In today’s competitive marketplace, businesses cannot afford to market to everybody. Instead, success lies in reaching the right people with an appropriate message. This is where understanding your target market comes in. Hence, identifying this group will help you channel your marketing efforts toward them, shape the message, and gain the best return on investment. The target market strategy involves the method you use to identify, analyse, and then reach the customers you want to reach the most.
In this article, we’ll discuss target market definitions, show you how to identify your ideal target consumer, and ultimately demonstrate how to develop an efficient marketing strategy.
What is a Target Market?
A target market segment of customers to which a business directs its products from services offerings. These People Are the most likely to purchase one item since they share certain characteristics such as demographics, interests, needs, or behaviours. When you define a target market, you narrow your marketing audience down to a very small segment of the population. By doing this, you can spend your dollars more wisely and get better results from your message for increased returns on your investment.
Target Market vs. Target Audience
Although it has become commonplace to use the two terms interchangeably, it is a very common mistake. The target market is the broader group of potential buyers of your product or service, whereas a target audience is the specific segment of that market that you are targeting with a specific marketing campaign.
For example, the target market for a luxury car may be the high-income age group 35-60, whereas women executives in metropolitan cities may be the target audience for a specific advertising campaign.
How to Find Your Target Market
To determine your target market, you must subject the target to several research and analysis processes. Here is how you can go about indeed finding the target market:
Analyse Your Product or Service
A good starting point is writing out your product features and the benefits associated with each one. Then, think about who is going to be using these benefits.
Evaluate the Market Size
Before you even think about going for a segment, you want to estimate what is referred to as target-market size — in other words, the number of potential customers in the target market. On one hand, it may seem easy to control a small niche market. But do take care that the market in itself is big enough to support your revenue expectations.
Conduct Market Research
Research allows you to validate your assumptions. For example, surveys, interviews, focus groups, or online analytics will give you an insight into the behaviour and preferences of consumers. The factors of the target audience in research include demographic, psychographic, and behavioural characteristics. Look closely at the competitors, including who they target and how you might be able to differentiate yourself from them.
Create Customer Personas
Create detailed personas of your target consumer. This persona contains demographics, motivations, pain points, and buying habits. Personas keep your marketing efforts focused and will help understand the target audience.
Target Market Examples
Let me tell you about a few real-world target market examples so that the concept gets some clarity in your mind:
- Nike: Catered to athletes and fitness fanatics from all walks of life, but categorised according to sport and performance needs.
- Tesla: The customers that they have in sight are people who are environmentally aware and have a very high disposable income.
- Dove: Females aged 18 to 45 interested in self-care and maintaining a positive body image.
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Conclusion
Target market denotes those customers most likely to benefit from and purchase a product or service. Researching demographic, interest, and behavioural buying criteria will yield insight into the most promising customers to consider as prospects. Once defined, the target market strategy determines how to fine-tune the marketing mix-for instance, messaging, channels, and promotions-according to the particular needs of that audience. A clear target market strategy will help you attract your ideal customers, increase the efficiency of your marketing, and fuel the growth of your business.
FAQs
Which market segment shares a customer’s age, gender and ethnicity?
The segment primarily defined by the demographic aspects of a customer’s age, gender, and ethnicity is termed as demographic segment. It types persons based on some characteristics of individualism and helps adjust the marketing strategy of businesses.
How do you determine your target market?
You can determine the target market by analysing the product or service, researching the present customer base, and executing market segmentation according to demographics, interests, and behaviours. This helps identify the group of people who are most likely to buy from you.
