How to find your target market

30 July 2010 No Comment

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A mistake many small business owners make is falling into the trap of marketing one-on-one. That is, spending too much time on different marketing tactics that never really leverage the full potential of a business’s time, money or resources.

The best example of this can be seen with the emergence of social media. Millions of small business owners spend hours each day on sites like Facebook and Linkedin, attempting to market their product or service on a one-to-one basis, never really indentifying with their target market as a definable group.

What I believe to be the fastest and most profitable way to grow a business is to identify a target market, clearly define where it exists as a group and then implement one-to-many marketing strategies to that group.

The first step is to find the “who” the followed by “where”.

Consider your choice of media

The choice of media to communicate your marketing message needs to be strategically chosen. For example if your target market are retirees in the 55 to 65 age group, then social media would be to far less effective than if your target market was say Internet Marketers.

The top 15 questions you need to ask yourself when identifying and defining your target market are:

1 – Who is already marketing to this same group effectively and therefore has an existing client list?

2 - Which Associations does your target market belong to?

3 – What does your target market read on a regular basis? ie Magazines, Newspapers etc

4 – What blogs are there online that reaches your target market?

5 - Where does your target market live if geography is important?

6 - What seminars, trainings or events does your target market attend?

7 - Who else is trying to market to the same group that you could do a joint venture with?

8 - Where does your target market network on a consistent basis?

9 - What online communities or forums does your target market participate in?

10 - What radio or TV programs does your target market tune into?

11 - What trade shows or exhibitions does your target market attend?

12 - What industry groups does your target market belong to?

13 - Where can you source a mailing list of your target market?

14 - What sporting clubs or other personal activities does your target market have a preference for?

15 - What social media sites are engaging your target market on mass?

16 - Do you have a list of past clients that you have not kept in contact with?

Here is what I suggest you do. Set aside an hour or two and really research each of these 15 questions and write lists of answers to each. This will then give you a guide as to where to place all of your marketing attention in the coming year. The choice of media to use will be obvious once you identify where the group is.

You want to make sure that you really do some in depth research in answering these questions. Do not just skim through this exercise as you will not gain any benefit from it. By developing a large list of places your target market already gather together in groups though will put you in a position of power to effectively market your business.

For example in the case of the financial planner looking to target retirees between 55 to 65 he might answer question 14 with the following:

- Golf Club
- Bowling Club
- Local Church Group

Now if you want to market to the members of these clubs and groups because that is where your target market is then the choice of media will probably be either placing an ad in their monthly newsletter, or being an active member yourself of these groups, or both.

Author Bio John Bogiatzis is small business Attraction Marketing Specialist. For the last few years, John has spent most of his time developing and researching some of the best business and marketing strategies for SMEs. Along the way, he’s managed to build a profile in Australia as a leading expert on the subject and has interviewed some of the greatest minds on small business growth. More information about John can be found at www.johnbogiatzis.com.

Comments From The Forums:

Burgo said:

You know 24 years ago there were no such thing as Facebook, twitter, blogs and so on, so had to target our market differently.

One thing that I was forced to do was to decide whether I wanted to be a generalist or a specialist, this decission then gave me a larger or smaller market to target.

I chose to become a specialist and thereby creating a neich.

Marketing to a neich is much more cost affective than trying to market to a whole market. There are others in this whole market that do the same type of work as you, where as in a neich you may not have any one else to be concerned with.

When I started carpet cleaning there was no one specialising in small area carpet cleaning and pet stain treatment, and although some carpet cleaners have got into the pet stain treatment, few if any have taken on the small area carpet cleaning of say one room.

Even now after having been retired for a couple of years there is still a demand for what I do.

I would definately use the clubs as a good place to market your products through, and I picked up heeps of work by cleaning surf life saving clubs and my local Churches.

Building a data base and contacting past customers is very affective especially if you can produce an add on product.
Send them a monthly newletter.

How do you reward your customer,. Do you send them a Thank you card with a $ 2.oo scratchie inside