batesvillechristmastrain.com – One of the keys to business success is determining the right marketing strategy. However, it must start by knowing the target market well. How to?

In this article, we’ll cover what a target market is all about, including how to define it exactly. Let’s see more!

What is Target Market?

The target market is the group of people to whom your product will be sold. Generally, the target market will have the same characteristics both in terms of habits, demographics, and others.

Target Market Benefits

In general, target market aims to ensure that your marketing is right on target. This is important to increase sales as well as measure the level of success.

Some of the benefits of identifying a target market are as follows:

1. Increase Sales

Focus on the target market allows you to make products faster and get to market before your competitors. As a result, your product sales will increase.

In addition, you will find it easier to develop products. All the data you have from your target market will help in determining the products that customers like. Not only that, your ability to properly meet customer needs will encourage customer loyalty. Remember, 65% of a company’s profits come from its loyal customers. If this is applied to every product, it will certainly give better results.

2. Knowing the Budget Required

Marketing activities that you do will cost money. If you don’t define a target marketing strategy in advance, you will try to target everyone. That is, the budget you need will be very large this way.

Even if you end up selling a lot, your profits will be relatively small due to high marketing costs.

3. Anticipate Competition Well

Every business model will experience business competition, except for very specific models. If your business has competitors, don’t worry too much. Your ability to anticipate competition will give you an advantage. The key is knowing your target market and seeing what your competitors are offering in that market. Then, create the advantages of your product that competitors have not been able to offer. In essence, knowing your target market can help you “stand out” from your competitors. That’s what a company like Nike does with its various products.

4. Makes it easy to prepare promotional content

A successful marketing is influenced by the advertising content used. The more in line with the target market, the more attention it will attract. Thus, the potential for product sales can be maximized.

Your target market will determine whether the promotion will be carried out through print media such as newspapers or magazines? Or digital marketing like video marketing? This requires data-driven judgment, i.e. your target audience.

5. Building Communication with Customers

By knowing your target market, it will be easier for you to communicate with your customers. The goal is to understand customer needs.

The communication you do can be by way of surveys or other methods. Because you already know your target market, you know who you deserve to involve in these activities. The information obtained will be very precise. This is important for determining the new product that you will create. Of course, the products that users need will be easier to sell, right?

6. Open Investment for Small and Medium Enterprises

Investment is an effective way of developing a business, especially for small and medium businesses. If you want others to invest in your business, show that it is well planned. One way is to show a clear vision and mission, including understanding the target market you want to reach. Thus, investors will be more confident in developing cooperationdo your business.

How to Determine the Right Target Market

Given the importance of the target market for your business, knowing how to determine the right target market is a good strategy. Then, how?

Let’s learn the steps one by one:

1. Starting with Assumptions

If you already have a product being marketed, you can see your current customers, then make a potential target market for your product. For example, your product is a youth fashion product that has an attractive design and is priced at an affordable price. These products are easy to buy through various marketplaces, apart from how to create your own selling website.

So, your target market is young people who tend to want to be different with unique designs. They are active smartphone users and like to shop online. In addition, your target market is those who buy a product by considering the price factor.

On the other hand, if you are just about to create a product, you can try to make assumptions about your product and who the target market is like the method above.

2. Observing Market Competition

Then, because every product must have competitors, you must be smart in observing the competition. This will give you a gap to win the hearts of customers to buy your product. The competition that occurs can be in terms of features, price and ease of purchase.

By studying how the market responds to your product and how competitors offer similar products, you can create or develop your best product. Apart from that, you can also look at what makes consumers buy your product compared to competitors’ products.

3. Communicate with Your Customers

To convince customers about the products you have, you can go out into the field to meet your customers. By asking them, you will find out about their needs and how your product has helped them at this time. Say, you own a travel business. You may find that your customer wants a package tour. With this information, you can be creative in creating attractive travel package products.

You no longer need to offer travel tours with locations that customers determine themselves. Because your customers also need your recommendations regarding the best tourist spots. This is also at the same time to prove the assumptions that you have previously made about your target market.

4. Take advantage of Analytics Tools

You can take advantage of technological advances to get the expected results. By using data processing tools (analytics tools), you can find out the characteristics of your sample target market. For example, you can use Google Trends to find out what is most searched for on the Google search engine. When you type in “world travel you will find results related to that search.

Then, you can add City tourist destinations to the tour packages that you offer for destinations. The reason, many users are trying to find information about the location.

5. Creating Buyer Personas

Buyer persona is a customer representation. You describe the figure of your potential buyer based on physical characteristics, demographics, and others. Demography is the study of population dynamics. To build a buyer persona, you can start by determining your gender, age, lifestyle, and more. With specific data, your target market will be easier to identify.

You can get data for buyer personas from various analytic tools. If you have a website, Google Analytics is one of the right tools. This tool is able to record information on visitors to your website, starting from their location, length of access, and even their profile. You can create more than one buyer persona, depending on your business type.

