Targeting the Right Audience
Northern School of Marketing: Short Course 7:
Course Description
Targeting the Right Audience is an essential, hands-on course for marketers, business owners, students, and anyone seeking to elevate their marketing impact through smarter, more focused audience selection. Building on foundational concepts from earlier courses—including Marketing Planning Made Simple, Crafting Your Marketing Message, and all previous modules—this course gives you the tools and techniques to identify, evaluate, and reach the people most likely to buy, support, and champion your brand.
Knowing your audience is only half the story—targeting them effectively is where the results happen. This course walks you through the entire targeting process: from segmenting your broader market, assessing which groups offer the best fit and returns, to testing and refining your audience focus through real-world marketing efforts. You’ll use practical frameworks, live data, and creative exercises to choose the right targets for every campaign and business goal.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
- Define target marketing and explain why accurate targeting is critical to marketing success.
- Apply segmentation techniques (demographic, geographic, psychographic, behavioural) to group potential customers effectively.
- Evaluate segment attractiveness using clear criteria—size, growth, profitability, accessibility, compatibility, and risk.
- Prioritize and select target audiences using scoring models and data-driven decision-making.
- Develop buyer personas that truly represent your ideal customer profiles.
- Test audience choices with pilot campaigns and feedback mechanisms.
- Refine targeting strategies based on results, market changes, and brand alignment.
- Align your marketing strategy, messaging, and channel use to reach chosen targets most effectively.
Is This Course For You?
This course is ideal for:
- Marketing professionals, managers, and analysts seeking greater precision and confidence in targeting decisions.
- Business owners and entrepreneurs who want to maximize return on marketing investment by focusing resources where they matter most.
- Students and graduates building advanced, actionable audience selection skills for modern marketing roles.
- Product, brand, and communications professionals who need to identify and validate their best-fit audience segments.
- Anyone progressing from earlier courses who’s ready to move from segmentation theory and broad messaging to precise, results-driven targeting.
How This Course Links with Previous Modules
If you’ve completed Marketing Planning Made Simple, Crafting Your Marketing Message, or other foundation courses, you’ve explored marketing strategy, customer understanding, branding, and communication. Now, Targeting the Right Audience helps you focus all of that knowledge where it counts—identifying and reaching the specific people who will drive your growth and success. Together, these courses form a comprehensive, sequential skill-building journey.
Course Structure
The course comprises three focused modules, each broken down into insightful lessons and practical tasks:
| Module | Focus Area | Key Activities |
|---|---|---|
| Module 1 | Market Segmentation & Audience Discovery | Segmentation analysis, audience research, group clustering, creative quizzes |
| Module 2 | Evaluating and Selecting Target Markets | Scoring models, attractiveness criteria, persona workshops, segment ranking |
| Module 3 | Testing, Refining & Activating Targeting | Campaign pilots, feedback collection, targeting adjustment exercises |
Each lesson includes:
- Microlearning video:Â Engaging summaries and expert tips.
- Long-form article:Â Deep dives on targeting strategies and real brand examples.
- Practical worksheets:Â DIY data analysis, persona creation, and audience modeling.
- Downloadable resource toolkits:Â Templates for scoring, mapping, and campaign planning.
- Assessments:Â Quizzes and creative challenges to reinforce mastery.
Approach and Outcomes
You’ll work hands-on with segmentation and targeting models, build and refine your own ideal audience profiles, and run mini targeting exercises using real or hypothetical scenarios. By the course’s end, you’ll have a repeatable, evidence-based process for selecting audiences that deliver results—and the confidence to make targeting decisions for any brand, product, or campaign.
Your most effective marketing begins with targeting the right audience—let’s start today!