A target market pertains to a group of consumers identified as potential customers of a company’s products and services. These consumers share similar characteristics such as buying power, buying geography, demographics, and incomes. Companies set and identify target markets to know where they need to put their efforts into to assure product sales and for the development of their marketing plan. Not doing so could cost a lot of money and time for a business.
One of the keys to successful sales of products or services is knowing who it will attract the most, and who will buy it. That’s why it’s important to research or define a target market.
How to Define Your Target Market?
First, defining a target market doesn’t mean that you are restricting your product to other consumers. You can’t target “everyone” but anyone can still buy from you. It’s just that your top focus should be on your target markets to assure sales of your products and make effective advertising.
Now, defining a target market should be done before you decide what product or services to sell, or even before you buy it from your supplier, or have it created by your manufacturer. It’s even wiser to define your target market even before you start your business. But if your business is already running and your products are ready, you can still use these strategies to define your target markets to improve sales and marketing.
Segmentation
Divide your target markets into various segments such as age, race, gender, location, marital status, religion, education, and income level. Narrowing down these segments allows you to see through research that they tend to value the same products and services. Thus, it gave you the ability to decide what products to sell to whom, foresee how much you can potentially earn in a specific segment, and create strategies to attract them on buying your product. It is also vital to understand estimating the size of your target market.
Check competition
Check your competition’s successful target markets. You can try to target the same type of consumers by doing better. For example, you can lower your pricing versus other brands or do the same with pricing but compete with product quality and benefits. It’s risky but fruitful if you succeed.
Surveys
Research ways on how to get your customers to do a survey for you. Doing so will allow you to collect data that you need such as age, gender, religion, marital status, employment status, number siblings or number of children, health status, usual products they buy, lifestyle, hobbies, and many more to identify your target markets.
Use Existing Customers
Use the characteristics and profiles of those who already bought from you. Doing so will allow you to see what kind of customers usually buy specific products from you. From there you can define them as your target market where you can focus your marketing strategies into.
To effectively market your products or services, you need to define your target market as specific as possible. Visualize your potential clients in detail or make some research about them. Once you’ve done it, you’ll be able to make decisions on your marketing strategies.
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