Who is Your Target Market?

SELECTION

It is a natural part of selecting your target market to exclude different groups that you think your product won’t appeal to as well. Being very selective of your target market is an underestimated part of setting up a successful marketing campaign. Many small businesses feel excluding potential customers is costly to business and that a wider net yields better results. This is not the case, in fact it is one of the bigger mistakes of identifying your market that people can make. Finding a niche, or small group of people that would absolutely benefit from your product then dominating that niche is step one. Once you build a base you can pick other niches to appeal to and add to your customer portfolio. If you target wider, you are likely to encounter a majority of people who won’t be interested versus finding a small group that would love your product and expanding from there. This creates not only a strong consumer base but also a sales base to continue growing your business.

MARKET SPECIFICS

The specifics of each individual market you define are important. Knowing their age, gender, geography, likes and dislikes all contribute to who they are as a consumer to your business. You want to be detailed and specific, not only when identifying multiple markets but also the individual consumers within it. Let’s say you start with a market of women because you sell a feminine product, while that may seem like a great target group, it’s much too big. You need to narrow it down to a specific age, will teenagers, adults, or elders be more interested? What job profession or hobbies may be influenced more to want your product. The more details you can pin down, the smaller and easier your identifying markets will become.

THE DETAILS

While we just talked about getting down to specifics for your markets, it’s important to look even further and personalize them to your business. It’s not enough to know what they are within the market, but who they are. You can look at their daily frustrations, who they might be mad at (e.g. their local governor, business they don’t agree with, etc.). Looking at the trends that occur around them and what secret desires they might have can also help you appeal to their market. For example, a mom with teenagers(not adults or babies, but teenagers) can be interested in a lot of teenage products and services they can share with their family. As an adult woman, she may not have been interested in those without kids. Their speech and jargon is also important when trying to relate to a market, they may have special words that identify someone as being part of that group, using those words may make you “in” with them and your product more appealing. There are many small things that make us as individuals tick and knowing which ones will help you the most, can do wonders for a business.

VALUE

Finding your ideal target market can be made easier by following the PVP index, this stands for Personal fulfillment, Value to the marketplace, and Profitability. Personal fulfillment is how much you enjoy having this type of customer, sometimes we get “pain in the butt” customers but they are really good for business. You can rate each of these categories on a scale to 10, the higher the number the better. Value to the marketplace is how much does this market value what you are providing for them? Would they pay more for the service because they want it so much? Lastly Profitability, how profitable is the work you do for this market? This isn’t talking about the overall price tag and gross purchasing but instead you’re after cost profitability. A lot of the times you will have a very expensive product but you will only be barely profitable after costs and expenses, sometimes even netting a loss. It is about “turnover” not “leftover”. By rating all these categories, you can add the numbers up and compare them to see which market you should focus on. This is why it’s better to establish smaller markets and then build up into bigger ones.

Highlights:

• In The Book of Survival by Anthony Greenbank, he wrote: “To live through an impossible situation, you don’t need to have the reflexes of a Grand Prix driver, the muscles of a Hercules, the mind of an Einstein. You simply need to know what to do.”
• Targeting a tight niche allows you to become a big fish in a small pond. It allows you to dominate a category or geography in a way that is impossible by being general.
• Dominate a niche, then once you own it, do the same with another and then another. But never do so all at once. Doing so dilutes your message and your marketing power.
• Find the value within your niche, choose the best place to start for your business following PVP and then start building and growing.

REFERENCES

The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand Out From The Crowd by Allan Dib