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A target market are the people, businesses and other key stakeholders that you are selling your products or services to. Put simply, these are the core potential clients you need to focus on. Their engagement to your product or service will impact business outcome in the long run.
First, you need to understand what it is you are offering your clients. Next, consider the people that will need your product or services the most:
Make sure you consider anything that matters to your core offering. This is what’s known as demographics.
Once you have an idea about an ideal client you want to target, analysing their digital footprint, such as social media, will help you understand their likes, dislikes, motivations and pain points. This is what’s known as psychographics.
If you already have a set of clients, look at your internal data as an indication of who your target market is. Analyse sales information from your database to see location, gender and other basic information. You can also look at data from your website analytics or social media followings.
If you have competitors that are leaders in the market, take the time to assess their sales and marketing techniques. Observe their marketing approach, but don’t copy.
For example, they could be promoting a new product which clearly targets new dental surgeries in the Greater Sydney area. Your market research should focus on finding:
This can tell you a significant amount of information on who their target market is for not only this product, but their overall offering.
With an understanding of your target market now in place, you need to segment this audience into smaller groups. For individuals, it could be according to the location , gender, age, marital status, or occupation. For B2B industries, your targets should include segments associated with the business itself.
When you group your audience into these segments, it becomes easier to create sales and marketing strategies that target these specific groups. You can use the right message and imagery to sell your products or services, and create buyer personas that make sense to you.
Once you’ve identified your target audience, you can make more informed marketing decisions that give you a better opportunity to level up your marketing. It also allows you to focus your marketing efforts and better allocate budget for segments that are most likely to buy.
