The Target Market
Definition: A specific group of consumers at
which a company aims its products and services
Your target customers
are those who are most likely to buy from you. Resist the temptation to be too
general in the hopes of getting a larger slice of the market. That's like
firing 10 bullets in random directions instead of aiming just one dead center
of the mark--expensive and dangerous.
Try to describe them
with as much detail as you can, based on your knowledge of your product or
service. Rope family and friends into visualization exercises ("Describe
the typical person who'll hire me to paint the kitchen floor to look like
marble...") to get different perspectives-the more, the better.
Here are some questions to get you started:
·
Are
your target customers male or female?
·
How
old are they?
·
Where
do they live? Is geography a limiting factor for any reason?
·
What
do they do for a living?
·
How
much money do they make? This is most significant if you're selling relatively
expensive or luxury items. Most people can afford a carob bar. You can't say
the same of custom murals.
·
What
other aspects of their lives matter? If you're launching a roof-tiling service,
your target customers probably own their homes.
Once upon a time,
business owners thought it was enough to market their products or services to
"18- to 49-year olds." Those days are a thing of the past. Because
the consumer marketplace has become so differentiated, it's a misconception to
talk about the marketplace in any kind of general way anymore. Now, you have to
decide whether to market to socioeconomic status or to gender or to region or
to lifestyle or to technological sophistication. There's no end to the number
of different ways you can slice the pie.
Further complicating
matters, age no longer means what it used to. Fifty-year-old baby boomers
prefer rock 'n' roll to Geritol; 30-year-olds may still be living with their
parents. People now repeat stages and recycle their lives. You can have two men
who are 64 years old, and one is retired and driving around in a Winnebago, and
the other is just remarried with a toddler in his house.
Generational marketing,
which defines consumers not just by age, but also by social, economic,
demographic and psychological factors, has been used since the early 80s to
give a more accurate picture of the target consumer.
A newer twist is cohort
marketing, which studies groups of people who underwent the same experiences
during their formative years. This leads them to form a bond and behave
differently from people in different cohorts, even when they're similar in age.
For instance, people who were young adults in the 50s behave differently from
people who came of age during the tumultuous 60s, even though they're close in
age.
To get an even narrower
reading, some entrepreneurs combine cohort or generational marketing with life
stages, or what people are doing at a certain time in life (getting married,
having children, retiring) and physiographics, or physical conditions related
to age (nearsightedness, arthritis, menopause).
Today's consumers are
more marketing-savvy than ever before and don't like to be "lumped"
with others--so be sure you understand your target market. While pinpointing
your market so narrowly takes a little extra effort, entrepreneurs who aim at a
small target are far more likely to make a direct hit.
Conclusion :
The Target Market a specific group of consumers at
which a company aims its products and services. Target customers are those most
likely to buy from you. Do not be tempted to be too general in hopes of getting
a larger chunk of the market.
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