How to analyze your target audience before launching ads to create powerful creatives

Many advertising posts in Facebook or Instagram feeds pass by users' attention. They can be visually beautiful, with quality design and even a good offer — but they don't hook.

Why does this happen? The main reason is a misunderstanding of the target audience. If an advertiser doesn't know what actually hurts, interests, or motivates their potential customer, then even the best image will remain just another banner among hundreds of others.

Adheart – Meta Ads Spy Tool to uncover your competitors' top-performing ads and trending products

That's why analyzing the target audience before launching ads is a critically important stage. It allows creating not just good creatives, but working advertising materials that touch the right emotional points, evoke response, and stimulate action.

What is a target audience and why creative success depends on what you know about It

Target audience (TA) is a group of people for whom the advertisement is created. These are users who have a need, problem, or desire that can be addressed by a product or service. A common mistake of advertisers is that they define the audience too generally, for example, "women 25–40 years old" — this is too broad a portrait. The target audience should be defined more precisely, for example, "women 25–35 years old who are interested in sports and looking for comfortable workout clothes" — this will already allow creating a relevant message.

An emotional trigger works only when it's relevant. For example, fear of missing an opportunity, desire to look better, wish to save money or have status. Moreover, the same product can be sold differently. For a business audience, the main thing will be saving time and money, for youth — style and self-expression. The right message increases advertising effectiveness.

If you speak in your audience's language, the creative becomes understandable and close.

So, the clearer you define the target audience, the easier it is to create a creative that will not only attract attention but also encourage the desired action.

Checklist: what you need to understand about your target audience before developing creative

Before sitting down to develop advertising creative, it's important to have a complete picture of your audience. Here's what you need to understand about TA so that ads don't get lost in the feed, but really hook and convert.

1. What triggers your audience's attention in the feed?

• What visual elements attract it (bright colors, real people, UGC, memes, serious business visuals);
• Does it respond more to video or static banners?
• Are there trigger-markers in the niche (for example, "casino chips," "fast delivery," "before/after" in nutrition)?

2. What pain or desire of the user the advertiser trying to address?

• What pain points does the user have? (lack of money, fatigue, insecurity, boredom).
• What motivators drive them? (status aspiration, benefit, security, entertainment).
• How does the product solve these problems or bring them closer to the desired result?

3. How does the user make decisions?

• Is the purchase impulsive (quick emotional decision) or rational (comparing options, looking for proof)?
• Is social proof important (reviews, number of clients, expert recommendations)?
• Does FOMO work ("only 3 spots left") or does a trusting tone give better conversion ("choose without risk")?

4. What language should you speak with your audience?

• Does the audience respond to emotional slogans ("Dreams come true") or to facts and numbers ("50% discount, delivery in 24 hours")?
• What keywords do they use themselves in reviews and searches?
• Do you need to adapt the message to local cultural codes (language, slang, symbols)?

Use this checklist to get not an abstract "customer avatar," but living insights that will directly tell you how to make creatives better.

Where to start TA analysis for making great creatives

Target audience analysis for creatives is not just "drawing a customer avatar." The marketer's task here is much broader: you need to go beyond basic demographic data and understand the real drivers of user behavior.

In practice, this means answering several key questions:

• what triggers audience attention in the feed — emotional trigger, format, theme;
• what pain or desire they're trying to address — saving money, feeling of status, entertainment, convenience;
• how the user makes decisions — impulsively or rationally, independently or under the influence of social proof;
• what language to speak with them — emotional slogans, facts and numbers, visual metaphors.

It's precisely the answers to these questions that become the foundation for strong hooks, correct angles, and relevant visuals that make creative not just "visible," but working.

1. Analyze the product

The first step is to understand what value the product really brings to the user. This will help find the right accents in the creative.

Ask three questions:

• What problem does the product solve? This can be a specific pain (lack of money, insomnia, lack of time) or a more abstract need (self-expression, status, entertainment).
• What benefit does it bring to a person? Does they get peace, savings, joy, prestige, new experience?
• Why this product and not competitors' products? Here you should define the unique selling proposition (USP): how you are better, faster, more convenient, more accessible.

