A target market is a specific group of potential customers at which a certain product or service is targeted, as they are the most likely to be interested in or need a business’ offerings. As a Business Owner, identifying your target market is a really important aspect of creating a marketing plan too.
Finding your target market can be quite tricky, but start with looking at your current customer base; why do they buy from you?
Looking into your competition is also a great way of focusing on your target market, what are your competition doing to target their audience? Analysing your product can help you find out exactly what it is people are looking for; make a list of pro’s that your product or service can bring to your customers, then begin to look into what kind of people would benefit from them – this may still be slightly vague, so there are more things you can look into such as breaking down the market segments.
The four market segments are demographics, psychographics, geographics and behavioral. Looking into the specific demographics of your customer base can allow you to create a more direct marketing strategy if you consider things such as age, ethnicity, location, income level and gender.
As well as this, focusing on psychographics can allow you to understand your target market on a more personal level, by briefly assessing their personalities, lifestyles, interests and hobbies. By doing this, you can assess how your product/service will fit into your customers lives and, importantly, how to market your business to them (in terms of platforms such as social media, newspapers, radio, etc).
Geographic segmentation allows you to target an audience based on their location, such as cities, states and countries – allowing you to assess differences in the market and advertise accordingly.
Finally, behavioral assessments can be a great way to see your customers reactions to your business, brand loyalty is a great example of this as it shows a pattern of consistency therefore categorised as a behavioral trait.
Some Final Tips:
- Try not to break down your target market too much, you can have more than once niche.
- Research how to reach your target market by looking at blog posts or articles, forums, etc, that have connections to your audience.
- Keep on top of your target market research to ensure your advertisement is relevant at all times.
- Be sure that the marketing strategies you use have more unique characteristics than others in the marketplace.
