How to select a target audience efficiently?

Every business owner will have asked the following questions: “How many potential customers exist in this market? ”How to select a target audience?”
And how many can I turn into qualified leads for my business?

Digital marketing can provide the answer, helping you to identify, quantify and prioritise your target customers. Identifying and selecting a target audience is the foundation for any successful strategy.

A clearly defined audience allows you to tailor your messaging, offers, and campaigns to the people most likely to engage with your brand and convert into customers.

Rather than wasting resources on broad, unfocused outreach, targeting helps maximize ROI by reaching those with genuine interest or need. It also enhances customer experience, as your messaging speaks directly to their goals, pain points, and values.

Whether you’re launching a product or building brand awareness, a well-chosen target audience is the foundation of effective, measurable, and sustainable marketing.

Two of the key channels that can help you select a target audience are Google Ads and LinkedIn.

To understand how, consider the following example: A business that is based in Australia, has clients nationwide, and sells software products that are applicable to law firms and recruitment companies, respectfully.

This example business has the capacity to service new leads and customers, however, like many businesses, it has limited strategic and marketing resources. When deciding on their B2B Lead Generation strategy they conclude that it can only focus on one customer group, or target persona, and not two. 

So who should they focus on: lawyers or recruiters? 

Google Ads

Businesses can use Google Ads to quantify the search volumes relating different customer groups. This is called keyword research and good marketers will be able to not only research search volumes, but also the expected cost of ads and how competitive bidding on those terms is.

Take our example: in the example’s geography, there are 3X the number of searches for software relating to recruitment agencies than there are law firms. There is also less competition.

This reinforces the importance of a thorough market analysis and research. By understanding how it works, the demand for your products and services as well as how strong the competition is, you can design a strategy around the key opportunities that the market offers. This will allow you to maximise the efficiency of your resources.

LinkedIn Ads

Another channel that can be utilised to identify and select a target audience is LinkedIn Ads. Take our example, and targeting companies in Australia, with between $1m and $100m in annual revenue, more than 10 staff, and then narrowing down to the key ownership job titles, would result in 4,200 individuals to target in the recruitment market and 5,100 in the legal market.

Conclusion

While choosing a target audience may seem like a strategic gamble, data-driven tools like Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads offer marketers and business owners the clarity they need to make confident, informed decisions.

These platforms not only help you estimate the size and accessibility of different market segments but also provide actionable insights into search intent, ad competitiveness, and buyer personas.

In a world of limited time, budget, and resources, focusing your efforts on the most promising and responsive audience isn’t just smart , it’s essential. By leveraging these channels early in your strategy, you can significantly improve your chances of building a sustainable pipeline of high-quality leads, maximizing ROI, and aligning your offering with the people who need it most.

Identifying, quantifying, and prioritising your audience isn’t just the first step in marketing, it’s the one that sets the direction for everything that follows.