As with any other form of marketing, when marketing for your app, you need to have a clearly defined target market. It’s important to know your target market through and through because they determine all of the marketing and content decisions for your app.

If you find yourself having trouble with defining your target “app” market, here are 3 steps you can take to help you clearly identify it:

Step 1: Start with your current market

The first step in the process of narrowing down your target “app” market is taking a look at the current target market for your business. This will give you some basic information and a solid starting point to go from.

Your target “app” market will essentially be a subset of your current target market. They will share a lot of characteristics with your current target market but will be narrowed down a bit further.

Although it might not seem like a big difference, it’s an important difference to make. Identifying the specific portion of your market that will use your app will help you market your app to them better and help you provide them with content they actually want to see.

Step 2: Evaluate what your App Provides

Now that you have a good starting point, the next step in this process is to dig a little deeper and really pinpoint who the ideal target market is for your app.

First, ask yourself: What benefit does my app provide to my users, and what kind of people are looking for that benefit?

This question is great because it will not only help you gain more clarity on your target “app” market but will also help you clearly identify the purpose of your app and why it’s needed in the market.

Once you answer this question, you’ll want to focus specifically on the second half of it – what kind of people are looking for that benefit? Get as detailed as you can with this part. 

Determine what these people are struggling with, how this struggle is impacting their daily lives, how you can help relieve them of this struggle, and how much better their lives will be once they overcome this struggle. 

No detail is too small for this step! Really get to know these people and their struggles as specifically as you can. This will help you tremendously in the next step of defining your target “app” market.

Step 3: Bring them to Life

The third and final step in this process is to actually bring your target “app” market to life. This part is probably the most fun because you get to use your imagination like crazy! 

For this step, you’ll want to create a few different “avatars” or “personas” of your target market. These avatars are potentially real people that fall in your target market. 

In this step, you will come up with very specific personal details about them in addition to their general demographics (age, gender, income, etc). You will give them a name, determine their interests, hobbies, personality type, day-to-day lifestyle, beliefs, opinions, values, and more. The more specific you get with your avatars, the better you will be able to understand your target market.

It’s a good idea to come up with about 3 avatars that are all different but fit into your general target market. These avatars are very useful to reference when you create content, write copy, or brainstorm new products or services for your app.

This process may seem like a lot of work, but it will pay off in the long run. When you are unsure of exactly who your target market is, it causes you to be unsure about everything else in your business. 

It’s important to take the time to go through this process and set yourself (and your app) up to be as successful as possible!