Who is your target market, really?

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Topics to be covered today

1. Audience definition
A while ago I was starting a marketing campaign for a client and after a nice long chat about goals the question comes up .. “So who is our target market”?

The client answers, “Everybody that has a business”.

WRONG! Defining your audience is a crucial step in marketing (online and offline) and unfortunately, this is a step that most people never go through. They assume their market is everyone and they move forward without any precision in their campaigns. Lack of precision WILL result in lack of conversion.

Your audience is going to determine

• your keywords
• where you go to market your product/service
• how you position your product/service
• the product/services that are complimentary to yours
• and so on

SO … The more information you have about your audience the better off you will be able to address them and the problems/issues that they may be facing.

Things to look at when determining your target market are

• Geographics (location, climate, pace of life, etc)
• Demographics (age, religion, income, education, marital status, etc)
• Psychographics (attitudes, beliefs, emotions)
• Technographics (technologies used, etc)

Audience Definition Example:

Bad
All Businesses

Ok
Small to medium businesses based in California with annual revenues in excess of $1M

Better
Woman-owned businesses in the pet food industry, based in California with annual revenues > $1M. Organization size less than 10 people experiencing rapid growth over the past three years.

Can you tell the difference? When your target market is sufficiently defined you should be able to picture them in your head. Once you have this level of understanding of your audience – your keywords
will get better because you can craft them to appeal to a specific trait. With better keywords you will get more targeted traffic and with more targeted traffic – your conversion rates will be higher.

Sound simple? It can be if you practice.

I almost forgot – it is OK to have more than one target market as well. You just want to run through the audience profile for each one.

The daily take …

1. Audience definition will help you precisely target your market(s)
2. 4 areas to look at when defining your market (Geographics, Demographics, Psychographics, Technographics)
3. When properly defined you should be able to see a mental image of your customer
4. It is OK to have more than one target market

Coming Up … What’s up ROI? Calculating Return on Investment.