Target Market
Do you ever feel you are working very hard with your business yet getting nowhere? Some may believe it is their product that is not a great seller but did you ever think it is that you are trying to sell to the wrong people?
Scenario:
Jane loves to crochet and believes she’s pretty good at it. So she decides to open an Etsy shop and showcase her best work.
Many people buy her crocheted baby hats and blankets but they never buy her gloves or shawls. She is very confused.
Jane just can’t understand why her best work is not selling yet some stuff is “flying of the shelves.”
Jane never looked into who is buying her goods. From the looks of it, I would say new moms are.
Jane simply needs to do some research to find that there could be a market for selling crocheted baby clothing.
If Jane continues to make shawls and gloves and not make more baby hats and blankets, her small business may just go under. She is wasting time and money making goods nobody is buying.
Know Who You Are Selling To
When you go into business you need to know who will buy your stuff. Otherwise you may be going in blind and thus, lose money and precious time. The people that are more willing, able and almost excited to buy what you sell are called your TARGET MARKET.
Before you attempt to make anymore sales, you need to figure out who your target market is.
Target Market: a group of customers that a business has decided to aim its marketing efforts and ultimately its merchandise toward. Wikipedia.
How Do You Know Your Target Market?
Easy. They are the ones that will buy from you. They have an affinity for your product.
Oh! You need to know how to find out who they are.
Defining Your Target Market
Here is a series of questions you should answer. You do not need to answer all of them but surely take each one into consideration when you are trying to figure out who your marketing efforts should target.
While answering the questions below you should be able to eliminate much of the population, thus giving you a mental vision of who your target market is. Feel free to draw a picture or find an image of her online and print it.
(For simple ease of typing and knowing that my target audience is moms, I will now use the term “her” in reference to your target market, but you can certainly have men as yours.)
Is your market female, male or both?
How much do they earn a year?
What is their life like? Are they single? Kids? Married? Divorced? (This helps to determine who buys what and when for the household.)
How old is your customer?
Where do they live? The city? Country? Beach? Desert? Rural? Suburbs?
What beliefs, hobbies, and interests to they have?
Who is already buying your product (or reading your blog)?
What is her average day like?
What worries them?
What makes them happy?
What do they do when they get off work? Do they work at home?
Do you now have a vision of who he or she is? Can you picture her life? Her spending habits?
Did you print a picture of her? If you did, place it somewhere where you can see it every time you work online. This will help you to “talk” to her more easily on your blog, your Facebook Page or in your emails.
See First Steps to Marketing Online for Mom Business Owners for more info on where to market your WAHM Biz.
What To Do Once You Determine Your Target Market
Now that you know who your target market is, you can easily come up with marketing ideas and campaigns, for instance, what to say and share on your Facebook Page or what to write on banners, ads, tagline, branding, and your elevator pitch. You can even evaluate what colors work best for your site to make your target market feel more comfortable and thus more willing to make a purchase.
The ideal situation is to get into your target market’s head as best you can to determine where and how to market to her. You have an image of her and you also evaluated her lifestyle. It is not a big step from here to learn how to market to her. The next step is to figure out where your product will be seen by her and what are the best words or copy that would get her to buy your product.
Copywriting is the act of writing copy (text) for the purpose of advertising or marketing a product, business, person, opinion or idea. The addressee (reader, listener, etc.) of the copy is meant to be persuaded to buy the product advertised for, or subscribe to the viewpoint the text shares. Wikipedia
Now answer the questions below to determine where and how to market. You may need to do some research into the demographics of various platforms to see where your target market “hangs out”.
Where to market. Online or offline or both?
How to market. Newspaper, online ads, fliers, Facebook, forums. blogging?
What do your sell? What do stop selling?
What do I say in the ads? In my blog? On Facebook?
More Help
You have figured out who your target market is. You know what she looks like and her lifestyles. You may even have an idea of where to market to her, how to do this and what to say.
Below are some more resources that will help you figure out where to market and how:
-Google Analytics You can find out who is coming to your site, how long they stay, where they are from, who sent them to your site and so much more. Having Google Analytics for your site is absolutely necessary in helping you figure out what to do next for your site. It also helps you to know if your marketing on other sites is working by knowing if visitors are coming to your site from there. I have written a basic post about Google Analytics.
-Useful Social Media is my Pinterest board with over 40 pins talking about demographics and stats of various social media sites.
-If you have a certain platform or blog you would like to advertise with or at least find out what their readership is like, you can always request a media kit. This may tell you how many readers and some demographics in which you can see if it is a good match for your audience or target market.
-Simply type in your target market keywords into a Google Search and sites and blogs that cater to that audience will be listed. These are sites that are popular for those keywords and a great place to advertise, guest post or just comment to get your name and business out there.
One more tip: make sure your target market is big enough for you to make a profit and sustain your business (at least online). Come up with your main keywords for what you sell. For instance, if you sell crochet baby hats your keywords would be “crochet baby hats”, “crochet baby caps” “crochet for baby” or even “crochet hats”. Take those keywords and plug them into Google Adwords Keyword Tool. This free tool tells you how many people search for those words in a month. You want at least 5000. But really, the number is relative to the industry and which words you use. The idea is that you need to know if people are searching online for the stuff you sell; there is a market online for them. The bigger the search number the better.
Knowing your target market is the first step to marketing, advertising and simply getting exposure for your business. Knowing who you are targeting whenever you make any move online is vital to managing your business online.
Always look at the image you printed and know you are making her happy by selling your product to her.