I can’t tell ya how many times I’ve asked my clients, who do you want to market this (idea, product, or service) to, and they immediately blurt out “EVERYONE!”
It’s great to see them so excited and enthusiastic. But that’s when I also need to cautiously draw them in and guide them toward a helpful marketing reality. Establishing their target market.
I start out by repeating one of Seth Godin’s infamous lines... “Everyone is not your customer.”
Target your "target market"
Although your product or service may appeal to almost “everyone”, that’s not an effective way to strategize your marketing efforts or budget. When you’re marketing your product, you need to be speaking to a particular audience.
"When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one."
Meredith Hill
Choosing a target market, or “niching down”, is essential for all businesses, no matter what industry you’re in.
Not because your product won’t benefit a wide range of people, but because when you’re trying to market your product, you need to focus your time, energy, and money on a specific group, or “niche”, to be the most efficient AND effective!
This is what will determine your messaging, tone, and marketing strategy.
It’s not about making assumptions about your audience, playing favorites, being biased, or trying to offend anyone. It’s simply understanding who you’re specifically talking to, who most of your customers are, and how you, your product, or your service can benefit them. Especially if you’re looking for those valuable qualified leads.
When you’re working with a marketing budget, you want to know where you need to focus your energy, efforts, and money, and specifically who that would be.
Say you were selling makeup foundation. The process of niching down would look like this:
Go to where your target market hangs out
Once you know the details about WHO your target market is, you want to determine WHERE they hang out.
Do they spend a lot of time on social media? Are they businesswomen who are actively networking? Are they active fashionable women who regularly socialize? Are they athletic and spend time outdoors?
By establishing a clear target market, you can be confident knowing that your product is something that they’re looking for. You’ll then have a better idea of how and where to communicate to them, through your content and selected platforms and media.
For example, by using the above scenario, if you’re trying to reach a middle-aged woman with sensitive skin who enjoys being outside and wants the added benefit of SPF sun protection and toxic free makeup, you wouldn’t communicate with them, or reach out to them in the same manner that you would talk to young men who are motorbike enthusiasts.
Your messaging, tone, graphics, and overall communication methods would be different for each of those niches. This niching down exercise will help you focus in on where you’ll find your audience and where you need to pinpoint your resources, marketing efforts and budget.
You’ll then be better equipped to determine the most efficient and cost-effective method to market to that audience. Ultimately, you’ll not only reach and grow your target market, but you’ll also find that others outside that specific niche will still find and come to you.
If you want some guidance on determining or reaching your target market, I offer a free 30 minute creative review call where I can help you with your branding, marketing and promotional needs.
