How to Determine Your Target Market?

Are you having trouble figuring out who your target audience is? Don’t worry. Even the biggest corporations struggled with this when first starting. This essential step is often something businesses skip, and most of them realize their mistake sooner or later. Hopefully, you’re reading this sooner rather than later.

Not knowing who your target audience is is a waste of time, money, and resources. No matter how great you think your product is, there are others who won’t agree. This is why you have to find your target audience. Knowing this information helps to market your product in the most effective way.

So how do you figure out who your target audience is? Sometimes the answer is evident, while other times, it’s more complicated. Your target audience is the people who are going to be the ones that will purchase your products, use them, and then tell others about them.

If this sounds like something you’re struggling with, it’s a good thing you’re reading this article. Below, you will find a list of questions to ask yourself to identify the individuals you need to market to.

1.  What is your target demographic?

To determine your target market profile, you need to know their characteristics. You may be thinking, yeah, it sounds like a good first step, but how do I figure that out. Here are the questions you need to ask yourself to find out their demographics.

• What is their age? You may wonder if their age matter. It does if there is a significant age difference, while a few years won’t matter as much. Someone in their late teens to early 20s probably isn’t worried about an anti-aging home or buying a home. You don’t have to do a specific age; instead, choose an age range.
• Are they married or single? It makes sense the single people would be interested in products than those who are married wouldn’t.
• Are they male or female? This is important when choosing your market audience for obvious reasons.
• Determining where your target audience lives helps with knowing what type of language to use—knowing where the individual lives help to connect with them in ways they understand and accept. People who live in New York will want products vastly different from those who live in California. You may also want to do localized advertising or regional advertising, and you’ll need to determine if it’s worth the cost.

2.  Who did you initially make your product for?

Who did you make your product for?  Sometimes this may be the only question you need to answer. When you started thinking about making your product, you probably had an idea who would benefit from it.

3. Where do they work?

If you’re in the B2B market, then the industry will matter more than if you were targeting consumers on an individual level. By determining which businesses, you are going to sell to and then market it accordingly. A few questions you need to ask are.

• What industry are they in? Are they large corporations or small businesses? Are they in the construction industry, or do they work in the tech industry?
• How many employees do they have? Knowing how many employees they have will help you determine how successful they are the amount of revenue they bring in.
• Are they brick and mortar or online stores? If it’s primarily online, you’ll have to get more creative since you won’t talk to them face-to-face.

4. How much do they earn?

I know most people aren’t fond of bringing the money factor into it, but it matters. If you’re selling a high-end item, you don’t want to market to people who will have trouble affording it. Think about it. What would happen if Tesla marketed to individuals who were on the low, middle-class end?Needless to say, they wouldn’t sell as many cars as they are right now. The reverse is true too.

5. What are their hobbies and interests?

You need to know the answer to this question to market to the right people effectively. If you’re selling hiking shoes, you want to market to people who enjoy the outdoors and probably not those who enjoy sewing.

This is especially important when using social media advertisements. They determine when and where to show ads based on the preferences you selected

6. What are their values, and what’s important to them?

Consumers are now buying more than ever from companies that have the same values as them. Many people no longer buy products from companies that they feel aren’t socially responsible and environmentally friendly. Another factor that developed in the last few years is that your political beliefs can cause you to gain or lose customers. It’s more important than ever to know your target audience’s values.

7. What type of items do they purchase?

What type of products and features is your target customer buying? Do they buy the same products, or do they switch back and forth between brands? If they did buy your product, would it be a continuing thing or a one-time purchase?

Understand why the customers choose what products to purchase. Is it an impulse buy or something they know they need or something they have to save for? What can you do to convince consumers to buy your product instead of your competitors?

8. Who Chooses What Products to Buy

If you have determined that your target audience had a significant other or children, find out who makes the buying decisions. It also may depend on your product too. Perhaps the wife makes day-to-day purchase decisions while the husband makes the decisions about higher-priced items. However, it works make find that out and then gear your marketing technique towards them.

9. What are your current customers buying?

Do your current customers like one product over the others? If so, find out what product it is and then target people in a similar demographic as your existing customers. An example of this is if you noticed current customers are buying a lot of pumpkin spice candles, pay attention to their age, gender, and other specifics to broaden your customer base. Another easy marketing technique, if you have a brick-and-mortar store, is to create a window or sidewalk display of your best-selling items.

10. What’s the best way to get their attention?

9 times out of 10, this answer will be online and, more specifically, social media pages. Social media pages have become a marketer’s dream. People spend more than 5 hours a day on various social media platforms and frequently click on ads and never have to leave the site to make their purchase. Another thing people like about social media because they can connect with companies and learn more about them and their brand.

Summary:

Figuring out who your target audience is is the best thing you can do for your business. This helps you know what direction you should take with your marketing and how you should market. If you create an entire campaign around the wrong audience, it will be a lot of wasted money with very little return.  Just asking yourself a few simple questions can make a huge difference between your business succeeding or failing.