1 Learn the concept
A target market is the specific group of people a business most wants to reach. Trying to speak to everyone usually means speaking to no one, so marketers describe their audience in detail before they spend a dollar. Good targeting saves money, sharpens your message and makes campaigns easier to measure. This lesson shows how to define a target market using demographics, psychographics and behavior, and how to turn that research into a simple audience profile.
2 See it in action
- Demographics: age, location, income, occupation and other facts about who the customer is.
- Psychographics: values, interests, attitudes and lifestyle, which explain why they buy.
- Behavior: how they shop, which channels they use and what they have bought before.
Worked example
From a vague customer to a target market
Before: "Our customers are women who like beauty products."
After: "Women in their 20s and early 30s who live in cities, buy skincare online, follow creators for product advice, read ingredient lists and want a short routine."
Why it works: the second version tells you where to advertise (creator platforms), what to say (simple routines, honest ingredients) and what to show (real skin, not heavy makeup).
Check: could you write an ad that speaks to this person and nobody else? If yes, the definition is specific enough.
3 Study an example
Real-world case study
Glossier: a brand built by listening to its readers
What they did. Emily Weiss started the beauty blog Into the Gloss in 2010, interviewing people about the products they actually used. When she launched Glossier in October 2014 with four products, she drew on years of comments and feedback from the blog's readers to decide what to make. The company also grew through referrals, including community members who shared personal links and codes with their networks.
What happened. The blog had built a large, engaged readership, reported at about a million monthly readers, so the brand launched to an audience that already trusted it and had told Weiss what it wanted.
What to take away. A target market is easiest to define when you talk to the people in it. Glossier's audience shaped the products, the tone and the marketing, so everything spoke to one clear group instead of everyone.
Audience figures vary between published sources and should be treated as approximate.
4 Apply it and download
- Choose a business and write who its ideal customer is in two sentences.
- Fill in demographics, psychographics and behavior for that customer.
- Complete the audience profile worksheet.
Worksheet Audience profile worksheetOpen, print or save as PDF