Do You Really Know Your Target Audience?

Finding your target audience is more than knowing basic demographics. And it’s more than tracking clicks. While these details are important, they’re the tip of the iceberg when it comes to understanding your customers.

To truly know your target audience, you must have a deep understanding of user behaviours, preferences and needs. This can become challenging when ensuring compliance with privacy regulations like GDPR.

This article explores how to find the target audience for your brand in 2024, including the importance of detailed audience insights, how modern analytics tools can help and why ethical segmentation practices are vital. Do you really know your target audience as well as you think?

The challenge of finding your target audience

Simply put, a target audience is the group of people most likely to benefit from your products or services.

When it comes to finding your target audience, it’s tempting to cast a wide net and appeal to everyone. However, this approach rarely works.

Instead, focusing on a specific group allows you to tailor your marketing efforts more effectively, speaking directly to your ideal customer via the channels they prefer, rather than spreading yourself too thin.

Traditional methods of finding your target audience focus on demographics, such as gender, age and geographic location. Demographics help businesses categorise customers into broad groups, ensuring that marketing messages align with their general characteristics.

For example, a business targeting young, urban professionals might develop messaging that reflects the fast-paced lifestyle associated with this group and focus on the digital channels these users prefer. On the other hand, a brand targeting retirees would take a more relaxed and informative tone and use more traditional media channels.

While demographics are important, they’re limited in the information they provide us about customers. The reality of who our target customers are is much more nuanced. That’s why modern segmentation techniques go even deeper, utilising psychographic and behavioural data to understand the 'why' behind consumer actions.

Psychographics allow marketers to segment audiences based on personality traits, values and lifestyle preferences. Meanwhile, behavioural segmentation considers past actions, such as purchase history or browsing habits, to predict future actions and customise messaging.

For instance, a brand might target adventure seekers versus homebodies, or early risers versus night owls, each requiring distinct marketing strategies.

In an increasingly privacy-centric world, however, understanding and finding your target audience has become more complex.

Privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA make it challenging to gather personal data without explicit consent. The enforcement of these laws, alongside the decline of third-party cookies, limits the amount of data marketers can collect, hindering their ability to create detailed consumer profiles.

This is the modern challenge of finding your target audience: brands must now navigate tight privacy restrictions while still gathering enough data to understand their audience effectively.

How to find your target audience in 2024: Ethical, privacy-first audience segmentation

How do marketers overcome these challenges?

With rising concerns about data privacy and stringent regulations like GDPR and CCPA, businesses must adopt privacy-conscious practices while still effectively understanding and reaching their target audiences. This delicate balance is what defines modern, privacy-first audience segmentation.

At its core, ethical audience segmentation revolves around three key principles: privacy, fairness and transparency.

Companies must protect their customers’ personal data and comply with data protection laws. Gone are the days of indiscriminate tracking — today's marketers need to ask for permission, be transparent about data collection methods and use anonymised data wherever possible.

In particular, a major concern in audience segmentation is the risk of discrimination and unethical targeting — for example, geographic or demographic data that might correlate with race, gender or socioeconomic status.

Instead, brands must focus on segmentation strategies that are inclusive and non-discriminatory, such as not relying on postcodes, which can sometimes reinforce socio-economic or racial divides.

Fairness is another essential pillar. Vulnerable customers, such as those with lower incomes or limited access to resources, should not be unfairly targeted. Companies must ensure they aren't exploiting vulnerable groups — whether through predatory pricing or misleading advertising.

Finally, transparency is vital to building customer trust. Businesses can foster trust by being transparent about how they collect and use data, allowing users to make informed choices about their participation. One way to incorporate this is by offering an easily accessible privacy policy, along with clear consent forms.

Case study: Nike ‘just does it’ with ethical audience segmentation

One real-world example of ethical audience segmentation comes from Nike. Nike has developed a ‘dedication score’ algorithm using first-party data to better understand customer preferences and engagement patterns.

By analysing user behaviour across its SNKRS app and other channels, Nike tailors offers and exclusive rewards to its most loyal customers without overstepping privacy boundaries. This approach not only drives conversions but also strengthens customer loyalty by respecting user privacy.

How analytics helps you find your target audience for your business

Ethical marketing that respects user privacy, offers transparency and prioritises fairness and anti-discrimination is, of course, important — but not necessarily straightforward. Luckily, modern-day analytics tools for finding your target audience are pretty clever, offering all-in-one solutions to track metrics the right way.

You can still gain valuable insights into how visitors interact with your content, where they come from and what drives them to engage with your brand. With privacy-first analytics solutions, you can access these insights without compromising your audience’s personal data. Here’s how.

Traffic sources

Understanding where your audience is coming from helps you identify which marketing channels are most effective. Whether it's through search engines, social media, direct visits or referrals, analysing traffic sources reveals which platforms and campaigns are driving the most visitors to your website.

User behaviour

Analytics allows you to track user activity on your site, such as page views, session duration and bounce rates. For example, seeing which pages are most frequently visited and how long users stay can highlight the most engaging content and potential areas for improvement.

Geolocation data

With anonymised geolocation insights, you can understand where your visitors are based, helping tailor content to specific regions. This is particularly useful for international campaigns and localisation efforts, all while respecting user privacy.

Device and browser information

Knowing what devices (desktop, mobile, tablet) and browsers your audience uses helps you optimise their experience. If most users access your site via mobile, for example, ensuring a seamless mobile experience becomes a priority.

Referrals

Analytics helps you identify which external websites or platforms drive traffic to your site. This helps evaluate the effectiveness of partnerships, guest posts or affiliate marketing campaigns.

