How to Identify Customers with a Target Market Analysis

Before you can begin marketing your business, you need to know your target audience. Your product or service is not going to appeal to every single person. While once it was enough to post an update online, a business now needs to focus on specific demographics to ensure it makes its mark. Discovering who the target market is, however, requires dedicated research and careful analysis.

Here are the right ways to analyze and assess your target market and how to identify potential customers.

How to Gather Intel

First, you need to understand what problems or issues your products solve, why a customer would want to buy the product, and ultimately, who the customer is. Additionally, a business needs to know what questions the research will be answering, such as:

• What does the product give the audience?
• Does a business need to alter the product in any way?
• How does the potential market view the current product?

Let’s investigate this further.

Your customer is coming to your business to receive a specific product, so what purpose does it fulfill? Is your product something Millennials will use or is it for older adults with grandchildren?

Don’t assume every potential customer will understand what your product is for. It may be obvious to you, and you may be an expert on its benefits, but you need to approach every campaign with a fresh pair of eyes.

By answering these questions, you can then move on to building a customer profile.

How to Build a Customer Profile

A customer profile is highly essential to be able to create a marketing campaign which will hit the right targets. By assessing and sorting your customers into set demographics, you can build a complete customer profile which will cover a variety of bases. Each industry, niche, and sector will be different. However, there are a number of customer criteria which will appear in all.

To begin to sort potential customers into demographics, think about:

• Location
• Gender
• Age
• Family status
• Occupation
• Income
• Education

After you have sorted customers into the above demographics, you can narrow it down further to include:

• Hobbies
• Values
• Attributes
• Behavior
• Lifestyle

These demographics are not set in stone. Don’t be afraid to tweak and change specific demographics to add extra layers into the profile. The more defined your customers are, the better you know them.

By understanding your audience inside and out, you can create more tailored campaigns it will respond to every time.

How to Narrow Down Your Research

Once you are aware of your customer profile, you need to obtain the right data to know more about your industry, your demographics, and the ideal target customer.

You can gain insight into your customer data by:

• Using analytics on social media
• Using online resources such as Google Trends
• Conducting research by using tried and tested methods such as surveys (both online and offline), interviews, and focus groups

It’s most important to focus on what the data is telling you; never assume. This is a huge mistake many businesses make. Assuming can lead to wrong decisions and potentially losing loyal consumers.

There are a number of online resources you can use to uncover the customer data. However, target marketing is a highly skilled discipline, so turning to the experts at digitalmarkgroup.com will ensure you hit the right marks every time.

If you choose to approach focus groups or use surveys, you’ll need to offer something in return. Think about what discounts you can give to those who answer your questions to ensure they respond.

Once you know your ideal customer, it’s what you do next that will set you apart from the crowd. Tailored marketing campaigns appeal to the customers who need what you sell. You simply cannot, and will not, appeal to everyone; so why create marketing strategies to try and encompass every web user? It’s a waste of time, money, and resources. Targeted marketing will ensure you see an ROI every time.