Dear Entrepreneur,

A well-defined target market is the first element to a marketing strategy. Your target market is the specific group of people to whom you are trying to sell your products or services. Understanding your market helps determine your potential customer base. Unlike mass marketing, which offers one product to everyone, target marketing aims a few products at a specific type of person.

Having known your ideal customer groups you will now need to be absolutely clear about what they want and need, and exactly what it is that you are going to offer them. This understanding will enable you to develop the specific marketing message and proposition that will most effectively sell the benefits of your product or service to them.

If you get these messages wrong, then it is almost certain that your marketing efforts will fail, as your customers will buy from your competitors instead. Your product, service, or business proposition will have missed the target completely.

Before you start to develop or choose your marketing strategy, it’s always worthwhile to speak first to a sample from your target audience. By doing this you will be able to check that your profile of your intended market has been the right one, and test your assumptions about what you think they want and why they could buy from you.

Once you have spoken to a sample of your target market and you are satisfied that you have confirmed your assumptions about their needs, you will be in a position to create or adapt a marketing proposition to sell the benefits of your product or service to that audience

With a thorough understanding of the needs of your ideal customers, you should then strive to create an offering and proposition based on four criteria that will give them a product or service that is:

Exactly what they want from you
Precisely when they need it
In a way that is convenient for them
At a price they can afford and are prepared to pay
If you are not convinced that your sales proposition meets all of these criteria, then you will need to study the profile of your customers again and revise your offering.

COMMON MISTAKES

Failing To Test
The most common mistakes made when targeting products and services towards specific users or customer groups are caused by not testing the assumptions you have made about your audience. You will waste valuable time and marketing budget if you launch a campaign towards an audience when you have not accurately identified who those customers are, and cannot precisely define what they want and why they could buy from you instead of your competitors.

Lack of focus
Do not buy into a list of unknown prospects, no matter how attractive it seems to get names of thousands of people you can blanket-sell to in the short term.

Yours Sincerely,
Kudi Konsult
Your Partner in Progress