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The best way to identify your target consumer is through a target market analysis. The first step in this process is by reviewing and analyzing your core base of customers. You can better identify target customers by preparing a target market analysis. Doing so will help you identify your ideal consumer group and understand them better. Likewise, target market examples are useful tools when establishing your business’s position in your ideal market. This will in turn make your marketing efforts more effective in the long run.
If you want to expand your bottom line and make better marketing decisions, learn more about your target market so you know who you’re marketing to.
What is a Target Market?
Before we jump into establishing your target marketing analysis, we need to identify what we mean by the target market. To reach a specific demographic for your products or services you need to establish your target market. This can be done by identifying your target consumer by their:
- Income
- Lifestyle
- Age range
- Likes and dislikes
- Geographical location
Besides narrowing down the type of consumer you wish to reach, you also need to determine market factors, such as:
- The size of the market
- Your marketing concepts
- The buying potential of the target consumer
- The motivation behind your target customers’ purchases
Next, you need to identify your target market.
How to Identify Your Target Market
To identify your target market, you need to research the market you’re curious about, consider your competition, and review consumer trends. All these analyses will help you develop a clearer picture of who you are trying to reach in the marketplace. This step is crucial before you will create your target marketing analysis.
1. Conduct market research
You will need to conduct market research to find your target audience. To do so, you need to ask salient questions. The following questions will help you unveil your ideal target customer and get to know them better. Ask these questions first to get inside your customer’s thoughts. You can also paraphrase these questions for customer surveys and for market testing. In addition, they can be used when analyzing keywords for search engine optimization and conversion rate optimization purposes.
Questions to Identify Your Target Market
- What problem do your customers want to solve?
- Do you understand their frustrations or pain points? If the customer is experiencing anxiety in finding a solution, you can use this to show them how your product or service can help. With this, you can market to businesses or individuals who really need what you are selling.
- How do your target customers currently solve their problems? What products or services do they buy and use?
- What makes your product stand out next to other solutions they use? Knowing the key differences will help you convince your target consumer to make a switch.
- What value do you offer customers who need your products or services? Convey this in your marketing strategy.
- Are your ideal target customers easy to reach? When you can easily communicate with a market group, you will realize increased profitability and repeat customers.
- How long does the sales cycle last? If a customer takes too long to make up their mind, you may need to focus on a group that decides faster. Knowing the duration of the sales cycle will help you strategize who to target and how.
- Where do your target customers currently go to make a buying decision? In other words, where can they be found online? Who or what influences them to buy?
Once you answer these questions, you can direct your marketing objectives to where they matter the most. Knowing this information will also help you to look at your competitors for further analysis.
2. Consider your competition
To identify your target market, you must also consider your competitors. How are they reaching your ideal customer? Do they offer a product or service that eclipses what you have to sell? If so, you may need to make some changes to your product or service line. To stay competitive, convince your customers your solutions offer them more value for the money.
To demonstrate these benefits, you might create an infographic that shows how your company’s products or services stack up against the competition. You might also display the one feature in a product or service that makes your company a solid choice. This will give you a clearer focus on who you should be targeting and why.
3. Review consumer trends
You can become better acquainted with your ideal customer by reviewing current trends in the marketplace. What trends affect your market? When you explore relevant consumer trends, you can also get a firmer grasp on who will buy your products and services, and their motivations. By reviewing current trends, you can pinpoint your customer by age, demographic, preferences, gender, and lifestyle. This type of review also helps you:
- Determine which markets you should pursue
- Accurately identify buyer personas and your ideal buyer
- Locate gaps, such as untapped areas that your products or services can support
- Get customer feedback about the possible success of a new product or service
- Find new markets to expand your demographic
- Access the data needed to realize your marketing objectives
- Appeal to your audience through online marketing
With this information, you can further explore how target marketing can be used to reach your core customers.
Target Market Examples
To better understand your target market, it helps to review examples of how your target market influences your marketing strategy and therefore your target marketing analysis. Again, this can be done by looking at examples of what you find out about a target market.
Stand mixer
This target market example covers the target market of women interested in buying a multi-feature stand mixer.
Age Range: 28 to 45 years old
Gender: Female
Income: Starting at $40,000 yearly
Lifestyle: Engaged or married, college-educated, likes to cook at home
Geographical Details: Suburbs in mid-sized to large cities
Likes: High-end kitchen appliances that display well in the kitchen
Energy drink
This second example covers the target market for an energy drink.
Age Range:16 to 22 years old
Gender: Male
Income: $10,000 to $25,000 yearly
Lifestyle: Single, in high school or college, likes late nights spent with friends
Geographical Details: Urban locales
Likes: Extreme sports, including skateboarding
What is a Target Market Analysis?
Once you identify your target market, you can easily jump into identifying your target customers’ likes, and determine what makes them the ideal customer. A target market analysis will help you reach your customers and provide them with a solution for their specific needs or concerns. Therefore, a target market analysis provides an overview of how you can best serve a target consumer and meet their product or service preferences.
How to Conduct a Target Market Analysis
When you conduct a target market analysis, you get more insight into your ideal customers’ buying habits. You can also use the analysis to create market segments for demographic purposes, make market projections, and display your findings.
1. Gather information on target customers
A target market analysis enables you to collect information on target customers so you can get a better idea of what they like or don’t like about your products and services. You can do this by surveying potential and current customers, and by learning more about them via social media. You can also support your analysis with customer feedback from reviews, and blog and social media posts and comments.
2. Create market segments for target demographics
Creating market segments help narrow customer preferences so you have a better idea of promoting a specific product or service to a certain segment in the marketplace. It also enables you to create new products or services that may add more value or benefits for a defined demographic.
3. Make projections for your ideal market
When you analyze your target market’s needs and preferences, you can also make better projections about how to market services and products to your target customers. This part of the target market analysis allows you to determine what may or may not work when marketing a service or product. Projections take into account the lifestyle, age, gender, preferences, and buying history of a target consumer.
4. Create your market analysis
Once you have gathered the aforementioned information, you can create a market analysis that will help you reach your target demographic. You can use the analysis to explain the benefits of your product or service, show your customer how the product or service meets their needs, and provide reasons why your product or service offers a more satisfactory solution. By using charts and graphs, you can create an analysis that can be easily communicated and shared with your marketing team.
Final Thoughts
When you create a target marketing analysis and understand your target market, you instantly elevate your influence in the marketplace. Doing so will give you the incentive needed to make better business decisions and build a customer following that will help you realize both short-term and long-term marketing goals.
