Let’s discuss eight easy ways to identify your target market and create a useful customer profile. Remember, targeting a specific market does not mean that you are excluding people who do not fit your criteria.

Identify Your Target Market

Why is it important to identify your target audience? A target market allows you to focus your marketing budget and brand message on a specific market that is more likely to buy from you than other markets.

1. Narrow Your Focus

One of the ways to identify your target market is by narrowing your focus can improve your aim when getting more business. The shotgun approach to prospecting blasting away in all directions in the hope of finding a customer is a common mistake. 

Instead, we have to aim with the precision of rifle shots with a clear perception of the targets. Make sure that prospective clients need your product or service.

2. Know Their Geolocation

One of the ways to identify your target market is to find out where your customers live. Knowing their geographical pattern can help you plan sales calls or target your direct mail pieces. This, in turn, can help you increase sales and decrease costs. If you can pinpoint a city or a region, can you narrow your search further to specific streets or specific pockets of an area?

3. What Do They Have in Common?

Look for common characteristics among your clients. People who buy a specific product or service are often alike in age range income occupation and lifestyle.

They read similar material and they tune in to similar radio and television stations. These common characteristics known as demographics help us know what we are looking for when we are prospecting for clients.

4. Psychographics

This is difficult to pin down and you may have to meet a prospective client face-to-face before you can answer this one. Attitudes, interests, and opinions collectively called psychographics can help us find the answers to these questions and decide whether a prospect is a buyer or not.

5. Analyze your client file.

You may not have to meet customers face to face to be able to determine the common denominators amongst your present clients. If you review many client files, you can often determine the profile of your average clients.

What should you hunt for?

Search your files for anything pointing to age, income, and position in the company to get a picture of the demographics of the people you serve. Plotting addresses on a map will tell you the geography, what they buy, and how (often) will point to their psychographics. If your information is still sketchy, it may be worth a phone call to fill in the blanks.

6. Listen to your clients

Get some feedback on your existing service or some indication of how a new product will be received. Don’t get trapped into a course of action based on the opinion of only a few customers. Talk to a lot of customers or do a survey.

7. Do a survey

Be specific about what you want your survey to do. Frame your questions to determine product acceptance, the level of the demand, the price and the timing.

While big surveys can take months and cost thousands of dollars, don’t lightly dismiss the idea of just developing your little survey and then asking each of your clients the same questions when you do follow-up calls.

8. Sum Up Your Research in a Client Profile

Cataloging the geographics, demographics and psychographics defines your target markets. Once you have a composite picture of your sales market, simply carry your sales message to those prospects that mirror the characteristics of your market.

Target Market Customer Profile Example

• Economic level
• Psychological makeup
• Age
• Gender
• Income level 
• Buying habits
• Location
• Live
• Work
• Shop
• Market profile
• Market size competition
• Other factors.

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