As a business entrepreneur it's extremely important for the health and growth of your company to have a refined and specific target market for your business and product. By broadly saying you target anyone who needs your services or product, it is not going to serve your needs as well as targeting and breaking your message down into a more specific grouping of people.
While targeting your marketing message to a specific group of people, know that you are not excluding anyone else from buying your product. However, you're focusing your efforts on a group of people that are more likely to want and need your product or services. This puts your money to work in a more efficient manner.
First start with your current customer that you have now. Analyze your sales and ask yourself some questions and make a list. What are they buying? What is the age group that they’re in? And what is the most specific item or service that has brought you the most business?
Next go to your product or service and work on your benefits to that item. (Make sure you’re not talking about features. Features are a completely different animal.) List out your product benefit and then list the type of people, age grouping, interest, etc. that would benefit from your product or service.
For example:
If you are a contractor that does home remodels and you want to target bathroom remodels, list your benefits and think about the target person for that benefit. You would probably end up with:
Homeowners
Parents between the ages of 25-45
Maybe aging adults
Income range
Specific Location
Age of home? Could be a factor depending on the contractorAnother way to help define your target market is to make sure to utilize analytics that are available for your website and social media channels. Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics, Pinterest Analytics, Twitter Analytics all feature information that will help you determine the age group, location, income level, and other important demographics that can help you refine and target your product services.
When you find and define your target market, you're also going to find out a lot of information about your target’s interests and lifestyle behaviors which you can include in your marketing message.
Also, know that you don't just have to have one niche or target in your marketing efforts. You can target different messages to different groupings of people. Like in the example above, you would probably market to younger parents differently than you would to aging adults for the remodel.
The purpose of all of this is to blend your message into their life in a way that speaks to them directly and encourages the call to action we are wanting from them. You do not want your message to just be an ad that bangs them on the head all the time.
While defining your perfect target market is not an easy task, it is one that you can refine as you go and grow your business.