When it comes to marketing your products or services to your audience, it is important to narrow down who your target audience is so that you can find them and provide them with the solution they are seeking, creating a win-win for both parties—your audience gets the product or service they need or love, and you get paid. Your ideal customer can ensure you a steady stream of revenue and growth over the years. Always keep in mind that your target groups are looking for two things; a strong value proposition and a cost-effective solution that convinces them what you’re offering is the right choice for them.
Why Target Market Is Important in Branding
Regardless of your brand’s mission, identifying and gaining the devotion of your target audience is a necessary means of reaching your brand objectives. You will find that knowing your target market inside and out will contain all the information you need to achieve your brand marketing goals.
Conducting Informal Market Analysis
The following questions will help you assess your market. Make your research and analysis as complete as possible.
- Who is your target audience?
- Where is your target audience located?
- What do they think about your current brand?
- What would you like them to think about your brand?
- How will you attract them to your products or services?
- Who else is competing for their loyalty?
- Are you targeting business or consumer sectors?
Find the people who are currently using or are asking for your product. That’s your initial target audience and they often know what it needs to succeed. If applicable, identify who is currently buying your products or services, as well as any common factors including demographics or psychographics. Once you do, you can survey them to gain their current opinion of your brand. Always offer some type of coupon, gift card drawing or other incentive for participating, and of course, thank them for their time. This can help you check the current pulse of your brand reputation with current customers. What do they love? What could be better? You can then also incentivize them to spread the word with a referral or loyalty program. Next, it can be helpful to ask the following questions:
- Who is my business a good fit for?
- Who would buy my product?
- What pain points can my business solve?
Consumers are constantly looking for brands to give them answers and solutions, so if you can do this, you’re already on the right track to moving your business forward.
Identify Why a Customer Would Want to Buy Your Product/Service
Identify your product or service’s characteristic features and benefits as related to the analysis above.
An example of market segmentation would be considering the customer who would benefit most from a focused aspect of the product. There are many different consumers who desire safety as a benefit when purchasing a car. Rather than targeting everyone in their promotional strategy, a car manufacturer would opt to target a specific group of consumers with similar characteristics, including families with young children.
In a column, list the features of your product/service. In the other, list the benefits each feature yields to the buyer. See the example based on our theoretical example of car safety features and benefits.
| Features: | Benefits: |
| 1. Anti-lock Brakes | 1. Helps prevent wheels locking up in emergency stops, allowing the driver to steer to safety |
| 2. Seatbelts | 2. Passenger restraint system to prevent ejection or collision with the interior of the car |
| 3. Traction Control | 3. Helps the driver stay in control of their vehicle in icey or wet conditions |
| 4. Airbags | 4. Deploys in an emergency to cushion the passenger from physical impact with the vehicle interior |
Identify Your Ideal Customer
Who is most likely to use your product or need your services? Who will gain the most value from your offer? Start to paint a picture of your ideal customer by creating a list of all the different types of people who may suffer from the problems that you solve. There are three main ways to identify your customer:
Geographics: Where they are located
Demographics: Who they are
Psychographics: What they like based on their personality
Some questions you may want to ask yourself are:
- Where does my client live?
- Are they married?
- Are they male or female?
- How old are they?
- Where do they shop?
Use a Funnel Approach With Your Determined Qualifiers
Think of your market selection process as filtering through a funnel, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, and the widest section of the funnel might be gender or age. Assuming your product or service is gender and age-specific, you can narrow your audience down right from the start. Your second filter may be income level if you have a more luxury market product, you could filter further by lifestyle interests, or career path. If your business is brick and mortar, it makes sense to filter by location first.
Offer products based on the business and collective attitudes, beliefs, and emotions of the target market. The desire for personal development, better health, and more money are examples of psychographic variables. These are the emotional factors that influence your customers’ purchasing decisions. For example, a seller of luxury items would appeal to an individual’s desire for status symbols.
Segment Your Overall Market
It is instinctive to want to target as many people and groups as possible. However, by doing this, your promotional strategy will never talk specifically enough to any one group, and you will most likely turn many potential customers off or just barely pique their interest. This doesn’t cause them to identify and ask “What’s in it for me?”
Your promotional budget will be more cost effective if you promote to a target audience with one type of customer, and speak directly, clearly, and specifically to them. This allows you to create a highly focused campaign that will directly meet the needs and desires of a specific group.
Larger markets are most typically divided into smaller target market segments based on geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral characteristics:
Geographic – Potential customers are in a local, state, regional, or national marketplace segment. If you are selling a product such as farm equipment, geographic location will remain a major factor in segmenting your target markets since your customers are in particular agricultural rural areas. Or, if you own a retail store, geographic location of the store is one of the most important considerations.
Climate is a commonly used geographic segmentation variable that affects industries such as heating and air conditioning, sporting equipment, lawn equipment, and building materials.
Decide if your business is going to operate on a local, regional, national, or international level. Identify the geographic region where your market is located. Identify specific boundaries within which you will do business.
Demographic – Potential customers are identified by criteria such as age, race, religion, gender, income level, family size, occupation, education level, and marital status. Choose the characteristics of your demographic target market that relate most to the interest, need, and ability of the customer to purchase your product or service.
A demographic profile for a business would include such factors as customer size, number of employees, type of products, and annual revenue. If you are a business-to-business marketer for example, you may want to consider segmenting according to your target customer’s size. A printing company may decide to target only magazine publishers that publish more than one magazine because they need high volume accounts to make a profit.
Identify the following demographic characteristics of your market:
- Age
- Income
- Gender
- Profession
- Education
- Family Size
- Homeowner
- Marital Status
Psychographic – This speaks more to what type of person they are on the inside, personality-wise, than their basic stats. How those traits manifest externally will impact what types of products or services this person seeks and ultimately chooses to purchase, as this often dictates part of their personal value system. Some people will be bargain shoppers, while others will seek luxury options, and sometimes on the same exact budgets and incomes.
Consider what TYPE of person makes up your market:
- Lifestyle
- Fun-Seeking
- Family Stage
- Trendy
- Hobbies
- Status-Seeking
- Sports Enthusiasts
- Conservative/Liberal
- Forms of Entertainment
- Subscriptions
- Family-Oriented
- Technical
- Artistic/Creative
Let’s consider our earlier example of shopping for a car with safety features. The same exact age, income level, gender, and occupation demographics certainly yields two completely different people with two different approaches. Both people have a need for reliable transportation for their family for convenience, control, and comfort, so they seek an automobile of their own. They may both have small children.
One person places less emphasis on certain features because they prefer to keep things basic with the family car because it gets beat up and used anyway, and they like to save money so they can take the family to Disneyland and have an experience instead. The other person might have more refined taste in their possessions or worry more about accidents based on their personality and individual experiences in life. This person might also be more artistic, creative, or technical and request the vehicle be provided in a certain color or with certain technological features, with a specific safety rating and inclusive of non-standard luxury options and trim levels, all of which cost more, which not everyone is willing or able to pay. This is why psychographic information can be useful to analyze as well.
The important thing is to know who your target consumers are and what your customers are willing and able to pay for, and offer them what makes the most sense for that situation. It often comes down to effective listening and then matching your products and services to what your customers are truly asking for. The more targeted you can be, the better. Subscribe for more business, sales, and investing posts. Have a lovely day!
