Target market analysis are a great tool that can help you learn more about your target audience.
Defining your target market is the first step to deciding how to maximize the value of marketing resources.
Having a deep understanding of who your customers are is more important than ever in today’s business world. Trying to target market everyone is very impractical and unaffordable which is why companies strive to find their target market.
A target market is a specific group of consumers whom you would want to sell your products or services to. It’s generally comprised of people who are good fits for your products. For example, Toyota’s Corolla’s target market is likely young individuals who are looking for an affordable, sleek car. To promote the Corolla, Toyota’s marketing and advertising efforts would likely strive to resonate with this target audience.
A defined target audience can help companies determine who, where, and how to market their products. Here are some tips on how to perform a target market analysis for your business.
Digging Deeper into a Target Market Analysis
To find the target market, a target market analysis is to be conducted through various methods including research, surveys, and interviews of the target audience. The target audience can include a mix of frequent customers, prospects, and others who might align with your target audience. When conducting a target market analysis, consider the following criteria:
- Customer Characteristics – The first step is to find out who your customers are. It’s important to learn their characteristics including ages, genders, educations levels, occupations, etc.
- Interests – The next step is to find out what their interests are. This could include hobbies, needs, and what type of products or services they enjoy buying from your business.
- Location – It’s important to know where your customers are located. Some things to investigate are: what cities/areas do they generally live in? The size/population of this area? Where do they work? Possibly even weather depending on what you’re selling.
- Timing – Learning when your customers purchase your items can provide a lot of insightful that could help with your targeted marketing campaigns.
- Motive – Finding out why customers purchase from you would be a very helpful because it can potentially help you learn what’s working and what’s not. If possible, try to dive deeper to investigate why customers choose your business over the competition.
How to Perform a Target Market Analysis
Once you’ve learned what you need to find out, it’s time to perform your target audience analysis. Here are some methods that you can use to collect information to develop your target market:
- Inspect your contact database to find customer behavior and market targeting trends. Looking back at previous leads help improve your marketing targeting because you can potentially learn how customers find and consume your marketing material.
- Conduct target market analysis surveys or interviews with returning customers and prospects. To help give incentive, you can offer some type of a reward or discount for their participation.
- Leverage your marketing resources. If you use social media, you can learn about demographic breakouts from the account stats. You can also create forms on your website that collect important information about your customers including company size, email address, profession, etc.
Understanding about your target market is very important for your business. Conducting a well thought out target market analysis can help improve your knowledge about the target segment you’re striving to appeal to.
