Understanding your target market is vital to successful branding and marketing. Understanding your audience and the market you serve allows you to provide a superior customer experience every time. If you understand your target market, it can save you from wasting money on a marketing campaign that is not relevant to your audience.
Your target market is not everyone or every business that is near your business location. It’s only made up of people or businesses that are a good fit for your products or services. You can’t market to everyone, and you shouldn’t it would be a waste of time and money. You need to understand who your target market is so that you can create an effective marketing strategy.
Performing a target market analysis can help you learn more about your target market, and ultimately, understand what makes them tick. A target market analysis will break down who your customers are and where you can find them.
For example, if you sell high end in ground pools and outdoor living services, only a specific group of people is going to be interested in your products and services. They’ll be affluent adult homeowners. But you’ll want to know some more specifics about them in order to figure out exactly who you should be marketing to and where to spend those marketing dollars. This is where a target market analysis can be of tremendous help.
A target market analysis with Brand3 will focus on the five W’s and the H, just like journalism.
Who You want to identify who your current customers are, and who your potential customers might be. This information would include age, gender, marital status, location, homeowner or renter, education level, occupation, income. For a B2B situation, it would include industry, location, sales revenue, budget, etc.
What Ask what your customer’s needs are as they relate to your business. What are their interests and hobbies? Based on that information, you can determine what products and services they might be interested in buying from you.
When When are your customers most likely to buy what you have to sell? Do they buy just once, seasonally, or do they like to have an automatic refill or service? Are they frugal where they only buy new when something breaks, or do they buy whatever they want, when they want it?
This is also where you ask when your customers are most likely to visit your website, or view your marketing materials. Are there certain times of day or days of the week that are better? Do they pay more attention to billboards or emails? Or is social media their thing?
Where You need to know where your customers live and work. How big is the home or company? What is the population of the area? How many employees are there? Depending on what you sell, you may want to know what the weather is typically like.
Why Ask why current customers purchase from you. Is it pricing? Customer service? Your sparkling personality? Also, find out why they decided to buy from you instead of your competitors.
How How do your customers behave? How do they spend their free time? How do they decide when to make a purchase?
When we conduct your target market analysis, we use several different tools, including in person interviews, mailed or online surveys, social media analytics, Google analytics, your company’s past sales information, and more.
Once we have gathered all of the information, we develop a written report that lays out all of the information in an easy to understand way that gives you actionable intelligence. The use of graphs, charts and statistics will help you visualize your target market. Based on our analysis, we may make projections and predictions regarding how certain factors may affect your business.
Your target market analysis is invaluable in many ways, as it can help with decision making including:
Up until now, we’ve been discussing a target market analysis for existing organizations. A target market analysis and additional market research, including focus groups, are very useful tools for a startup company as well, because it can help shape the products and services you offer. You will know precisely what people and companies in your area are looking for, and you can step in and fill that need. You will find out if the potential market is big enough to support your product.
If trying to conduct your own market analysis sounds like a bit too much, you may want to consider working with a branding agency, like us, that can bring objectivity and experience. Brand3 performs comprehensive target market analysis for our clients as part of our Branding Services.
