How To
How To Identify Your Target Audience
Published
4 years agoon
Startups are created when there is an existing problem which needs to be solved. Startups often spend years in moulding and creating a product or a service which aims to address a need or a problem. However, it can be easy to lose track of the end goal if the product or the service is not in the hands of the actual target audience. Target audience is a group of people you want to reach with your publication, advertisement (ads) or a message. For example ads related to non vegetarian food would not do any good if they are placed in areas with a high vegetarian population. Ads related to high end cutting edge computers would not do any good if they are not placed in areas which have a high density of industries. Simply put identifying a target audience will translate into sales for your product or service.
Target audiences can be identified by following three simple steps
1. Creating a customer profile:
The first step in identifying a target audience is to assign certain characteristic attributes to the audience which include
- Age: What is the age demographic that is most likely to use your product or service. This is important because customers across different age groups think differently, which would mean the marketing campaign needs to be tweaked accordingly.
- Gender: This is an important metric to be established because a product needs to be able to address these differences. For example, it does not make sense for a male grooming product to be advertised to the female gender.
- Spending Capability: The ability of a target audience to spend greatly affects marketing strategies. People who are able to afford spending luxuriously respond well to marketing campaigns which stress luxury and exclusivity. For example, OnePlus the mobile phone developer positioned itself as a flagship killer with the features of a flagship. It was able to appeal to the middle class spectrum which in turn translated into a huge volume of sales.
Other key characteristics can include marital status, geographic location, hobbies, interests and many more.
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2. Conduct market research
A lot can be gleaned from conducting primary and secondary market research. Primary research involves learning about customer buying habits through direct contact like surveys, interviews and focus groups. This is why a lot of startups and businesses usually ask customers to answer survey questionnaires when they make a purchase. Secondary market research is a kind of a market research method that involves collecting information or data from secondary sources. This means a business collects and uses information that has previously been collected by some other person or entity. A simple example would be food delivery platforms like Swiggy and Zomato asking feedback about a recent food order. The purpose of this is to curate a better restaurant selection experience for you when placing a new order.
3. Observing competition
It is safe to say that no product or a service would be a monopoly as new players will keep on emerging in the market. It is always a good idea to know what your competitors are doing with their businesses. This would offer fresh insights related to your marketing strategy like what other offerings could be added to your portfolio, or how a marketing campaign can be changed to tailor the ever changing customer demands. Analysing a competitor can lead to valuable modifications to your offering and yield new business. An example here would be how Zomato acquired UberEats thereby making them the market leader in the food delivery industry in India. Previously Swiggy used to rule the market by holding a majority share in the market. Zomato realised that instead of putting in resources to penetrate the market, acquiring UberEats would give them the advantage. Zomato now holds around 50% of the market in the food delivery business in India.
Target audiences will need to be reassessed periodically on a regular basis. The customer profile needs to be refined regularly and the marketing campaign changed accordingly. As the market trends keep constantly evolving, one can stay ahead of the curve by doing their due diligence in gathering market research data. Start defining and understanding your target audience so that you can make the most of your precious time.
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Reddit Soars After Strong Earnings and Upbeat Outlook
Published
4 months agoon
May 16, 2024By
AlveerReddit, the social media platform known for its online communities and meme culture, saw its stock price jump significantly after releasing its first earnings report since going public in March. Investors were impressed by the company’s strong financial performance and optimistic forecasts for the future.
The report highlighted a surge in user engagement, with daily active users increasing by 37% to 82.7 million in the first quarter. This growth was accompanied by an 8% rise in average revenue per user, indicating Reddit’s success in monetizing its platform.
Perhaps the most significant factor driving the stock price increase was Reddit’s forecast for the second quarter. The company projected revenue to fall between $240 million and $255 million, exceeding analyst expectations. Additionally, Reddit anticipates achieving break-even status or even generating a profit, surpassing predictions of a loss.
This positive outlook can be attributed in part to Reddit’s flourishing advertising business. The company is also capitalizing on a new revenue stream: content licensing deals with artificial intelligence (AI) firms. Reddit’s vast collection of user-generated content provides valuable data for training AI models, attracting companies like Google.
Analysts believe Reddit is still in its early stages of monetization and predict continued growth in the coming quarters, fueled by advancements in ad targeting and measurement tools. This optimism is reflected in the stock price surge, which has climbed roughly 70% since Reddit’s IPO.
Overall, Reddit’s first earnings report paints a bright picture for the company’s future. With a thriving user base, increasing revenue opportunities, and a promising outlook, Reddit appears well-positioned for continued success in the ever-evolving social media landscape.
If you are an avid follower of news on the social media platform Twitter, chances are you might have read about GameStop and how a group of Redditors took on Wall Street hedge fund billionaires. It all started when a Reddit user found Melvin Capital, a hedge fund company was shorting the GameStop stocks. An analogy would be if a person x wants to buy 5 bananas which are being sold at INR 10 in the market, and another person y already purchased 5 bananas. X could borrow y’s bananas for a while and sell them with the hope the price will go down below INR 10. Then x will purchase 5 bananas for a lesser price than INR 10 and give back the bananas to y thereby making a profit, in the difference of buying price. A group of Redditers noticed what hedge funds were doing with GameStop stock and decided to buy all the available shares in the market which in turn led to stock value soaring through the roof. Now imagine the bananas as GameStop stock and x is the hedge fund. Now hedge funds have to return the borrowed shares but since they already sold, they had to buy it for a larger price than they hoped. This in turn led to more than $ 5 billion in losses for hedge funds because they were shorting the GameStop stock.
