Best Ways to Locate Your Target Market
As a business owner, developing your product is simply one small a part of the work. to really achieve success , you’ll got to share your offering with the planet . Start by creating an internet site , and use it because the foundation of a strong marketing strategy.
But before you begin marketing your services to everyone, take a flash to think about who the simplest audience is for your brand. While it’s tempting to shoot in as many directions as possible, believe this: Are you likely to hit a target if you aim in several different directions, or will you be more successful if you concentrate all of your effort on the bullseye?
That’s where target marketing comes in. Precise targeting is vital for converting leads into customers. The more relevant and specific your audience is, the more likely they’ll have an interest in your brand.
Keep reading to seek out out more about this practice and to find expert recommendations on the way to define your target market.
What is a target market?
Your target market, also called a audience , is that the specific group of individuals at which your product or service is aimed. In other words, they’re the first audience of your marketing strategy.
A audience are often composed of a broad group, like women within the US, or it are often quite narrow, like urban, health-conscious, vegetarian women in Texas. The group you select will depend upon the actual consumer needs your product is addressing.
To pinpoint your target market, you’ll got to start by analyzing data about your customers and competitors.
Here’s the way to do it:
- Analyze your existing customers
- Know your product’s benefits
- Investigate your competitors
- Segment your audience
- Write a target market statement
- Refine your research
01. Analyze your existing customers
The first step in defining your target market is to find out more about your existing customers. albeit you’ve just launched a business and don’t have many purchasers yet, these practices will are available handy further down the road .
Start by gathering information about current and past buyers, and check out to spot any defining characteristics these customers have in common. This data will assist you market your product to people with similar interests.
You can find this information using website analytics tools, also as social media and email marketing analytics platforms. Some data points you’ll want to think about include:
Age: Do your customers share a standard decade or generation? Are they millennials, older adults, or something in between?
Location: Where within the world do most of your customers live? Consider the various cities, countries, and regions.
Language: Which languages do your customers speak? Remember that your customers’ language isn’t necessarily the dominant language of their country.
Spending power: Consider socioeconomic factors which will be affecting your customers. what proportion money are they willing or ready to spend?
Hobbies and career: What do your customers enjoy doing? What are their professions, and what do they are doing in their spare time?
Stage of life: Where are your customers in life? Are they college students? New parents? Retirees?
If your company is B2B instead of B2C, you’ll want to seem for characteristics of companies, instead of individual consumers. These traits include:
Business size: Are the companies that buy from you small, medium, or large?
Location: Where are these businesses physically located?
Vertical: Which industries are most of those businesses in?
Budget: How have these businesses raised money? Consider what proportion they’d be willing or ready to spend on products like yours.
Be sure to trace this information in an orderly manner in order that you’ll keep your findings organized and simply identify trends. Analyzing these trends will allow you to spot shared characteristics within your customer base. These characteristics will help steer your marketing effort toward your audience .
02. Know your product’s benefits
The next step in determining your target market is to know the customer motivations behind purchasing your product. For this, you’ll got to see from your clients’ point of view. believe what motivates them to shop for from your company, instead of a competitor. you’ll learn this information by chatting with your customers directly and posing for testimonials.
Get to understand the advantages – and not just the features – of your product or service. The features are your product’s characteristics. as an example , if your business sells suitcases, you would possibly describe your product as being small, compact, and having multiple compartments. Your product’s benefits, on the opposite hand, are the benefits it brings to your customers. believe how your product makes someone’s life better or easier. The compact, multi-compartment suitcase offers the advantages of being easy to hold and pack as a carry-on.
Learning about the precise needs your product is fulfilling helps point you toward your audience . For the suitcase company discussed above, for instance, the target market would be people that enjoy a light-weight , carry-on suitcase – like business travelers who take short, frequent trips.
03. Investigate your competitors
Hone in on your target market even further by taking a glance at which target markets your competitors are aiming at. You won’t, of course, have access to their customer analytics data. However, you’ll understand who these customers could be by doing a SWOT analysis of your competitors.
Take a deep dive into their websites, blogs, and social channels. Consider who their target market is predicated on their website content, content marketing strategy, and social media branding. You’ll likely be ready to infer details about their audience supported their brand language and tone. you’ll also check for comments on their social media pages to ascertain which sorts of people are engaging with their posts.
Take an especially close check out their most successful social media and blog posts. Do these pieces of content have anything in common in terms of their offering or branding? Which interests or needs do they address? Use this information to think about what sorts of qualities or advantages appeal most to consumers within your industry.
04. Segment your audience
At now , you’ve gathered some information about the characteristics and interests of your audience . Now, it’s time to use that information to obviously define your customer types. These customer types are getting to form the idea of your target market.
The best thanks to do that is thru a process referred to as segmentation. This involves dividing your customers into different groups, or segments, supported their shared qualities.
You can divide your customers based on:
Geography: Physical location, whether it’s your own city or a special a part of the planet . Note that if your customers are located round the world, you’ll got to create a multilingual website, also as localized ads and marketing materials.
Demographics: Characteristics like age, gender, race or ethnicity, income level, or legal status .
Psychographics: Inner qualities like personality, lifestyle, or personal values. These are often a product of geographic and demographic factors like location, generation, or stage of life.
Behavior: Perceived qualities supported online behavior, like buyer readiness or frequency of use.
If you’re a B2B company, use similar characteristics but apply them to business. Consider firm demographics – referred to as firmographics – like industry, location, customer size, business structure, and performance.
To gain a deeper understanding of your segments, you’ll also create buyer personas. Also called user personas, buyer personas are imaginary characters with traits and behaviors almost like those of typical customers. Ultimately, these fictional characters represent your audience , helping you gain insights into the requirements , desires, and lifestyles of your actual customers.
05. Write a target market statement
Now that you’ve determined the defining features of your audience , it’s time to place your findings on paper. Write a target market statement that focuses on the foremost important audience characteristics you’ve identified in your research.
Your statement should include:
- Demographic information about your target market, like gender and age
- Geographic location of your target market
- Key interests of your target marketThen, sum it up during a single sentence.
For example:
“Our target market is women in their 30s and 40s who sleep in the us and luxuriate in casual, comfortable fashion.”
Having a transparent statement about who your audience is will help keep your branding and marketing efforts consistent across your company. it’ll also are available useful as you adapt your company’s mission statement to be as relevant as possible for your audience.
06. Refine your research
Defining your target market is predicated on thorough research, but that doesn’t mean it’s getting to be perfect the primary time around. Even after you identify your audience , you’ll still got to continually test and experiment to urge an increasingly precise picture of your customers. Staying on top of your marketing research also can assist you continue with the days , as consumer interests change over the years with technological developments, generational attitudes, and spending trends.
To narrow in on your audience , you’ll got to A/B test your targeting efforts. Develop a social media marketing strategy and note of your engagement and clicks. you’ll also use website build and design marketing tools, like Email Marketing, to make targeted email blasts and analyze the performance of your campaigns.
Based on the results, you would possibly got to either adjust your marketing strategy or revise your target market statement. rock bottom line is to create a brand that resonates strongly together with your audience. Remember, the more targeted your content, the simpler your lead generation strategies – and therefore the more customers you’ll bring back your brand.