For example, a fitness app can be positioned as "quick weight loss for busy moms who don't have time for the gym" (emphasis on time saving + result) or as "professional training plan for athletes" (emphasis on expertise + program complexity). Different formulations lead to different creatives.

2. Create a customer portrait (customer persona)

Next, it's important to clearly describe who exactly is your ideal customer. This is not just "women 25–40 years old," but the most specific image possible.

Key parameters:

• age, gender, place of residence — important for visuals and language style;
• work or field of activity — allows understanding income level and daily life context;
• interests and lifestyle — is time saving important for the person, or are they ready to spend more on comfort and status;
• pains and desires — what problems need to be addressed (back pain, boredom, lack of money) and what dreams to realize (travel, health, freedom).

Example:

• Persona 1: "Marina, 32 years old, mother of two children, works remotely, wants to quickly get back in shape after childbirth."
• Persona 2: "Andrew, 27 years old, ambitious IT specialist, actively involved in sports and looking for challenging workouts."

For these two portraits, completely different creatives are needed.

3. Define pain points and motivation

Pain and motivation are precisely the engines that trigger reaction to advertising.

Pain points — this is what irritates, interferes, or creates discomfort. For example, lack of sleep and back pain, lack of money, lack of time.

Motivation — what a person strives for, what benefit they seek. For example, peaceful sleep, easy win, time saving, praise from others.

Because in reality, a customer doesn't buy just a mattress, but relief from insomnia and back pain, not a backpack, but daily ease and capacity. Creatives should show not the product itself, but the final result, solution to the problem or task. This is what distinguishes a creative that just appears in the feed from a creative that stops scrolling and leads to a click.

Tools and methods for target audience analysis for creating creatives

For advertising to really touch users and lead to conversions, it should be based not on intuition or designer creativity, but on insights about the target audience. Today there is a whole set of tools and methods that allow understanding what your potential customers think, feel, and react to.

Own data: the most reliable source

Usually, a business already has valuable insights that help create relevant creatives.

CRM and customer base. You can see who really buys your product: age, region, average check. This helps highlight priority segments.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) or other analytics systems. Shows how people behave on the site: what pages they view, what interests them, where they drop off.

Customer surveys. Simple Google or Telegram forms with questions "Why did you choose us?" or "What did you like most?" Answers give living language that can be used almost unchanged in advertising texts.

Social media comments. Users often write themselves what hurts them and what they like. From there you can take ready hooks: "finally a mattress I slept well on," "fast delivery saved before holidays." For example, if reviews often mention "convenient that delivery is next day," this is a ready trigger for creative — "Get your order tomorrow."

Audience Insights in Meta Ads Manager

This is a free tool from Meta that helps understand who your audience is:

• age and gender;
• geography;
• interests and preferences.

This data helps form initial hypotheses: for example, if most subscribers are men 25–34 years old who are interested in sports and finance, then creatives with humor about betting on matches will be more relevant than universal banners.

Competitor analysis through ad intelligence and spy services

One of the strongest ways to understand TA is to see how competitors work with it. Their creatives have already been tested, so they can suggest which approaches work.

For example, if in your niche most competitors test UGC videos with reviews, this is a signal that the format works. You can adapt it to your product and target audience.

What to analyze:

• visual — colors, style, images;
• texts and headlines — what benefits they emphasize;
• approaches and ad angles — through pain, status, savings, dream, etc.;
• placement — feed, stories, Reels, Audience Network;
• rotation duration: if creative lives long — it brings results.

Tools:

• Meta Ads Library — official catalog of all active ads. Minus: limited search capabilities
• Adheart — professional Meta Ads Spy Tool. Allows finding creatives by keywords, pages, GEO, formats; downloading them in original quality; saving in collections and sharing with team.

JTBD interviews

Sometimes regular statistics or competitor analysis is not enough to create strong creatives. Data shows what the audience does, but doesn't explain why they make certain decisions. This is where Jobs to be Done (JTBD) methodology and deep research methods like interviews and focus groups come into play.

Most advertisers in creatives describe product features, but people don't buy characteristics, they buy solutions to their own tasks:

• not a drill, but a way to get a hole in the wall;
• not coffee, but an energy boost or a moment of pleasure;
• not a mattress, but a chance to sleep without back pain.

