Targeting A Market – My Personal Example
In this post I would like to share with you my own personal experience from which I learned the importance of targeting a specific market. I will give you the example of this very website that you are on. When I was trying to develop our marketing strategy in order to get this blog across a few interested people I developed two marketing strategies. One was targeted specially at the individual that wanted to work from home by establishing for business in crafts or by doing a crafting job at home. This was an accurate description of the person that would probably find this blog useful.
The second marketing strategy targeted people that were merrily interested in crafts which included people wanting crafting ideas, craft supplies, finding out crafts to enjoy with their children and so on and so forth.
Needless to say that the second category was a much much larger consumer market. The number of people looking for an opportunity to create from business in crafts was much less than the people who were generally searching for information related to crafts.
My personal thinking was that even if all those multitudes of people that are not looking to establish a business from home in making crafts since they are already interested in crafting they will find this website useful and will be responsive. I was wrong. My first marketing strategy of targeting exactly the profile that matched the content of this website was much much more successful than the latter strategy. Although I was targeting many times more people none of them were interested in what this website had to offer.
Now imagine the same scenario in the case of your own business. If you try and adapt a marketing strategy using means of advertising and promoting you could be spending much more money if you decide to target everyone. Even if you decide to target the wide range of profiles in the consumer market you will be spending a lot of money. The truth is that you are better off approaching a profile that is much specific and very close to the demands and needs that your product or service seeks to fulfil. Not only will you tend to have a more focused approach in achieving your goals but you will definitely have better results. Since narrowing down to a specialised group of consumer you will be required to spend much less in your advertising and promoting budget. You will also realise that the conversion ratio which is converting the consumers into paying customers will be much higher if you have managed to narrow down your potential customer successfully.
We have already covered aspects of targeting your market in previous posts, what targeting a market for a particular segment of consumer essentially jazz is that it identifies the people that will do already have the need for your product in your service. There is not much good in targeting everyone because as the famous marketing saying goes over coats open when you target everyone, you target know one coach closed.
Start with people you have close at hand in order to determine who exactly is your target market. You could start by asking questions to friends and family and neighbours to stop ask them if we if they are interested in your product or service and would they buy. Evaluate their reasons for either yes or no as an answer. Do make sure that the people would you talk to people that you can trust to be frank and honest with you and whose opinions are liable. Try getting down to the bare details regarding as to who your consumer is. Try and get as specific as possible. Any possible detail was a long way in having establishing a marketing strategy such as,
Are your customers most women, men are both?
How much money do they earn?
What level of education do they have and what do they do for a living?
Are they married, single, divorced?
Do they have children?
How do they spend their money?
What are the outing habits?
What are the attitudes and believes?
What are the interests and hobbies?
Today there is a lover of statistical data available on many aspects of consumer behaviour. You will be able to return main pattern with a lot of habits such as how many times do is a particular segment of society go out, how much money do this spend, where do they like to shop, where do the like to eat, what are the online shopping habits etc.
While making a business plan it is a common practice to actually put down a definition of your typical consumer.. For example the definition that cigar company might come up for its potential consumer could be,
"Our typical client is a successful, single or married men between the age group 30-55, who likes to make a statement with his whatever he does. He is sociable and enjoys the finer things in life when it comes to food, clothes, jewelry and home. He is confident and likes to stand out in a crowd".
Now you can see that once you have a profile figured out like that, not only will you know the exact kind of product that will appeal to this person but also where to find the people of this profile i.e. country clubs, fine dining places, designer stores, classic holiday destinations etc.
It makes the job of finding and seducing your ideal customer all the more easier.