Who’s Your Target Market? Getting The Clients You Want

If I were to ask you who your target market is, what would you say?

Men? Women? Teenagers? People in your city? Or the standard “Everybody”?

That’s what I get most of the time when I ask someone this question. They say that everyone needs their product. That their service is something that anyone with a pulse would need and should be buying.

That might be true but how many of those people actually WANT your product or service? Just because you know they need it, do they know they need it? Do they care enough to believe they need it?

This is one of the major reasons that most businesses fail. They don’t know who their actual target customer is. They are practicing “Spray and Pray” marketing where they just throw a bunch of marketing stuff out at the world and then site back and see what works.

As a business owner, you need to drill it down to one very specific persona that is your target customer. Let’s re-phrase that a bit… your “Perfect” customers.

That’s who you want to focus on.

Look at your current customer list and see who your best customers are. Focus on them. What industry are they in? What are their hobbies? And most importantly… Where can you find more of them!

Once you get it down to defining who your perfect customer is, you need to find more of those customers. Where do they hang out? What magazines do they read? Do they have families? What age range are they in? What do they spend most of their time on?

Once you find that, you can focus your marketing and advertising efforts on those places. You can go to them with the message that will appeal to them, in a place that they will see it.

I always cringe when I talk to a business owner that is all excited when they just got a great deal on advertising in a new publication like a newspaper or magazine. I ask them who the demographics are for the magazine and we find out that the chances of their perfect customer reading that publication is very slim.

Think of it this way, would you advertise in the latest underage rock club if your products and services only appealed to the senior community? Of course not! It doesn’t make sense. But I see it all the time.

If you are in business to business sales does it make sense to advertise in a local community neighborhood paper? Doubtful. You might find that about 1% of the readers are either the owners of a business or at least in the purchasing position of a company. Just because that paper got distributed to 100,000 people and you got a great deal, doesn’t make it any better. You just wasted money talking to the wrong person.

That’s why it is so important to find your target customer… your PERFECT customer.

So, who is YOUR perfect customer?

Find this informative? Be sure to check out Branding Your Business & YOU. In today’s world, no one cares what company you’re with. They want a relationship with you. Let me know you how you can create a persona brand that will make you stand out from the crowd and become a category of one.

About The Author:
Ely Delaney is a dad, author, speaker, marketing consultant and Founder/CEO of Your Marketing University. His goal is to teach marketing in a simple easy to understand format that businesses can use to help gain marketing ideas & market their businesses to boost sales.

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