You already know who you want to target with your marketing campaign — people who would buy your company’s products. But what does this really mean? Even if everybody has a use for your company’s offerings, “everyone” isn’t exactly a solid target market for your to attempt to engage. Your target market should be an extremely specific group of people with traits and tendencies that make them easy targets for a specific marketing approach. When we put it that way, marketing sounds a lot tougher. Fortunately, it’s not as hard as you might think to identify your target market so that you can start developing a marketing campaign that caters to their needs. Here’s what you need to do:
Look at who buys your products now
You look most of your target market right in the eye every single day. The goal of your marketing campaign is to get the people who already buy from you to stop by more often, and to get more of these people to show up at your business’ doorstep in the first place. Find out as much as you can from these people; this will be the foundation of what your target market will be.
Look at who buys from your competitors
You will be better equipped to pilfer your competition’s customers if you know more about them. To that end, find out everything that you can about your competitor’s customers, and add them to your target market.
Consider what your product can do for people
Although a certain group of people may already buy your company’s products, this may only be a small swath of your target market. There could be thousands of people with untapped sales lead potential who simply don’t know about the value of your company’s offerings yet.
To define the people who might buy your products, but aren’t standing right in front of your face, create a list of your product’s benefits. Then start defining the type of people who are likely to have a need for such a product. For example, if you are an electronics retailer that mostly focuses on high-end laptops, then you may have a lot of corporate customers. However, the primary benefits of high-end laptops (top specs, blazing speed, etc) make your products perfect for hardcore gamers. This is an invaluable target market that could help you increase your profits exponentially when you start marketing to them.
Break down the qualities that define your target market
Once you have an idea of who your target audience is, it is time to break them down so that you can see how they tick. To this end, pull out all of the demographic data that you can, so that you can really see who your target audience is. If, for example, you sell super expensive home goods, “rich people” isn’t an accurate enough identifier for your target audience. You need to take a look at the average age, income, location, education level, occupation, family life, etc.
Create buyer personas
Your company’s marketing campaign should always be in line with your target market’s wants and needs. To that end, you should be creating buyer personas. These are totally fake representations of a typical buyer. They should include everything from a full-length bio to a pretty picture. All of your buyer persona’s information should be pulled directly from data compiled form your target market.
Now that you know who your target market is, it’s time to start marketing to them
The better you know your target market, the better you will be able to attract them to your business.