Who Is Your Target Audience?

While planning your postcard campaign, you created your goals, offer and message for the postcard campaign. A critical component of the planning was to define your target audience.

Your target audience is those individuals who would most likely benefit from your offer and take advantage (buy!) your services or products. Taking the time to carefully “profile” your target audience will improve the likelihood of success.

You can profile your target audience by using the buying characteristics of your current customers. For example, your company manufactures and wholesales trinkets to small businesses in your state. You further define a small business as a company that has gross revenues of less than $1 million per year. The decision maker for these businesses is the purchasing agent. Your offer is to sell surplus trinket inventory at a discount. Another goal for this campaign is expanding your business to a nearby state.

Since you want to sell surplus trinkets at a discount and encourage repeat business, your target audience includes your current customer base. They know you and are familiar with your name and reputation. Because you want to expand your business to a nearby state, you want to mail your postcards to the purchasing agents of those companies that gross less than $1million per year.

Profiling is important not only for business to business postcard campaigns but also for business to individual consumers. Before you ever went into business, you probably did market research to determine the characteristics of those who were likely to buy from you. For example, you located your store where there was foot traffic; you sell expensive jewelry so you located in an affluent area where the buyers make more than $50,000 per year; you offer your services exclusively over the internet so you need buyers who own a computer; you sell rock and roll memorabilia and your customer profile includes certain age groups, income levels, and people who purchase more than 25 CDs per year.

It is very important that your goals, offer, message and the mailing list you select work together. Take the time to profile your current and potential buyers. The more specific you are about your target audience the better your chances for a successful postcard campaign.