How To Target Your Market

In our last post we asked “What Does It Take?” to build our business which primed us for our next two posts which today will be “How To Target Your Market.” In our next post we will discuss how to make your target market hungry for your products and services.

So how do we target our market so that we are not wasting time with those that may not or never will have an interest in our products and services? Let’s look at this from two different angles but both will lead us to the same goal but approached a little differently.

If you are already in business (if not we will get to that next so stay tuned for a few paragraphs or so), you can quickly come up with your target and here is what you do and how you do it:

Take a look at your best customer, your very best, top customer or customers. What do they do, what do they look like, how do they do their business, who do they hang out with, what makes them tick, what makes them, them?

Now don’t do this exercise quickly and say it's easy and only spend five (5) minutes on it, as this is very important and there is more to it than meets the eye, so let’s jump in.

Take a look at your best customer or set of customers, what do you notice about them right away? What do they all share to some degree? What type of businesses are they? Why do they stand out? What makes them special to you?

Don’t do this based on the amount of money they spend with you, do this based on them. Let’s use a few hypothetical scenarios to make this as clear as possible.

Let’s say that you sell a product or service to large companies that either use the product and or service or resell them. Look at the level of the companies that you are dealing with, managers, higher level, Presidents, etc.

Whatever the level, find out what these people like to do, what are their hobbies, where do they vacation, what are their favorite foods, what are their favorite sports? When are their birthdays, do they belong to any clubs or organizations, country clubs, etc.? You will start to see a pattern here that will help you to target who you should go after.

What about the companies themselves? What do they do, how do they do it, and who do they sell to?

Not only will this help you figure out who you are dealing with and how to broaden your customer base, it will make selling far easier and you will now open up a whole new set of prospects to target with a much better and clearer message. If you know their struggles and the pain they have and what they go through to accomplish their goals you can figure out ways to make their lives and their jobs easier which will have them welcome you in with open arms.

If you know what they're going through you will be able to help them better. If you know who they hang out with you will increase the pool of prospects you have. You will also be able to have those you are serving make introductions for you based on the fact that you have helped them. Never underestimate what others that you are serving can do for you – always do the best you can to take care of your customers.

If you haven’t started out in business yet but are getting ready to do so, keep all of this in mind. Map out who you believe your best customers and prospects will be. Determine why you believe this and make sure it is clear, not just a feeling.

You may have to adjust this as you go but you will have a clear path as to who to go after and who to stay away from. This will also help to keep you from going through problems that you could have avoided by taking some time to make this clear now.

Define your market and figure out what the problems are that they are facing. Figure out a way to take those problems away. If you do this you will set yourself so far apart and above your competition that you will have great success. This goes for all businesses as that is the point of a business – to solve problems. The more problems you solve the more valuable you become.

By doing the items in this post you will not only win the business you are trying to win, you will have potential customers seeking after you and that is where you want to be. You will become the go-to company and will own your marketplace.

Now that you know “How To Target Your Market” go out and make your mark on the world!

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