This simple but fundamental shift in thinking is the essence of the JTBD approach.

Thanks to JTBD, creative becomes about the person, not about the product. It speaks the language of real motivation, evokes emotions, and looks not like selling head-on, but like solving a specific customer problem.

JTBD interviews are individual in-depth conversations with representatives of your TA that help understand:

• what task are they trying to solve?
• what barriers or doubts arise along the way?
• what circumstances push them to purchase?
• what result do they consider successful?

The interview formula often looks like this: 

"When I [situation], I want [motivation], so that [result]." For example: "When I come home from work, I want to quickly relax, so I can forget about stress" or "When I plan a workout, I want a simple app, so I don't waste time on complex programs."

Extract key formulations from JTBD interviews and use them as headlines or hooks and focus on the "job" the product performs, not on its functions.

Focus groups: testing hypotheses before launch

If JTBD interviews help identify motivations, focus groups allow testing how TA reacts to your creative ideas before launching advertising.

A focus group is a discussion of 6–10 participants from your segment, who are shown creative prototypes (visuals, headlines, slogans) and their reaction is observed.

What you can learn:

• what emotions does the first impression evoke?
• is the message clear?
• does the ad match their pains/desires?
• which variant motivates action more?

Use focus groups for quick filtering of weak ideas and filtering strong messages.

The combination of different methods — from own data and analytics to Spy services and JTBD interviews — allows seeing the complete picture: from dry statistics to deep emotions. This gives the marketer the opportunity to create creatives that are not just beautiful, but touch TA and trigger conversions.

Additional sources of insights

Besides own data and competitor analysis, there are many more open sources where you can collect ideas for creatives and better understand the target audience.

Google Trends. Allow tracking what topics, products or queries are currently trending, give the opportunity to see demand seasonality (for example, "buy air conditioner" sharply rises in May-June), perfect for finding topics.

Forums and communities. Thematic forums, Reddit, Facebook groups — these are places where your audience openly shares problems and requests. In comments you can find real pain points and use them in advertising texts as ready hooks.

Reviews on marketplaces and sites. Reviews on Amazon, Rozetka or App Store — real gold for a marketer. They show what people like about the product and what causes difficulties. Positive insights can be amplified in creatives ("delivery in 1 day"), negative ones — played with additional messaging ("free replacement within 30 days").

Bonus: what to learn about audience for launching in unfamiliar or exotic GEO

Launching advertising in new countries is always associated with risk: even if the product is the same, its perception in different regions can differ greatly. To avoid "burning" the budget, before starting you need to collect several key insights.

1. Language features

• What language is better to communicate in: official or local dialect?
• Are there "trigger" words in the culture that work better, or vice versa, are associated with something unacceptable?
• Are there local names or slang for the advertised product?

2. Cultural values and taboos

• What topics can be used, and what are taboo?
• Are humor, sarcasm, hints acceptable?
• Are there religious or political sensitive moments in the country that cannot be touched?

3. Financial and daily habits

• What is the average purchasing power?
• Are discounts and promotions important?
• How do people usually pay for purchases (card, cash, mobile services)?

4. Communication channels and ad formats

• Where does the audience spend more time: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or WhatsApp?
• Do they perceive video, photos or text ads better?
• Which placements in Meta are most popular (Stories, Reels, Feeds)?

5. Competitive field

• Who is already advertising in this GEO?
• What creatives do they use?
• What offers and messages "work" with local audience?

For collecting such insights, Ad Intelligence and spy services like Adheart are especially useful. They allow seeing what creatives are running in a specific country, which pages are active, and what formats competitors choose. This saves time and money on tests, as you can immediately start with proven hypotheses.

Finalizing

Target audience analysis is not bureaucracy, but an investment in strong creatives. It's precisely what determines whether ads will disappear in the feed, or stop the user and motivate them to click.

The combination of approaches — from CRM and GA4 to JTBD interviews and Spy services — allows understanding what triggers really work in your audience.

Adheart – Meta Ads Spy Tool to uncover your competitors' top-performing ads and trending products

Try Adheart with free demo access to see how your competitors talk to TA in any GEO, and create your own creatives that will be even stronger.