However, Robinhood, the zero commission investment and trading startup found itself in the midst of the storm. This is because thousands of normal small investors wanted to purchase the GameStop stock and they did it via Robinhood. Wall Street was not happy with the way a group of Redditors held hedge funds by their collars and lobbied to have the stocks delisted.
Mounting pressure from the Government and Wall Street forced Robinhood to delist GameStop, AMC and Nokia stocks from their trading roster which in turn led to huge customer backlash and lakhs of 1 star reviews on app stores of Apple and Android.
Background
Robinhood was founded by Stanford University graduates Baiju Bhatt and Vlad Tenev co-founded the company in 2013, with the aim of democratizing finance and making it more accessible to young and less affluent investors. This was due to trading being carried on commission based platforms like ETrade and TD Ameritrade and by a very small set of people. What made the app so attractive to the normal public was the ease of using the platform and its zero commission slogan. More importantly, Robinhood made the appeal of trading fun and interactive for the general public and the working class. Investment applications normally charge a nominal fee or commission on the execution of any successful trade.
However, the app gained huge traction in 2019 just when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world. Stock markets crashed suddenly, wiping out billions of dollars in investor wealth. However, this phase saw the rise of a new kind of investor. Americans were given $ 1200 stimulus cheques to protect them from the economic fallout of COVID-19 pandemic. Armed with these cheques, millions of trading novices began investing in the stock market via Robinhood.
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Revenue model
How does a startup which calls itself a zero commission brokerage earn revenue and manage to be profitable? Robinhood was designed to make profits by selling the customer trading data to several investment firms on Wall Street. This practice is known as high volume order flow. In financial markets, payment for order flow refers to the compensation that a broker receives, not from its client, but from a third party that wants to influence how the broker routes client orders for fulfillment. It is not illegal but it is often frowned upon, to use this strategy as it is also called a ‘kickback.’ This accounts for a lion’s share of revenue for Robinhood.
The second revenue generator is through interests. Robinhood makes money from interest made by lending out investor’s idle cash. Robinhood lends out uninvested cash sitting idle in customer accounts.
The third revenue generator is Robinhood Gold, the company’s premium account, allows investors up to $1000 of margin thereby allowing them to trade with more than they have in their cash balance on the app.
While Robinhood has been caught in the middle of a nasty war between Wall Street and retail investors, there is no denying the fact that it changed the way people invest in the stock market.
If there is one thing that every Indian and every cricket fan waits for all year, it is the Indian Premier League, which is the world’s biggest cricketing league. Professional cricket players from all over the world vie to get selected by one of the eight franchises which compete in the league. The entire league is a star studded affair and Indians manage to forget their differences and band together for all the time the league is aired. Each franchise boasts of a loyal fan following who have supported their teams through thick and thin ever since IPL was inaugurated in 2008. While the entire league is a melting pot of entertainment and competition, have you ever wondered how the franchises make money in IPL? In this article we will decode the business models behind the IPL teams and how they earn money.
Franchises need to bid for players every year before the start of the IPL season in an auction. Each franchise has a maximum spend limit of Rs. 80 crores to buy players in the auction. Apart from buying players each franchise also needs to bear the cost of travel, support staff and logistics. The following are the different avenues from which franchises earn money.
1) Sponsorships
Franchises earn a major chunk of their revenue from sponsorships, but they do not get the money from sponsorships directly. The IPL governing council gets money from sponsors and in the case of this year it is from Dream 11, which is the title sponsor while VIVO was the title sponsor last year. All the money which is earned from sponsorships is divided into a ratio of 60:40 with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) retaining 40% of the sponsorships. The remaining 60% is distributed among the ten franchises. BCCI owns and operates the IPL in India. The ratio of distribution might change in the coming years depending on the decisions taken by the BCCI.
2) Media rights
Broadcasting companies bid for the media rights and the winning bid will get to air the IPL on their channel. Star India bagged the media rights for IPL with a bid of Rs. 16,345 crores for five years (2018-2022.) The money from media rights are also distributed in the 60:40 ratio with BCCI keeping 40% and the franchises getting an equal distribution from the remaining 60%.
3) Franchise sponsors
Each franchise has its own dedicated sponsors which pay a huge amount of money to the franchise. The logos and names of the companies which you can see on the sporting attire of every IPL team are actually the dedicated sponsors of their respective franchises. The profit from dedicated sponsors depends on the deal the franchise has made with their sponsor. The income generated from dedicated sponsors might differ from team to team.
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4) Sale of tickets
Each franchise can choose a home ground from the available venues in the BCCI roster like Sunrisers Hyderabad, choosing Hyderabad and Kolkata Knight Riders choosing Kolkata. Only the home franchise can fix the price of tickets for the matches happening in their home ground. Bigger stadiums with large seating capacity earn the most from ticket sales. Kolkata Knight Riders home ground Eden Gardens has the highest seating capacity in India and therefore KKR earns the most from ticket sales.
5) Merchandising
Each franchise makes some money by selling official jerseys, caps, wrist watches, souvenirs etcetera. The merchandise is sold through the official franchise websites.
6) Prize money
Franchises battle it out in a long season to become the winner of the IPL season. The winning team also wins a hefty prize money which is an additional source of revenue. In 2019, the winning franchise won Rs. 15 crores while the runner up won Rs. 10 crores.
IPL is a big stage for franchise owners to earn their revenues as well as the perfect opportunity for players to make their mark and win big auctions. This is how franchises earn their revenues from the IPL. As this year’s edition is off to a flying start, IPL has been a blessing in disguise for millions of Indians in the gloomy times we currently are experiencing.
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