If you are familiar with the term, you might be wondering, what exactly is a target market? It’s not difficult to identify your target market, but it is crucial to do so! Target market can also mean target audience. Target Audience groups come in a variety of forms, but understanding exactly who belongs to yours can have a huge impact on how well your marketing campaigns perform.
Avoid becoming mired down in technical terms such as market positioning or target audience segmentation. Whether you are attempting to contact people with your marketing, selling a product, blogging, or providing a professional service, it is crucial to understand the fundamentals of analyzing your target market.
Let’s examine the fundamentals of target audience definition, discuss its significance, and begin identifying yours.
What is a target market?
A target market is, in essence, the demographic you are attempting to “sell” to. It’s simply that simple. You are aiming to engage a certain group of people whether you are offering a service, a product, your influence, or content. Target markets can range in size from very tiny and precise to highly encompassing and huge. There is no one-size-fits-all target market example or cookie-cutter that applies to every organization. Target audience may be comparable among competitors, but since they are often unique to each company, it is crucial to identify YOURS!
Why is knowing your target market important?
Understanding your target market is crucial since it determines the course of all of your marketing initiatives. It frequently directs the specifics of how you establish and run your company from the ground up as well!
Let’s take the scenario where you are launching a modest cosmetics store with reasonably priced, stylish new makeup. You can choose to rent a place in a small building directly outside a women’s dorm on the adjacent college campus, or you can rent space on a street corner in town. Selecting a location in the middle of your target auidience—you should know that young women are your company’s most likely target—is a much better move for your enterprise!
If you decide to choose the street corner instead, does that indicate you’re doomed? Not always. However, if your business is situated directly in front of young ladies who are interested in beauty on a college campus, you will probably have far greater success.
That might seem like a simple example of a target market, but you get the idea: knowing who your target market is will help you define your business decisions, especially when it comes to marketing tactics and plans.
Who is your target market?
Now let’s apply this to your business: who is YOUR target customer? You might be able to tell right away, or you might need to give it some thought. Every business is unique, and some have far more obvious differences than others.
Note: I encourage you to take a few minutes to consider who you want to specifically target and sell to in your business, even if you are a part of a multi-level marketing firm and they have identified your target market for you. It’s not always the case that you and the company you collaborate with have the same precise target audience, even if they do.
Let’s take an example where you are using a multi-level marketing organization to sell boutique clothing. Women of all shapes and sizes between the ages of 18 and 70 may be their target market. All of those female demographics could likely be interested in the goods. But since YOU make up a smaller portion of their entire marketing funnel, YOU could want to focus on a narrower or more specialized group of women. Perhaps targeting other mothers, professional women, or women who are larger or smaller makes sense. You understand. It is a good idea to identify the specific target audience whether you are marketing the garments or any other MLM product.
It will enable you to focus your efforts more effectively and draw in a devoted audience.
Certain demographics constitute the target market for certain enterprises. For some, it’s a few distinct groups bound together by a shared interest. Don’t give up if you feel that you want to try selling your good, service, or expertise to two very distinct groups of individuals. You might be able to identify a commonality between them where targeting both groups still makes sense, or you might discover that doing so will drag your company in too many different directions, necessitating a commitment to just one to proceed successfully.
It would be beneficial to consider how you might promote to each of the two highly distinct target market segments if you can’t decide between them. Trying to keep both of them as targeted audiences would not make sense if the marketing strategies used to reach them are too dissimilar.
As you create a marketing strategy and plan, the more detailed information you can gather about your target market, the better. However, even if you can only think about the following characteristics of your target market, keep them in mind:
- What gender they are
- Their age range
- Their overall financial status (rich vs. middle class, etc.)
- Their stage of life (e.g., are they working women, mothers, college students, etc.)
- Their interests (where does this particular group of people spend their time and/or attention focused)
While it’s acceptable for your target audience to differ in certain areas, such as life circumstances and hobbies, you will be more successful in reaching them if you try your hardest to provide a generic response to the questions about who you are attempting to reach with your business.
I strongly advise you to set aside some time, regardless of the size of the business you are starting (or have already started), to identify and characterize your target market and some of its characteristics.
You will be significantly better able to create a strategy for HOW to contact them if you know WHO you are attempting to sell to or reach with your business!
