How to identify your perfect target customer
Originally published: January 2025—Last updated: March 2026
Article topics
- What is a target market and a target audience?
- The benefits of identifying your target customer
- What to consider when determining your target customer
- Create a buyer persona
- Understand who isn’t your target customer
When marketing your eCommerce business, you might be tempted to say that your target audience is ‘everyone’.
After all, you want as many people to buy your products and services as possible… right?
However this can be a bad strategy that leads to messy marketing campaigns and frustrated customers.
The best approach? To identify exactly who you want to be your key customer, using the data available to you.
In this article we’ll examine the benefits of determining your target customer, the difference between a target market and a target audience, and how to work out who you want to sell to.
We’ll also share some expert tips to help you pinpoint your target customer with laser precision!
What is a target market and a target audience?
Your target market is a group of customers with characteristics in common that are most likely to buy your product or service.
For example, small businesses in need of marketing support or millennial women with young children.
A target audience (or target customer) is a specific subset of your target market, again, with shared characteristics in common.
For example, in the case of small businesses needing marketing support, your audiences could be local business owners, marketing managers, and freelance consultants.
While you will only have one target market, unless your product or service is extremely niche, you’re likely to have multiple target audiences.
The benefits of identifying your target customer
The main reason why it’s so important to identify your target customer is that you can focus your marketing on the right people. You can tailor your marketing messages to align with their needs and values and choose the marketing channels they’re most likely to use.
This means you’re more likely to receive traffic, conversions, and sales.
By personalising your marketing, you also improve brand loyalty. 76% of shoppers are more likely to buy from brands that provide a personalised experience, leading to an increased average order value (AOV) and a longer customer lifetime value (LTV).
What to consider when determining your target customer
When identifying your target market and target audience, the more detail you have, the better!
The more information you can gather, the more accurate the picture you can build.
Here are the four main categories to bear in mind when working out who your target customer is and how to get the data you need.
Demographics
Demographics refers to basic statistical information about your ideal customer. As it’s predominantly statistical, it’s often the easiest data to find.
You can access simple demographic information on Google Analytics and Google Ads.
Demographics include:
- Age
- Gender
- Income
- Education level
- Occupation
- Family status
Psychographics
Psychographics focus on your ideal customer’s attitude, values, and behaviour, and why they’re likely to buy from you.
You can get simple information about hobbies and interests on Google Analytics and Google Ads and speak to customers (both prospective and existing) about their traits, beliefs, and values.
Psychographics include:
- Hobbies and interests
- Personality traits
- Attitudes and beliefs
- Core values
Geographics
Geography focuses on your target customer’s location. This can be as broad or specific as you need it to be.
You can access information about where your customers are based through many digital sources, including Google Analytics and social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
It’s important to remember that geographics don’t just affect where you sell your products and services. Geographics can also influence cultural nuances and purchasing behaviours. For example, if a customer lives in an area with bad weather, they may be more likely to buy warm coats and waterproof shoes.
Habits and behaviour
Habits and behaviours look into your customer’s purchasing habits and which marketing channels they use.
You can access this information through a range of sources. You can identify how often customers buy your products through your eCommerce site and see which brands they engage with on social media.
Habits and behaviours include:
- How often customers buy
- The brands they like and where they shop
- How they research purchases and who they trust for recommendations
- Which social media platforms and marketing channels they use most frequently
- The pain points they have and how your product or service can help
Some pieces of information are trickier to get than others. According to HubSpot, 45% of marketers have information about their target market’s interests and hobbies, but only 24% have information about the causes they care about.
Let’s look at how to get as much information about your target audience as possible and how to use it to market effectively to them.
1. Conduct market research
There are different types of data you can use to build a portrait of your target customer.
- Primary data is data you collect yourself
- Secondary data is data you use that was collected by others. For example, through platforms like Nielsen, MarketResearch.com, and Circana
- Qualitative data is open-ended data focusing on the ‘how’ and ‘why
- Quantitative data is close-ended data which is measurable
There are pros and cons of collecting different types of data.
For example, while primary data is harder to collect, you can tailor it to your specific needs, and it’s unique, which means nobody else can use it to gain insights.
Conversely, secondary data is available to everyone which means it’s less unique, but is quick and easy to access, especially if your business is new.
