What are the differences between the target audience and the person?

Communication is one of the main tools to reach customers and generate a positive experience for them. This highlights the importance of conveying a clear, objective message that is also in line with people's needs.

Therefore, it is necessary to personalize and segment the audience, reaching the right people at the right time!

Identifying a target audience and building a personal profile is the first step in choosing the channel, message format, and language to use in future marketing actions.

In this article we will analyze the main differences between the target audience and the person, and which of them you should focus on in order to build an effective strategy:

Target audience vs Persona: what are the main differences?

You've probably already felt that some brands seem to understand your desires perfectly and approach you in the moments you need the most, right?

This is not a magic trick, but a strategy for defining the target audience and/or the person.

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The target audience is a concept that refers to a specific social segment, with a high chance of purchasing a certain product or service. It serves as the basis for building a successful marketing campaign.

Persona

In turn, the concept of persona is a different approach. We can define it as the semi-fictitious representation of a standard consumer, created to define the ideal customer of a business.

In its delimitation, data such as age, gender, and social class are complemented by behaviors and characteristics such as demographic information, family history, motivations, dreams, life goals, challenges, and more.

What are the benefits of working with a target audience?

Each of these concepts has its advantages. Starting with the target audience, among the main ones we can highlight the identification of the existence of different audiences.

In many cases, the same brand has different groups that use its products or services. When determining target audiences it is possible to know which niche buyers we need to consider for the business when developing a new strategy.

With this action, it is possible to determine whether the entire audience will be targeted or whether the strategy needs to focus on a specific type of consumer.

Another advantage is to be able to work on the identity and language used by the business, in the end, you will have more control over the people you will talk to.

This opens up space for wider content production, balancing actions, and also identifying changes and improvements that need to be applied to products or services.

What are the main advantages of building a Person?

Creating a personal profile is much more specific, so the benefits of working with it differ from the target audience.

Focusing on a specific type of consumer helps to form a basis very close to reality. This leads to the process of building a personalized marketing strategy.

In addition to personalized language, the business has a clearer idea of the communication channels in which to invest, preferred content format, opportunities for updating (a strategy in which the seller can suggest a product or service in addition to what is already purchased), and the extra benefits (offering a complementary product to the purchased one).

Another difference is that the person can be applied in all stages of sales and marketing, including the creation of a new product or service.

How to choose between the target audience and person?

If you want to do market research, your target audience will allow you to collect extensive data.

On the other hand, if you want to build digital marketing strategies or start investing with limited resources, the person is able to deliver a satisfactory result.

It would be advisable to start with a study on the target audience. This will give you an overview of the business and help you identify the consumers who buy your products or services. From there, you can segment using your persona profile.

Due to the ample information in the case of the strategy based on the personal profile, both from a demographic point of view and from a behavioral point of view, it is possible to understand several aspects regarding the customer's purchasing decision. Consequently, you can use the person to guide the marketing actions, as long as you use the target audience at the base of their implementation.