and currently has a home computer.

Here’s how we got there: This profile was created from our earlier research via PMB (Print Measurement Bureau) and NADBank which confirms the profile of the primary users of printers are:

• Age/Sex: Predominantly, but not exclusively male, aged 25-54. 60% of Canadian adults 18+ are between ages of 25-54, yet they account for 85.4% of Business. Computer Customers (PMB 1997).

• Education: University graduates account for less than 1/5th of all households, but they account for almost 1/3rd of computer ownership. 50% of home computer purchasers attended University, versus 36% of adult population.

• Own personal computer: according to the Radio Marketing Bureau & Statistics Canada 31.6% or almost 4 Million Canadian homes had a computer at the end of 1996. That is triple the penetration from only a decade earlier(10.3% in 1986). Current figures show it having crested 40%

• Have Home Office: and they also may operate small business from home.

• Enjoy mid to High Household Income: 20% of the households with higher incomes were four times more likely to have a computer than those with incomes in the lowest 20%. 41.3% of Adults 18+ report incomes in excess of $50,000 but they account for 72.4% of Business Computer Customers

• Live in major urban centres: 39.4% live in community sizes of 1 million +, with the following top five ranking of: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa/Hull, Edmonton and Calgary.

Narrowing the Field

The preceding few pages will demonstrate that asking and answering some realistic questions about the target group can help you focus on delivering a campaign with more efficiency, impact and memorability.

In constructing our media recommendation, we knew our primary Target Group should be:

Men aged 25-54, who were university graduates who had incomes in excess of $50,000 and they lived in major urban centres, predominantly in the top five markets noted above.

This streamlined our original 31 million candidates substantially, and allowed us to select media which best reached them within our budget.

PLUS: All of this media refinement allowed our creative to work harder because we reached our candidate purchaser more strategically, and funds were not wasted on irrelevant media.

As in all media, online or offline, you do not have to ‘buy more’ to reach your customers, you just have to buy smarter.

Stay tuned.

Dennis Kelly
dennis@firstimpressionsmedia.ca

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