Entrepreneurs struggle to identify a target market for their product or service. This article has tips on how to identify a target market.
When you launch a business and market your products, it is best to define your target audience and then conducting precision drops of marketing materials, in order to give you the best ROI in the form of closed deals. But what if you don’t know who your audience is yet? Even worse, what if you don’t know how to figure that out? Here are the tips you need to get started.
Marketing for Entrepreneurs
The statistics reveal that seven of every 10 entrepreneurs simply don’t know to whom they’re selling. Why does this matter? If you find the right audience with a need for your product or service, that’s much easier than talking a cold audience into a need they simply don’t have. Finding the right audience and then targeting your marketing efforts to reach them will accelerate your small business growth.
The first step toward finding your target audience is to understand exactly what it is you’re selling and why it will matter to your customer. Define that and you can start to re-engineer the sales process by figuring out your audience. Ask yourself what it is about the particular product or service that makes it “sellable.” List out a few bullet points about what needs your product or service fulfills.
Now consider who might buy your product. If you have already made sales, that’s easier; you have data that will show you the kind of customers that will be committed to buy. Can you determine basic data about them? Start with these four market segmentation categories:
Geographic
- Specific location
Demographic
- Age
- Gender
- Occupation
- Income
- Education
- Race
Psychographic
- Lifestyle
- Activity and interests
- Social class
- Values
- Attitudes
Behavioral
- What led them to your product (or service)?
- How do they use your product?
- What needs compelled them to purchase your product?
This may be a good time to conduct a poll of your current customers to determine what prompted them to buy, if possible. Talking to people that have considered buying or who became customers is a good way to find out more about your target audience. If you’ve made sales, your goal is to determine what you did right to close the deal—and then replicate that success.
If you’re a start-up or a new business, it’s a good idea to look at any competitors to see what they’re doing. How are they marketing their products and services? Look at their website and join any email subscription lists they have. Are they advertising? Do they have a social media presence? Where?
You may need to try several avenues to ascertain the best way to reach your audience. Look at your website analytics (assuming you have one) to see who is visiting your site, who is clicking on your ads, and how they respond with the information you’ve provided through your marketing channels.
Once you have these details in hand, a picture can begin to emerge of your target audience. The next step may be to seek small business funding to help fuel your new, more defined marketing process.
Small Business Funding for Small Business Growth
Benetrends helps fund small business growth. Our target audience is the entrepreneur seeking to overcome funding challenges to fuel their small business growth. We can help you reach your target audience with the funding for marketing to increase sales. To find out more, schedule a consultation today!