6. Describe the advantages of your product

After you determine the buyer persona of your potential customers and also your competitors, what is equally important is to show the advantages of your product. If your company offers products that emphasize features, then you should focus on explaining the sophistication of these features.

You can describe the convenience offered by your product to complete daily work. For example, products from Apple. By calling the product a premium product, the price factor is no longer a major consideration because the features that are presented answer this.

7. Creating Brand Positioning

Branding aims to create the perception of a product for customers. The role of branding is very important for the sale of a product. In fact, 91% of consumers tend to buy products from well-known brands. If you succeed in creating a brand positioning, your target marketwill be well formed. Furthermore, you only need to maintain your brand to get maximum market potential.

Factors That Determine Your Target Market

Some factors that can help you determine your target market are as follows:

• Locations for selling your products

Location is one of the factors when determining the target market with geographic segmentation. Remember, not all products you can sell anywhere. For example, a website creation service business. With this business, you can find clients from all over Indonesia online. However, if your business is laundry or car wash services, of course your target market will be limited to certain areas. At least, you can only determine the radius.

• Demographics of your potential product buyers

Demographics are everything related to population dynamics. This includes gender, age, education level, and more. If you know the demographics of potential buyers, of course you will know how big your marketing target is and what approach is most appropriate. For example, the children’s toy business. Even though the goal of marketing your product is for parents, the promotional content that you create will reflect the world of children, both in terms of design, color selection, typeface used and how it is delivered.

• Habits of Prospective Buyers of Your Products

By studying the habits of potential buyers, you will not only be able to determine what product you want to create but also the right time to market it. For example, if you run a cake business and consumers tend to buy products that are affordable, you can make products in economical packaging. Then, all the promotional activities that you do focus on the economic side and the price offered.

• Consumer Purchasing Power

Most consumers are very concerned about the price of a product as a major consideration. However, there are business areas that demand the quality of the products offered, in addition to price. One example is a wedding organizer, or wedding party planning services. To ensure that their special moments go perfectly, many people use the services of a wedding organizer instead of planning them themselves.

The reason, experience and accuracy in managing a series of processes is the key. No wonder consumers are willing to spend money to get the best service. So, if you are in a similar business, make sure you are observant in determining the best price for the services you offer, including providing various package options for different target markets.

Target Market Strategy

So, after knowing what a target market is and how to determine it, now is the time for you to choose the right strategy. Basically, there are four target market strategies: Mass, Differentiated, Niche, and Micro Marketing.

1. Mass Marketing

Mass marketing is an attempt to sell products to everyone. You heard right. This strategy does not implement special segmentation for consumers. Because, the products sold are general and intended for everyone. Examples are products for daily use such as toothbrushes, soap, and others. If the product you are creating is general in nature, you can use this strategy. Your focus is more on how more people know and buy your product.

2. Differentiated Marketing

If your product has started to target specific users, then you must start using differentiated marketing. This is a strategy that requires you to create different products for different target markets. For example, you can start to differentiate men’s and women’s soaps. Even adult and children’s shampoo. Usually, the sample target market in differentiated marketing is determined by demographic factors.

3. Niche Marketing

Niche marketing is a narrower target market strategy because it is related to specific consumer characteristics. For example, sales of toothpaste for sensitive teeth. Even though it has a relatively small market, it’s not uncommon for niche marketing to allow you to achieve better market penetration. If you apply the right strategy, you can become a market leader in that niche.

4. Micro Marketing

As the name implies, micro marketing targets a smaller target market. You can apply this strategy if the product you produce has limitations in terms of location, time or type of goods. Examples of products that can apply micro marketing are hotels, restaurants, music shows, to unique souvenirs.

What to Do After Knowing the Target Market?

Once you know your target market, there are several strategies you can apply to your product:

• Creating New Products

Your target market has explained in detail who your potential customers are and what the business opportunities are. So, you can create a new product by making sure all the elements are in accordance with the target market. These elements can be in the form of the type of product produced, product packaging, price offered, ease of delivery, as well as after sales service.

• Product Development

If you have issued a product and it turns out that it does not match the target market you want, you can do product development. One way is to do repackage (repackage). For example, by making smaller packages if your target market is people who like economical products.

You can also carry out promotional activities that target only predetermined targets. Besides being more effective, the costs required are certainly smaller.

• Retargeting

What if the target market is suitable but the increase in sales has not occurred? You can convince buyers by using social media for business and different promotional methods.

For example, if there are potential buyers who have visited your website but have not made a purchase, you can re-offer the product via Facebook or Instagram. The hope is to remind potential buyers about the advantages of your product.

Conclusion

Let’s Get to Know Your Business Target Market! Knowing the target market is very important, both for those of you who are just learning digital marketing and starting a business, or for those of you who want to increase product sales. Because, the target market is the right tool to make products that suit the needs of prospective buyers.

To find out your target market, you must first determine the segmentation, both in terms of geography, demographics and the economy. By using the right data, you will have a clear target market. The success of determining the target market correctly will be able to help your business grow well. Good luck!