Conversion tracking

Conversion tracking allows you to measure how well your audience completes specific goals, such as signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase. These insights help you fine-tune your marketing strategies and ensure your efforts are resulting in tangible outcomes.

Engagement metrics

Monitoring engagement metrics like the number of pages visited, the path users take through your site and how long they stay on key pages allows you to see how users interact with your content, guiding optimisation efforts.

4 essential tools to find your target audience ethically

Now you know what to track to understand your audience, here’s how. These are our top 4 tools for keeping your audience insights ethical and regulation-compliant:

1. Wide Angle Analytics provides privacy-first web analytics enabling audience segmentation based on anonymised, aggregated behavioural data. This helps you analyse traffic patterns and user engagement without relying on invasive tracking methods.
2. HubSpot's CRM enables audience segmentation based on consented, first-party data. With built-in GDPR-compliant tools, HubSpot ensures all data collection and segmentation respects user privacy and legal requirements.
3. Clearbit utilises consented, publicly available data to enrich customer profiles for segmentation. By focusing on privacy-safe data sources, Clearbit allows you to create tailored marketing strategies without compromising on data protection.
4. Segment (Twilio) collects and segments data from multiple touchpoints while maintaining strict privacy controls. Segment ensures compliance with GDPR and other privacy regulations by using anonymised and consent-based data for audience segmentation.

Case study: Referrals vs Engagement Segmentation with Wide Angle Analytics

At Wide Angle Analytics, we use our own product extensively. It proved to be an invaluable tool when fine-tuning our early advertising campaigns. We focused on segmenting traffic based on its source, identifying which content captured visitors' attention, and cross-referencing this data with further engagement on our website.

As a result, we optimized advertising spend on the channels and content that led to the most engagement.

By analyzing anonymous traffic statistics, we were able to extract valuable insights without compromising individuals' privacy.

Trends and best practices for ethical audience segmentation

Ethical audience segmentation is not static. Like all things digital, it’s constantly evolving, subject to consumer behavioural trends, sentiment around privacy, regulations and new technologies.

Here are some current trends and expert insights on best practices in ethical audience segmentation.

The role of machine learning in ethical segmentation

Machine learning (ML) algorithms enable marketers to predict user preferences based on their on-site behaviours and declared interests — all the while safeguarding privacy.

‘This approach enables us to customize our marketing messages without resorting to invasive data practices. We always make sure users can conveniently access their data preferences and adjust them as needed,‘ says Kris Mullins, CMO of Capital Max.

The rise of micro-segmentation

Gone are the days of segmenting audiences solely by broad demographics like age or gender. Micro-segmentation involves breaking down larger groups into highly specific cohorts that share common traits, interests or behaviours.

By focusing on niche groups like 'job seekers' or 'supermoms,' marketers can tailor their messaging more effectively, leading to higher engagement and conversions.

User agency over tracking

The shift towards empowering users to control their data is growing. For example, Apple’s iOS 14.5 software introduced App Tracking Transparency, allowing users to opt out of tracking across apps.

First-party data collection

First-party data collection is another ethical approach gaining traction.

Gert Kulla, CEO of Red Bat SEO Agency, advises that ‘Marketers need to focus more on first-party data like site analytics and customer information. This allows for audience insights without compromising user privacy.

‘For example, one client I worked with segmented their email list based on on-site behaviours rather than purchased third-party data. They found the segmentation just as effective for targeting content but avoided any privacy issues.’

With a bit of upfront effort to put the right practices into place, such as clear opt-in forms and transparent privacy statements, marketers can still understand their audiences while respecting user privacy.

Data encryption for enhanced security

To ensure user data remains protected, secure data encryption has become a best practice. Encrypting user data ensures that only authorised parties can access it, which helps maintain personalisation without sacrificing privacy.

Jessica Bane, Operations Director at GoPromotional, says ‘I recommend adopting robust encryption protocols and anonymising customer data wherever possible. Always seek consent for data collection and be transparent about how it will be used. Regularly update your privacy policies to reflect the latest regulations and educate your team on data protection best practices.

‘At GoPromotional, we constantly revise our data handling procedures, making sure our strategies align with both customer trust and legal requirements’

Balancing audience insights and privacy: Are you ready?

The challenge of understanding and finding your target audience consists of two opposing forces.

On the one side, there’s the need for in-depth audience insights to stay ahead of the competition, provide personalised experiences and connect with your customers. On the other, customer data security and privacy are paramount from both ethical and regulatory perspectives, making it harder to acquire audience insights.

By leveraging modern analytics tools to find your target audience — embracing first-party data and prioritising privacy — businesses can segment their audiences more ethically and effectively. It just requires a bit of planning and upfront effort.

Ultimately, the brands that succeed will be those that truly know their audience, respect their privacy and use these insights to deliver personalised, meaningful experiences. Are you ready to meet the challenge?

Explore Wide Angle Analytics today and see how our Google Analytics alternative can help you gain valuable audience insights while staying compliant with privacy regulations. Get started now!

FAQs

What are the 4 types of target audience?

There are four primary types of audience segmentation:

1. Demographic: This method focuses on who your customer is, analysing characteristics such as age, gender, income and education.
2. Geographic: This divides your audience based on their location, which is particularly useful when geographic factors influence purchasing decisions.
3. Psychographic: This approach categorises audiences by their personalities, including lifestyle, attitudes, interests and values, providing deeper insights into their motivations.
4. Behavioural: This type examines audience interactions with your brand, looking at traits such as product knowledge, purchase patterns and previous purchases to inform strategies.