How to Use Surveys to Identify your Target Market
When you effectively identify your target market, you can tailor different strategies and messages to connect with the right audience. Effective targeting will also lead to more effective marketing strategies that can significantly boost sales and revenue. Use the following three steps to identify your target market with the use of survey software:
- Step 1: Select a Balanced Survey Sample
- Step 2: Include Demographic and Behavioral Segmentation Questions
- Step 3: Analyse Results to Identify your Target Market
Step 1: Select a Balanced Survey Sample
The first step is to outline your survey sample by picking a balanced sample of the general population. This sample can be segmented using the following demographic characteristics:
- Age Group
- Gender
- Income
- Education
- Region
Step 2: Include Demographic and Behavioural Segmentation Questions
Additionally, you must include additional questions on demographics or behaviour that may be relevant to your category using your online survey tool.
For example, if you are a soft drink manufacturer, you may choose to include the following questions:
- How often do you consume soft drinks?
- How often do you purchase soft drinks?
- Do you purchase soft drinks online?
Step 3: Analyse Results to Identify your Target Market
Once you have your survey results, analyse them to identify which segment of the general population is most likely to be interested in your soft drink. This will give you a general idea of who your target market should be, clearly defining their characteristics as per age, gender, where they shop, etc.
How to Decide the Number of People to Survey?
Once you’ve identified your target market, you need to determine the number of people that are a part of this population. This can be done using government census data that has categorizations of your country’s population by different characteristics like age and gender.
The larger your sample, the smaller your margin of error is likely to be as your results will start to mimic the actual population. You can use our margin of error calculator to determine what sample size will give you an accurate understanding of your target segment.
How to use Screening Questions?
Screening questions, or screeners, are used in surveys to determine which respondents can take the rest of the survey. They are placed at the beginning of a survey and can disqualify respondents from taking the survey based on their answers. Screeners help researchers identify their target audience from a pool of respondents.
For example, if you only want to survey respondents who purchase soft drinks monthly, or more frequently, you should include the following screener in the beginning of your survey:
How often do you purchase soft drinks?
- Weekly
- A couple times a month
- Monthly
- A couple times a year
- Yearly
- Never
You can then apply disqualification logic to the “A couple times a year”, “Yearly”, and “Never” answer options so as to disqualify respondents who select them. When you deploy your survey, respondents who select those answer options will skip over the survey and arrive on a page that thanks them for taking the survey.
