If you run a business, you'll know that your product or service won't suit everybody in the world. In fact, most of the time your messaging in how you sell and market your product or service won't even connect with everyone in the world too.
If you're targeting everyone, you're targeting no one. You'll be speaking too generically and broadly that most people just won't resonate with it and see how your product or service can solve a problem.
That's why having a set target market is key. Target marketing is knowing who your product or service is for, understanding what their problems, needs or wants are, as well as how your product or service solves that problem, need or want, and then speaking their language in a way that can help them see exactly why your product or service is right for them.
This blog is going to help you identify your target market as well as why it's something you need to be thinking about and actioning. Follow along to see how we can help you with more Marketing training for your business today.
What is a target market?
A target market represents a group of people defined by a set of criteria to which a company wishes to sell its product or services.
Your target market will be the people who are most likely to buy what you’re selling. They share similar characteristics and habits as well as things such as age range, gender, geographic location, education, earning potential, and more.
If you wanted to sell an urban SUV, your target market could include characteristics such as the number of children they have, females, aged in their 30’s, with an earning potential of $60,000+ annually. This is a simple example, and there are many more factors to consider, but this is how you would begin to build a Customer Avatar and begin speaking to her.
If you want to follow along with a free Customer Avatar Template while you're identifying who your target market in your business is for, we've got a free template made just for you. Download your copy today.
Why is it important to identify your target market?
Having a defined target market is important so you can narrow your scope and make the effort of converting leads to sales that much easier. Spending time and money marketing to people who MIGHT want your products or services is not very economic, or powerful, compared to marketing and selling to people who you KNOW want and need your product or service.
If you identify your target market, and you know what their pain points are to be able to speak their language and talk to their needs or wants, then you'll be able to perform some very effective marketing.
How to identify your target market
If you haven't already, don't forget to download your FREE Customer Avatar Template to follow along with this next process of identifying who your target market in your business is.
Think back to your business' purpose
Think back to why you started your business. What's the purpose behind your product or service? Who are you trying to help? What wants, needs or challenges are you solving? What exactly are your Vision, Mission, and Values in your business and who does that relate to?
This is the first step because everything you do in your business should be going back to this and driving this.
Reviewing your current customer base
The next easiest step to identifying your target market is to look at your current and most engaged customers.
- Why do they like you?
- Why are they buying from you?
- What do they all have in common?
- Who spends the most and why?
Once you identify those people and write down some of their characteristics, then you can flesh out your Customer Avatar in more depth and begin to look for more people like them.
Check what your competitors are doing
You should always be checking out your competition, seeing what they’re doing, and then doing it better.
Look at who they’re targeting with their language and the imagery and messaging they use in their marketing. Ask yourself - are these the kinds of customers I want? Do these customers reflect my values? If so, then you can use the parts of their target audience that resonate with your business and take note of the language and messaging that could suit your audience to help your process in identifying your target market.
Analyse your product/service niche
Niching is very powerful, and scary. You could think that by niching you will have less people to market to. However, niching allows you more opportunity to become an expert in your field, which will attract trust and loyalty from your target audience.
Look at your products and services, determine what niche you’re servicing. What is the specific language used for this niche, the language your audience will speak? What are the solutions and help your niche provides?
Understand the demographics you want to target
Now that you've done all your research on what your target market could look like, it's time to start digging into the specifics. If you'd like a FREE Customer Avatar template that will help you achieve this easily, don't forget to download your copy today.
Think about these questions. How old is your target audience? Where do they live? How much money do they earn? Are you catering to a specific gender? Or even specific professions and industries?
Each demographic has its own language, its own words and nuances. You wouldn't speak to a teenager the same way you would to someone in their 40’s, right?
Understand the psychographics of your target market
Next step is diving into the wants, needs and problems of your target market. This is how you can refine your messaging even more specifically. What is your target audience thinking? What are they feeling? What kind of lifestyle do they aspire to? Do they have the same values as you and your company?
That last question is important. Often you will find people will stay loyal to a company because of their values, even making sacrifices on quality or cost because of the values. In fact, that's one of the top ways a business can achieve Cult Status in their community.
How to target your target market
Now you know who you want to target, how do you find them? How do you reach out to them and let them know how awesome you are?
Social media
Social media is one of the best ways at finding your target audience. There are plenty of ways to find them organically:
- Use hashtags to target specific keywords that relate to your target market
- Join or even create groups that align with your business and target market's values, and offer help and a forum for your target audience
- Create content that relate and talk specifically to your ideal audience
- Or even work with partners or influencers who have similar or the same audience as who you want to target
Paid advertisement
You can also use paid advertising on social media channels, such as on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn as well. You can target people through specific interests, professions, and other keywords to help you land your paid advertising right on their feeds.
Alternatively, you can do some paid Google AdWords. This way, when someone searches for a specific keyword or phrase that matches what your target market would likely search, if you’ve got the right words paid for, your ad will appear at the top of search results.
Create relevant content according to your demographics
The key for both organic and paid channels is having that understanding opf the demographics and psychographics of your target audience to easily make content that helps them, solves their problems, and adressess the pain points they have.
Short videos, blog posts, Instagram reels, and stories - the options for content that target your audience are so plentiful. From doing SEO work on your website to help you organically rank for keywords to doing podcasts with industry leaders that your target market would look up to and even holding events aimed at working with the right people in your industry, all of this is based on the clear understanding of who your target market is, and exactly how they think and feel.
When making content think about being educational and helpful, as well as entertaining and memorable. Then hit them up with a call to action which is irresistible. Not sure how to best take your target market on a journey that makes sense and flows easily? Let us show you why you need to be thinking about setting your marketing strategies and sales processes up with a Marketing Funnel.
Key takeaways
The key takeaways here are that just marketing, for marketing’s sake, is a waste of money. Take some time to research yourself and your products and services, and take the time to research your target audience.
Knowing WHO they are and WHAT they want will give you more power with your marketing. It will be more effective and give you a better return on investment long-term.
Plus, when you’re doing your marketing and creating all this content, seeing it work well makes it more worthwhile. You can have more fun with your marketing, forming a bond with your target audience, helping them out, building rapport, and ultimately growing your business.
For more advice and learning on how to better market yourself and your business to your target market, check out our podcast episode of The Make It Happen Show from award-winning digital growth agency Founder, Brett Campbell below.
