Pop quiz! What’s the number one rule in marketing? KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. As Entrepreneur.com describes it: “’Shoot for the moon if you miss, you’ll land among the stars’ doesn’t work in business. You’ll be shooting into the black expanses of space”. The power of your brand depends heavily on your ability to deliver a targeted message to a specific group of people that will convert into customers. So how do you identify this perfect group of prospective customers? Let’s first look at why you should. Return On Invest (or ROI for short) The main reason having a defined target market is so important to the development of your small business is ROI! Most small business don’t have immense budgets for big marketing campaigns. And even if they did, money spent on low ROI campaigns is money wasted. By clearly identifying your target market, small business can even effectively compete with large companies, especially ones that focus mainly on general campaigns targeted to anyone and everyone. Not only can having a specific target audience help your marketing ROI, it can also increase your product ROI as well. Knowing your target market well gives you the opportunity to fine-tune your product to perfectly match their needs. But more on that later. So How Do You Do It? In order to define your target market, here are 3 key questions you should ask. Firstly, if you already have a product or service, ask yourself—what is your primary value proposition? Or in other words, what makes your product better than the rest? You should also be asking yourself what your main features are? And then taking it one step deeper: what benefit does each of your features provide? It is important to determine the purpose of your product/service. Through this, you can then examine what type of consumer needs your product. Once you’ve loosely identified your ideal consumer, you need to start characterizing them in detail. The goal is to be able to narrow them down to a tee. Potential characteristics that you can use are gender age buying power income level geographical location marital status education level occupation ethnic background For example, if your product is a sleek, aesthetics-focused water bottle with the ability to keep liquids cold for a longer amount of time than most, your target market could be 24-30 year old women. Once you have a general description of who they are, you can then dig deeper and determine psychographic characteristics such as their personality, values, interests, hobbies, and other lifestyle descriptors. For our water-bottle example, digging deeper would be identifying that they are practical but girly women who live in Los Angeles and have a deep interest in fitness, wellness, beauty, and fashion. They spend most their free time attending fitness classes like spin, yoga, or pilates. They are heavy Instagram users, and enjoys sharing their fitness goals and experiences with their friends on their accounts. Get the gist? But Where Is This Information Coming From? There are several ways you could go about retrieving this information. First of all, look at your competitors. Who are they targeting? What type of consumer is purchasing their products? Who’s following them on their social media accounts? Don’t try to target their exact customers, but looking at the type of market they are targeting could give you a better understanding on who you should (or shouldn’t) be focusing on. You can also look at your own customers. Go into your Kashoo software and take a look at all your customers. Which customers are spending the most money with you? If you have more than one product, which one is purchased more often and by who? Your customers are the people who already like your brand and purchase your product. So how can you attract more of them? Conduct surveys to find out more about them and look for similarities in their buying behaviour, psychographic characteristics, and demographic descriptions. If you’re just starting out and don’t have customer information to tap into, try your personal network! Conduct surveys amongst your business and personal networks to find out whether there is a need for your product and who exactly are the type of people who have that need. There are also endless data that you can find online. Statistics Canada and The US Census Bureau provides invaluable data regarding the Canadian and American households. There are also tools like Prizm, Vividata, and Simply Analytics that you can pay for to collect market research data. Narrow It Down to Scale It Up Having your target market narrowed down not only makes it easier for you to craft your initial marketing message—it will also help when you need to scale your business. Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve already got your product and a good list of customers, it’s important to accurately identify your target market as these are the prospective customers with the highest likelihood to love your brand! Once you’ve got your customers on lock down, keep track of their information and bill them directly within Kashoo! You can also track every change you make to their account with our Show History function. Whether it’s an address change, billing information change, or even just a phone number change—never lose track of your valuable clients. Try Kashoo free today!
