Finding Kosas' Target Audience + User Persona
In creating a user persona, you first have to analyze a company’s target audience. A user persona should be based on current statistics of customers of a company, not what you think the target demographic should be. Doing research into the target demographic of the Kosas company was especially useful, as the target audience was not what I assumed it would be.
Based on current marketing from the Kosas Pinterest account, Kosas is marketing their makeup to women of all ages from all kinds of backgrounds. However, these various ages ranges are only seen on the Pinterest account, not on any other social media platform. I am assuming that based on the youthful nature of the company, that Kosas’ broad target audience would be teen to middle age women who are already purchasing clean skincare and makeup products. As Kosas is based in LA, I would also assume that a larger potion of consumers are form or are near this area.
To create a smaller segment, I could target via a campaign, I would include parameters such as age, gender, digital marketing traffic, and location. Based on information from Similar Web, the Kosas audience is made up of 73.57% females and 26.45% of males. In looking at the age demographics, I was a bit surprised to see a higher percentage for ages 25-35 (31.35%), and ages 18-24 only being 29.82%. Even though there is not too big of a difference, I initially would have thought these numbers to be flipped. As the age increases after 35, the percentage of customers decrease. I could not find too much information on the geography of Kosas customers, but I know they have more customers from the LA area considering they advertise on physical billboards in this geographic region. However, from the Similar Web site, 75% of customers are from the US, dropping to the next popular being Canada at 5.7%. Such a gap in geography worldwide could highlight an opportunity for growth in expanding worldwide reach. I was also surprised at the digital marketing channels that drive traffic to the Kosas website: Kosas receives the most traffic from internet searches (53.36%) and direct (34.53%). And other underutilized channels are mail (<0.01%) and social media (4.61%).
In analyzing the psychographics of Kosas’ target audience, I found more information on interests. Similar Web showed that popular interest of a Kosas audience included Fashion, Makeup, Shopping, Beauty, and Cosmetics. The same audience also visited many similar websites like Glossier, Credo Beauty, Ilia Beauty, Charlotte Tilbury, and Dermstore. Many of these websites are clean beauty companies. It appears that the Kosas new target audience likes to be informed on ingredients of products and how clean the company actually is. A Kosas audience is most likely a curious individual who wants to ensure that the products they are using are ethical. This same audience may also spend a large portion of time watching YouTube tutorials as 73.48% of social media traffic comes from YouTube.
In understanding the target audience, I can create a user persona to get a better idea for who I am designing for. In creating a persona, I will create a female who is ages 25-35, and who also lives in the LA area. This individual will also be a curious and creative individual who is passionate about the ingredients they use.
Meet Maria:
