When it comes to dating, everyone has a type, it could be a physical type, mental or a character type, and yes the qualifications for cut out may differ but truth be told we all have a preference.
Same applies to business, we have got to identify our target market so that the effort and resources you put are actually fruitful and bring atleast a 70-80% outcome should bring money back to the company in terms of sales and profit.
Knowing who makes up this primary audience should be your goal when you are trying to identify your target market.
Below are some of the ways to identify your
1. Understand the customer problems that you solve
Start with the problem – A good way to determine who is likely to become your customer is to clarify the problem that your product or service addresses, understand the problems that you solve and use that to your advantage, make sure your products are customized to solve your customers needs and wants.
Example you can have delivery services to ensure working parents, wives or very busy individuals are able to have fresh vegetables,fruits and even their shopping delivered to their home and saved of the effort and hustle to have to got to the market to sort that out.
2. Paint a picture of your target customer
Note down all the different types of customers that suffer from the problems you solve. Listing out the characteristics of your typical customer is another good step towards identifying your target market. These characteristics need not be personal ones; they can pertain to lifestyle, income earned, disposable income, geographical location, hobbies, and many other things. Once done, you can start to build up a picture of these customers.. Also group them by market sector – are they manufacturers, recruitment agents, and gender, age, anything that helps you zero in on your target market.
Define them in as many relevant ways as possible by:
- Determine what needs your product fulfills
- Use a funnel approach
- Gather survey data to identify potential markets you might find it worthwhile to contact a marketing firm that can help you gather preliminary data.
3. Which specific customers will benefit from your offer?
Ask yourself:
- To whom will these problems be most troublesome?
- Who will have the most to lose by not dealing with these issues?
If you can demonstrate that the cost of NOT sorting out the problems is GREATER than the cost of dealing with them, then your case becomes compelling.
Take into account aspects like emotional upheaval, stress and the risk to reputation when implementing your solution, as well as a bottomline cost. It is all these factors that make up the value you are offering.
4. Think about niche markets
Today we live in the world of niche. For example, we are no longer prisoners of television schedules. We can watch what we want at our convenience, from almost anywhere in the world. Every person can enjoy a unique viewing experience.
The web is fantastic at delivering personalised products and services, cutting out many of the distribution challenges that previously existed.
These factors mean that it is a more effective strategy to be a big fish in a small pond, rather than the other way round. It will be easier to build your reputation and gain refferals. You will also find you get more from your marketing endeavours.
With what you already know, start to segment your market. Do you want to work:
- with particular types of people – high-net-worth individuals, men, women?
- in certain geographical locations – Peterborough, The ?
- around defined market sectors – manufacturers, accountants?
5. What company expertise can you offer?
One way of deciding on the right markets to pursue is to think about your business and its employees.
- Do you have particular areas of expertise? For example, do you have a lot of experience in particular markets, such as finance and accounting?
- Do you have unique knowledge of a specific geographical area?
- Are you better at getting on with certain types of people?
All these factors could help you establish a particularly attractive offering for your target market.
Take an accountant working alone in Nakuru, for example. For a start, working all over the country is probably not practical. They may therefore decide to only work with clients in the North West.
It may be that before going it alone they worked in-house for a couple of different entrepreneurial businesses. Therefore, the accountant may decide to make their marketplace ‘Entrepreneurs in the Nakuru’.
Suddenly, if you are an entrepreneur in the Nakuru, this is an accountant probably worth knowing. Because the accountant only works in this area, they are more likely to introduce you to the right people and know about schemes and funding available to entrepreneurs.
Meanwhile, by concentrating in this marketplace, the accountant knows which websites to look at and belong to, which publications to read and possibly write for, and which networks to attend. Within this target market it will be quite easy for the accountant to become known. Without limiting their market it would almost be impossible to know where to start.
6. Who are your competitors?
The market place has been termed as a jungle, an eat or be eaten kind of environment, where you have to keep your eyes open to discover an untapped opportunity or improve your products and services to rise and win over more customers.
Ever had one product that was just okay it did what you intended it to do but the challenges it presented were too much? Then you come across its competitor which is amazing doing the job better with less to none of the previous challenges.
Get to know what are their weaknesses and customize, innovate your products and services to have the strengths that solve the needs of the customers, that your competitors do not offer.
Creativity, is paramount to get your clients into your products advertise these strengths as your selling point to clients, let them know, show clearly why they should choose you and not your competitors, prove that you are truly the better option.
At Robisearch we help our customer reach their business goals and reach their greatest potential , kindly leave a comment below.
Robisearch transforming the world through Innovation.
By: Waithera Mwangi.