How to Make a Product More Appealing to Your Target Audience?

If you want your product to sell, you need to make sure it’s appealing to your target audience. That means creating and modifying your product early in the development process to better align it with your most important demographics.

It also means marketing and advertising that product carefully. Whether you advertise it in a catalog, through online ads, or through a combination of other tactics, you’ll need to carefully position the visibility and appeal of the product.

So how can you do it?

Start With Market Research

The process begins with market research or the practice of researching and better understanding who your audience/target market is.

• Who is your target audience? First, figure out who your target audience is if you don’t already know. You’ll need to think about several defining categories, including age, sex, geographical location, employment status, relationship status, education level, income level, and dozens of other variables. If you’re not sure who your target audience is, you’re going to have your work cut out for you. Get to know each demographic segment, familiarizing yourself with their values and perspectives, so you can make a better decision about who is best aligned with your products and services.
• Creating buyer personas. Next, you’ll be ready to start creating buyer personas. These are fictional characters that best embody each of your demographic segments. For example, your buyer persona might be “Betty,” a stay-at-home mom in her 30s who lives in a suburban neighborhood and is highly educated. Buyer personas help you better understand the perspectives and behavioral patterns of your market.
• Conducting surveys. If you want to get to know your customers even better, start conducting surveys. Ask your customers what they’d like to see in new products and what challenges they’re currently facing. Gather enough data here, and your customers will start creating your product for you. Read more about the Uses of Custom Boxes for your Product.
• Conducting focus groups. When you initially develop your product, and if you have a functional prototype, consider conducting focus groups. In these sessions, you’ll work with a group of people within your target market (or from several target markets, if you’re undecided) and have them interact with your product. You can judge their reactions in real-time and gather more feedback that you can use to improve the product further.

Research Your Competitors

It’s also a good idea to research your competitors. Chances are, there are already other businesses serving your ideal target market. What steps are they taking to make their products more appealing to that niche? Can you replicate some of those appeals? Are there other things you can learn from their approach?

Experiment With New Angles

At this point, you’ll be ready to start experimenting with new angles. In the design of your product, or its positioning in your marketing and advertising strategy, you can attempt to make the following appeals:

• Hobbies and interests. Are there any specific hobbies or interests that your target demographic particularly enjoys? You may be able to integrate some aspects of these hobbies or interests into your product or how you position your product. You can also take a shortcut by working with influencers who already have massive appeal to your target demographics.
• Emotional resonance. One of the best ways to make a marketing and advertising strategy more effective is to use an emotional appeal. Depending on who your target audience is, the exact nature of that emotional appeal might evolve. For example, for a younger person, you might tap into feelings of excitement and enthusiasm. For an older person, you might tap into feelings of comfort or nostalgia. Know which emotions are going to be most effective and try to make use of them.
• Timing and placement. You’ll also need to consider the timing and placement of your messaging. If you’re trying to reach children, playing television ads during popular morning cartoons is a safe bet.

Keep Learning

Finally, commit to ongoing learning. The more you learn about your target demographics and the more you learn about your product, the better you’ll be able to position that product in the future.

• Customer surveys and feedback. Keep conducting customer surveys and acquiring as much feedback as possible. Your customers may have suggestions for how you can improve things in the future.
• New experiments. Consider tweaking your product and conducting more experiments. Each new variable you tinker with is a new learning opportunity.
• Ongoing adaptation. Your market and your environment are going to change. It’s important to stay nimble and adaptable in response.

Developing a more appealing product for your target audience isn’t exactly easy, but there is a straightforward process you can follow. With ample research and experimentation backing you, you can create a near-perfect fit.