Welcome to the first installment in a month-long step-by-step guide to marketing new businesses. We’ll be journeying through a roughly chronological representation of the process new businesses should be taking to make their name known through various online marketing practices. This week, we’ll be covering the first step that any business must take in building a foundation for marketing: defining and selecting your target market.
How Does a Target Market Benefit You?
Identifying a niche target market allows you to focus your marketing budget on a selection of people who are more likely to buy from you, meaning that your business is functioning at a more efficient and cost-effective level. Your target market will also assist you in determining where to market and how to present your brand. It’s important to note that you needn’t select only one niche target; selecting a specific market does not mean excluding people who do not fit your guidelines, it simply defines to whom you will allocate the most of your marketing budget.
What is NOT a Target Market?
Business owners tend to be too broad in defining their target markets When asked what their target market is, many businesses might respond with something like “anyone interested in my products or services”, “homeowners”, or “college-educated adults”, all of which are too broad. Customers cannot be defined by a single label; in order to truly dial in on the best means of reaching your desired customer base, you must truly paint a picture of all that they are.
How to Define Your Target Market
Step one in identifying your target market is understanding why a customer would choose to purchase your product or service. Think of your Unique Selling Points, or USPs, and how they fulfill customer’s needs. What benefits does your product or service offer? Next, ask yourself which groups of people have these needs. As you define the various characteristics of your target market, you can begin to form an image of your typical customer. From this point you can begin to segment your ideal customer based on their geographic, demographic, and psychographic characteristics. The more descriptive you can be, the more detailed your target market will become.
Finally, conduct research on the market that you have established. This can help identify their preferred means of communication and, by extension, the best methods of reaching them through your marketing.
Now that you’ve identified your target market, you must select your marketing channels and plan your campaign! Click here to read the next post, covering setting goals, budgets, and choosing marketing channels.
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