Our top tip: Your existing customers are a fantastic source of information! Look at emails, social media messages, live chats, and existing surveys. Customer interviews are a great way to get fresh, relevant insight, and you can do them over video messaging platforms like Zoom.
2. Look at your competitors
An easy way to understand your prospective customers is to look at your competitors.
This will help you see which type of customers they’re attracting and if there are any gaps in the market.
A solid strategy can be to identify your competitor’s ideal customer and target a different one they aren’t pursuing.
For example, take Coca-Cola and Pepsi. While the two brands offer a similar product, they target completely different people.
Coca-Cola focuses on an older, family-focused market that values nostalgia, while Pepsi concentrates on a younger, fun-loving, sporty audience.
Check out seven easy ways to keep an eye on your eCommerce competitors.
Our top tip: Check out your competitor’s reviews, as well as comments on their social media posts. This will help you understand their customer’s pain points and where they’re falling short.
3. Understand the product or service you’re selling
This one might sound self-explanatory, but it’s vital to understand the benefits of the product or service you’re selling.
Doing this will help you understand which customers value those benefits the most.
For example, imagine you sell skincare products which use all-organic ingredients and are designed for daily use. This suggests your target audience cares about sustainability, has a consistent skincare routine, and is willing to pay more for the highest quality products.
Our top tip: Don’t forget to ask your customers how they use your products or services. They might use them in ways you might not have thought of!
4. Drill down as much as possible
Target market segmentation is the process of using data to split your target market into smaller groups; your target audiences.
Take Airbnb. Its target market is anyone who wants to travel. However, this market is extremely broad, which makes it hard for the brand to run a successful, all-encompassing marketing campaign.
Instead, Airbnb splits this market into easy-to-manage smaller groups – families, travellers who want to save money, dog owners, people looking to stay in luxurious accommodation. This makes it easier for it to create targeted marketing campaigns that drive sales.
According to Bain & Company, 81% of businesses say that segmentation is essential for growing profits.
Earlier we identified that a potential target market of an eCommerce store might be millennial women with young children. As part of that market, you might identify two separate audiences – one that is budget-conscious and one that tries to be as eco-friendly as possible.
You can appeal to the budget-friendly group by offering discounts, promotions, and cost-effective bundle deals. You can appeal to the eco-friendly group by selling sustainable products and eco-friendly delivery options.
Our top tip: Some of your audiences will be worth more to your business than others. When marketing your product or service, focus on the audiences that will drive the most revenue.
Create a buyer persona
A buyer persona is a fictional representation of a target customer. This document lists the background and demographics of your ideal customer, alongside their challenges and how you can help them.
There are lots of benefits to creating a buyer persona:
- By giving your buyer persona a photo, a name, and a personality – you understand them better and can market to them more easily
- It allows you to solve your target customer’s pain points across all your marketing campaigns
- It means you have a tangible document to share with other people in your business, as well as third parties like marketing agencies and influencers
- It ensures consistency across your business – and consistency can lead to greater growth and higher revenue
- It helps shape future business strategy, for example, when determining which products or services to develop next
Our top tip: We recommend having multiple buyer personas – try creating one for each customer audience you’ve identified.
Understand who isn’t your target customer
As well as determining who your ideal customers are, it pays to research who your ideal customers aren’t. This is known as a negative market segment.
Your negative market segments are customers with no or a low intention of buying. For example, if your target audience is millennial mums with young children, your negative market segment might be single Gen-Zers who don’t have children.
Once you’ve worked out your negative market segments, create a persona for them. This will help you and your team determine how to avoid them as you work on your marketing campaigns.
Our top tip: If you can’t think of who might have no intention of buying, think who might be too high-maintenance or have unrealistic expectations. For example, if you sell clothes, you might want to avoid customers who return items too often.
Ready to research your perfect customer?
Identifying the right target customer may seem daunting, but it’s not as challenging as you might think. The key is to gather as much information as you can to understand your target market’s key characteristics.
Remember to act on data, not hunches, to ensure the best results.
One final tip from us. Your target market will change and evolve over time, so it’s important to regularly review and update your target market and audiences to ensure you’re still marketing to the right people.
For example, Levi’s started out as affordable jeans worn by cowboys and miners. They then became popular with teenagers and young people, who wore them to rebel against older adults.
More recently, their durability and commitment to sustainable practices have led them to appeal to environmentally-conscious shoppers.
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