"When you're communicating to everyone, you're speaking to no one."
Target Audiences/Markets
Although it would seem counterintuitive to limit reach when trying to achieve our goals, breaking down markets into smaller segments (stakeholders) is important to focus your marketing and communications efforts and to maximize resources.
The first step is usually to define the relationship of the stakeholder to the organization depending upon specific information or traits.
Demographic information (facts: i.e. age, occupation, education, income, gender, marital status, etc) is generally the easiest information available to get to know more about stakeholders. This can often be found within government (federal/municipal) census information, your government's strategic planning documents, and/or you may have to undertake research on your own. It is also important to understand the location of your audience and their general buying behaviours.
The next area to help put your finger on your target is to look at psychographic information. This includes understanding your target's attitudes, lifestyles, values, and interests. Psychographic information can be harder to pinpoint because it is influenced heavily by culture. Look for this information in newspapers, voting history, public attitudes, and even by looking at the issues prevalent within a community.
Primary/Secondary/Tertiary
Once you feel you have a good grasp on what your market's characteristics are you are now ready to outline your primary target audience. From there, you can look at other stakeholders or outlying audiences as your secondary audience.
Primary: the group of people likely to be most influenced to react to the message
Secondary: the next group of people who can be affected or influenced but are not within the primary audience.
Tertiary: Those still affected but are least likely to react to your message.
For example, if we are selling a high cost organic baby product online, our primary audience would include characteristics like current parents of babies (usually age 20-40), with high school and above education, have a high disposable income, have access to Internet , and who embrace an organic lifestyle.
Secondary audiences could include grandparents and parents who don't usually eat organic. Although these aren't the group of people most likely to purchase your product, they could still be influenced to buy the product if they identify with the market. A tertiary audience could be low-income families as they may choose to purchase the product if they see a benefit over time.
Who is not a target market? In this scenario: non-parents, parents of older children, those without access to the Internet.
The final word? Because you'll reach the audience most likely to be influenced by marketing and communications efforts, this is the way to success.
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