When you are trying to market the products or services that your business offers to customers, it can be helpful to first determine who your target audience is. When you know who is most likely to buy what you’re selling, you can market to them in the most appropriate ways. You’ll want to determine things such as the age, income, location, and gender of your potential customers. Here are a few ways to figure out who your target audience is.
Look at Your Current Customers
If your business is already up and running, and you’re currently selling your products or services, who is buying them? Look at what you know about the people who are buying from you now, and use that information as a basis for determining the specifics of your target audience. People who are similar to your current customers are the most likely to become your future customers.
Evaluate Your Competitors
Check out the marketing tactics of companies that compete with yours. Who are they targeting their marketing to? Can you presume that their customer base is similar to yours? Learn from what others are already doing to shorten the time it’ll take to hit your marketing stride. If it works for them, it’s likely to work for you too.
Focus on Product Benefits
It’s common to think about what your product is or does when looking at marketing ideas, but it’s much more helpful to focus on the benefits that your product provides to your customers. Once you know what problems your product can solve, you can determine who is likely to have those problems and identify your target audience from there. When people are shopping, they think they’re buying a product, but they’re really buying solutions to problems. Putting your focus there will give you a leg up in marketing to the correct people.
Be Specific
It can be tempting to market your product widely, with the goal of drawing in customers from all areas. The risk here is that with generic marketing, you’re less likely to really grab the attention of the specific people who are most inclined to buy what you’re offering. Base your marketing on the specific audience you’ve identified to maximize your connection with them.
Identifying your target audience is a great first step in any marketing campaign. You can connect your marketing strategies on a personal level with the people most likely to become your customers.