Marketing your small business is essential to help it grow and thrive. But unless you target your marketing at the right audience, it’s not likely to be effective. You can spend a lot of money getting your message out to the general masses. However, you’ll maximise your return on investment if you tailor your advertising to the people who are most likely to be interested in what you’re offering – those people are your target market.

Now, you might have already concluded that your target market is (for example) parents, gardeners, gamers, or small business owners, but, in practice, those categories are still too broad. If you want to hone your message, it’s important to know exactly who your customers are and what they want. Here’s how to work that out.

Analyse your products or services before marketing them

Evaluate what your products or services do for people. What problems do they solve, and who are they most likely to appeal to? A good way to do this is to list a product’s features and, alongside each feature, list the benefits. For example, the main feature of the phone charger you’re selling might be that it charges twice as fast. The benefits would be that it saves your customers time and spares them the inconvenience of running out of battery. Therefore, your target market would include busy people who can’t function without their devices.

Examine your existing customers

Have a look at who is buying your product or service already. Why do they choose to buy from you? Are there any commonalities? If you see similarities between the customers who generate the most business, take note of them.

Keep an eye on your competitors marketing

Check out your competitors’ marketing. Who are they targeting, and how? Unless you have a significant commercial advantage over them, it’s advisable not to compete for exactly the same customers but instead look for a niche market that you can target.

Narrow down your key demographic

By thinking about who your products or services are most likely to appeal to, you can identify your target demographic and tailor your messaging towards them. Ask yourself how old they are, where they live, what they earn, how their family is structured, what they do for a living, what their personality, attitudes, values and interests are, and what their ideal lifestyle might be. 

Sanity-check your findings

Once you’ve come up with a potential target market, ask yourself the following:

• Is it a large enough group of people to be viable?
• Will they find my product or service affordable
• Does my product or service really appeal to them?
• Will it be easy to get my message to them?

If you find that you’ve narrowed your target market down too much, you may wish to broaden your criteria a little. Or you could create different messaging for different groups.

Have you identified your target market and want to create a website or landing pages to funnel them towards? Get in touch with us to learn about our affordable small business website packages.