Business Marketing - Step 4 Defining your target market

Business Marketing - Step 4 Defining your target market

Introduction:
if you haven't defined your target market yet, then there is a good chance that your efforts is not very efficient yet.  One of the major benefits of having defined your target market is that you can shape your marketing around it.

It also allows you to provide real valuable content and information to that market, further separating you from the crowd of marketers that shout "buy my product, buy my product" and they all just throw their products in their prospects face. Sometimes that might work, but let me ask you this:

How many times have you walked into a store and said no.  When the shop keeper asks you if he can help you with anything?

Let's take another example:
let's say that you are selling drills, are you really into the market of drills?  Or are you the business of selling the holes that the drills create?  I say that everyone that is buying a drill is actually looking to make a hole, given how many types of drills there is out there, and the competition, how do you set yourself apart?

Why not make an article or a how-to guide that is very thorough and high quality on the topic of how to create a hole, quickly and efficiently just where you want it.  And given away for free to think that people that are looking to buy a drill is going to find some use of it?

What if, in that article or how to guide there are some other information on the drills that you sell, do you think that people would be wanting to buy those drills?

Part 1:
so, that is also one thing that you have to take into account when you define your target market, that it is also important to define their true need of your target market, as well as define who the user of your product and feel of their need is.

So if you have not yet selected a product to sell or other way of making money I strongly suggest that you take the time up front doing quite a bit of research on what people are really in need of and also make sure that it is a growing need in the future. In doing so allows you to start a business around a product or solution that is very likely to be in a growing demand.  Instead of trying to sell a product that no one has the need for.

If you already have a product that you're trying to promote.  Then you need to figure out what need that product solves to understand how to properly market it.

All right it's action time, get a pen and paper or open your favorite write program on your computer and answered thse questions.

1. What pain does this product/solution solve?
2. Why does the customer need this product/solution?
3. Are there any other closely related needs that the customer can have? And can you provide that as well?


Part 2:
When you have written down what all the needs the customer has then you can start to focus on writing down who your ideal customer/prospect is. If you are already selling a product succesfully you have some statistics to draw from if you have a system in place that saves you'r customers information, or have a customer database.

If not then asking yourself these questions will help you to narrow it down:

1. Who has already bought what I am selling/promoting? (It is easier to get a person that have bought a similar product to buy one again then it is to get a person that has never bought such a product before).

2. Is my product or solution depending on the age of the customer (if it is an expensive product you will understand that it is hard to sell to minors with little to no money.)

3. Location based? Do I have an online or offline product? Is it region specific or nation wide? (Knowing where you'r ideal customer lives or is coming from allows you to target you'r marketing especially usefull if you are doing generic offline letter advertising campaigns).

Keep asking yourself questions, in regards to your product or solution similar to those above to further narrow it down.

Some things that may be important to know about your ideal customer:

Age,
Location,
Income,
Sex,
Occupation,
Level of Education,
etc


Part 3:
another benefit that you should see from marketing towards your target market is that your marketing costs, should either be reduced or should see a higher profitability. Why? To take an example, if you're doing regular letter advertising, and just send to everyone in your zip code. You are going to send your advertising out to a lot of people that ain't even the slightest interested in your product and therefore wasting your money. Forget the whole concept about, "at least I'm getting my company name out there", because that is just a very expensive way of getting nothing in return.

If you are doing Google ad words campaigns and haven't selected your keywords properly.  You are probably suffering from having a low conversion rate, and therefore probably a low profitability. Knowing who your ideal customer is and what their need is you have a lot more information to your disposal to do keyword research from based on their need and pain, which obviously you're product or solution will solve.

The more you work on defining your target market, the more experienced you will become and the better you will do.

Tobias Fransson
+46 739 681 752
Skype: tobiasfransson