Why using a target market is important in advertising

What is a Target Market?

In the marketing world, many valuable factors go into your strategy. While some factors may be more important than others, they all contribute to the final goal of getting your product to the people you would like it to. That group of people is known as your target market. A target market is a group of people that share certain characteristics and have been considered potential customers for a company’s services or goods.

Some of the characteristics that place potential customers in these markets are as follows:

Gender
Age
Income
Race
Education Level
Religious Beliefs
Geographic Location

This list of characteristics allows your company to place existing customers and those you would like to reach into specific groups. Having your target market defined will make the process of reaching your audience easier and help you stop spending money on advertising to the wrong people. Now that we know what makes up a target market, how do you find it?

How To Find Your Target Market

One of the best ways to begin to find your target market is to analyze the data you have collected from sales. There are many ways to collect your sales data. Data collection can be easy to do even if you have never done it. Some of the most effective methods of collecting data are either surveys or emails. These forms of data collection require little effort but get big results.

According to Grenis Media, about 76% of marketers fail to use behavioral data to target customers online with relevant advertisements. By simply collecting data, you will be a step ahead of most of your competitors and not waste money advertising to the wrong group of people. Surveys and emails will also allow your customers to give you feedback on how your business or your service has treated them.

Once you have your data, you must look for characteristics your buyers have in common. Finding these characteristics and grouping them allows you to easily narrow down and see which one of these groups are buying the most of your product, or which is buying the most often. It also allows you to see how much money your average customer spends on your product and if that average varies between certain groups.

Both ways of collecting data will help greatly in finding your market. Now that you have a good idea of what your customers have in common, you now can see which of your group of customers will be the most profitable to target. Understanding which customers you would like to target is key to finding out what type of target market you are after.

Types Of Target Markets

Now that you’ve collected data, you must decide what type of target market would be the best fit for your product. There are four different ways you can segment your customers. The types are as follows:

Geographic (Location)
Demographic (Population)
Psychographic (Lifestyle)
Behavioral

These different types of target markets can be decided based on what type of business you have and who your customers are. Take this example:

You and your competitor both own landscaping businesses in Florida. Both of you are looking to offer another service for current customers and also attract new customers.

Your competitor does not use a target market and decides to offer a new snow plowing service. However, you used a target market based on your location and know that there is no demand for snow plowing in the area. Instead, based on responses from surveys you collected from existing customers and knowledge of local weather, you decide to offer weed whacking.

By recognizing the needs of your target market, you are creating a better opportunity for your company to succeed by meeting the needs of the people who live there. Using a certain type of market will help you continue business with your current customers as well as attract new customers to your business.

Next Steps…

Now that you know your target market, the next step is putting your new knowledge to use. One step that can be taken is to create an advertising strategy specifically for your desired target market. This allows you to now advertise to the right people without wasting time and resources in other markets.

Reaching your target market will vary depending on what type of market they are and what characteristics they have.

According to HubSpot, marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in revenue. Not only will you be saving more money, but you should be making more as well.

However, to maximize profit, it is best to find out what type of advertising is best for your target market. OOH advertising may receive better results for some industries, while streaming audio may work better with others. Remember, digital and traditional tactics can work in tandem. Choosing which strategy best fits your target market is the next step in the process. Developing the right strategy can become exceedingly difficult and time-consuming. However, with the help of Media Place Partners we can make the process as seamless as possible for you.