Feb 26, 2018
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Marketing successfully shouldn’t be guesswork. If you want to reach your target market and motivate them to action, you first must understand who you are marketing to. As you set out to define your brand’s target market, there are key points to keep in mind.
Demographics are just the surface.
Demographics cover the basic information of your target market: age, gender, geographic location, ethnicity, etc. Demographics is the perfect start to defining your target market, but it is a beginning rather than the whole story. Psychographics are a crucial second step of research, where you discover a person’s values, religious beliefs, shopping habits, interests, and hobbies. As helpful as it can be to know that your target market is women in their mid-thirties, it would reap few benefits if you market to young mothers if your actual target market members are predominantly single with no children.
Understand people, not just statistics.
Along with the first point, understand that these are people. When marketing, that means connecting with your target market in ways that we connect with other people. Learn what values motivate the people of your target market. Seek to understand what drives them to act, and appeal to that motivation. These are people with individual stories, experiences, values, and desires that have shaped them. In order to market to these individualities, find where the individual overlaps to create a harmonious story with which your brand can connect.
Don’t be biased.
Because as a brand you have your own agenda, sometimes you may become blinded by your own biases. You may have an idea of who should use your product, what target market should want to purchase your services, or how your target market should feel or act. Do not let your prior conceptions of the target market distract you from how they really are. Do not offer leading questions in research, use a sample that represents your target market well, and accept the research obtained as more accurate than your opinion. If you ignore the accurate aspects of your target market, you could unintentionally cause your brand to fail or fall short of its potential.
What problems do they have that you can solve?
The only way you can offer your target market a product or service that they would want to purchase is if you first identify their concerns and problems that need to be addressed. By listening to their complaints, desires, or problems with how things currently are, you then have an opportunity to offer them something better. Sometimes the key to marketing to the target market is framing your brand in a way that displays it as an answer to their concerns, making it relevant to them.
What makes you different for others?
There are probably a lot of other places that do what you do. So what makes you different? What about your target market’s values would make them want to use you instead of someone else? In order to market to your target audience, you need to know what makes you unique. Finding what makes you different will assist in marketing your brand as something that stands out. You don’t want to be redundant to your target market.
Understanding and connecting with your target market is crucial to producing extraordinary marketing. To acquire customers, know them. Let them see why they should know you. As you move forward with marketing, let Savavo help you construct a marketing plan that will have the foundation and understanding needed for success.