Most business needs some sort of marketing to raise awareness and generate interest in the products or services they provide. Targeting the right market is incredibly important, and can be broken down into categories to make your planning a little bit easier.
Demographic
Demographic information can be split up into subsections;
Gender
This is broken into male and female. You can generally tell by looking at an advert which gender it’s targeted to based on the colours, language used, and the product or service itself.
Age
The age of target markets is generally broken up as so;
18-24, 25-39, 40-60 and 60+ although this can vary depending on the intended target markets for a campaign. It would obviously have an age range for children too.
The age of someone can tell you information about what their wants and needs may be – for example, you wouldn’t target a Honda civic to a 5-year-old. Adverts for children need to engage children but it also needs to engage their parents – as they are more than likely going to be the ones parting with money. When it comes to older people, using marketing campaigns that have nostalgic elements can often help engage people – for example using an old song.
Level of Education
This could be anywhere from no formal high school education to a PhD. People with certain educations are targeted differently because they earn different amounts of money, and have different interests.
Income Level
Income level is an important factor for marketing because there is no point in targeting your product to people who can’t afford it. Products and services that are seen as a ‘luxury’ are normally targeted to people who have a higher income.
Marital Status
This could be; single, married, divorced, widowed etc.
Marital status is also an important targeting factor because when you are in a relationship vs being single your priorities are different. Company’s use campaigns such as “a perfect gift for your boyfriend/girlfriend” to try and improve sales, especially around holidays such as Christmas and Valentine’s day.
Occupation
Occupation is an important factor because people with different jobs want different things. This can also be related back to their level of income but someone’s job can also tell you a lot about them.
Social Class
Social class is broken down into 6 sections in marketing, it goes from high management roles, all the way down to unskilled jobs.
Religion
Religion is an important factor because you don’t want to offend anyone or get negative publicity. You wouldn’t try and sell Jewish people pork, or Indian people beef so you shouldn’t market towards them. An example of a company not taking religion into consideration before putting out an ad campaign is Greggs 2017 Christmas campaign. Many people were outraged when Greggs released images from their upcoming campaign, in the pictures the baby Jesus was replaced by a sausage roll in a nativity scene – a bad move considering Jesus was Jewish and Jewish people don’t eat pork.
