Recognizing Target Markets
Achieving good sales is the ultimate target of any company. Many criteria, such as competitive pricing, near perfect product, reaching out to correct audience and motivational advertising, are responsible for this and should be dealt with in marketing.
First things first, all the efforts will go futile if the correct audience is not recognized. It is the major factor in getting abundant sales, because the right customers aren't targeted, they won't buy the product. The right customers are known as targeted customers or niche market, those who will be happy to buy products that fulfill their needs and is also less pricey.
Small businesses shouldn't fear competition with large companies as they produce products considering a bigger spectrum, which sometimes won't be customer specific as the products are more generalized and they don't much care about the competition they might get from others. This gives an opportunity to the smaller firms to produce products, which can cater to the need of a section of people whose needs aren't met specifically by the large companies.
Although it seems like a silly question, but firstly, a firm should understand who are the people they want to target. The success lies behind understanding this, which requires thorough research and analysis. Various factors must be considered. The age group is the first factor, whether the product will be useful to babies or children or teenagers or youngsters or middle aged or old. Sometimes there is a possibility that the product will cater to the needs of all age groups. Next thing to consider is gender. Marital status, occupation, ethnic background, health status, income status, education, hobbies, etc., are some of the factors that should also be pondered upon.
After decided upon the customer group to be targeted, the benefits that can be provided by the product to this group should be jotted down. A thorough examination of the service or product should be done for this purpose. If there is sufficient time, a survey can be conducted on the current customers and pose them with questions like what they liked in the products they are using, anything discomfort they are facing, do they want anything to be changed to make the product better, etc.
After making a list of all the benefits, thought should be applied to which of these benefits will actually help the targeted audience. Make a short list of the benefits that will be advantageous and send it to the marketing department. It can surely help in their marketing plan and can boost up sales.
Internet has made reaching out to the targeted customers can be very easy. Search engines can be utilized to the maximum extent for this purpose. The thing to be exactly searched can be typed as a keyword or search phrase in the search engines and the results brought on the first three pages will be of great value. But lots of time and investment is involved in this process, as different keywords will fetch different search results. So efforts should be made to finally get what is desired.
Next best thing is reaching out by newsletters and ezines. Many ezines are related to marketing, finance, shopping, Internet, etc. A number of ezines websites can be found in an ezines directory, which even contains the contact information, advertising price, etc. The list of ezines website sites should be cut down to which are relating to the target market and ad should be placed in the ones selected which should include all the product advantages if the ad allows that many words.
Recognizing the target market is crucial to any successful advertising and sales campaign. Once it is recognized, they can be reached through different channels like websites, newspapers, magazines, etc. This makes the customer think that he is being directly addressed to. And since the whole approach will interest them, the amount of traffic received in return will be simply overwhelming and the whole effort will be worth it.
Matt Kaey
eMarketing Search
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Comments (4)
Sean North12
Business
I can totally relate to that, with the rise of social networking and with a little time spent identifying your target audience it is so easy to plugin to communities and sources that serve your target audience enabling a much faster and higher conversion rate
Matt Kaey14
Co-Owner of APSense
Thanks for the comments Sean, appreciate it. I see it too. I get contacted often with questions like, "Have you advertised on "this site" or "that site", they have great deals and get a lot of hits." "Should I advertise there?" Most of the time they have not even considered that the site has little or nothing to do with there market. I very rarely pay for ads, but I tell them, I'd rather pay $100 for 1 precisely targeted ad space than $10 for 10 spaces with little or no target related to my
Sean North12
Business
Excellent and informative article Matt, nothing can beat the benefits a precise targeted marketing campaign, as oposed to the daily recommended target anyone and everyone campaigns I see every day, for return on time and investment precise quality targeting wins hands down
Matt Kaey14
Co-Owner of APSense
No, not necessarily, the target market can be very broad and still be a "target". For example, if you are starting a marketing blog your target is not only marketers themselves, but anyone who wants to promote a website, product, service, etc. If you have a more defined market, such as a silver jewelry shop, then you will of course need to target those who buy jewelry, particularly interested in silver jewelry. That may mean advertising on jewelry related blogs, forums, etc. Hope that helps!