
You must know your target audience to have a successful business and there are ways to go about identifying this audience. You must narrow down specific demographics and create your marketing and advertising strategies to target these. This process is not difficult, but it does take some time and thought to ensure it is done properly. It is critical that you know who your customers are before you start selling a product or service. Following a few key steps allows you to learn who your customers are so that you can launch your business seamlessly.
Review your Business Plan
Make sure you know the goals you have set forth and the products and services you want to offer.
Look at what you are selling and ask yourself how these will solve a problem for potential customers.
Consider how what you are selling stands out above your competition. Once you have these two
points down, think about who your product can help and break this down into demographics.
For example, are you targeting young mothers, teenage boys or middle-aged men who are part
of the middle class? All three of these groups require different strategies to get their attention.
Start Your Research
Identify your target market by starting with secondary research because you can pull this together by looking at existing data concerning the market, your industry, broad customer potential and your competition. This type of research saves you time because the work is done for you and all you have to do is analyze it and adapt the results for your own personal use.
Next, conduct primary research by actually talking to the potential customers you want to be your target market. Use surveys, focus groups and other similar methods to get real-life feedback from real people. Once you collect the information you need, add this into your secondary research and look for trends.
Develop a Customer Profile
Once your research is gathered and analyzed, you will put together your customer profile. This looks at both psychographic information and demographic information:
- Psychographic information: This involves things that look at your target customer’s interests, values, lifestyle, psychology, hobbies and attitude behaviors.
- Demographic information: This involves things like age, location, marital status, gender, ethnic background and income.
Locate Your Target Audience
Once you figure out who your target audience is, you need to find out where they are so you can properly market to them. Know things like the websites they visit, the stores they visit and where they go for social gatherings. You want to be able to properly display your advertisements where they will see them and respond to them.
Once you know who your target market is and you are ready to launch your marketing and advertising campaigns, you must continue to evaluate this. For example, pay attention to how your target audience is responding to your marketing and advertising efforts and make changes and tweaks where necessary. This is an ongoing process and it must be kept current to ensure long-term success.