10 Tips for Figuring Out Your Target Market

When it comes to creating landing pages, offers and just about any other type of content online, a strong understanding of your target market matters. Without it, you may not achieve the success you’re after.

Once you figure out your target market it’s much easier to make content stick. Whether the content is simply blog posts or you’re using landing pages to convert visitors into subscribers or buyers, the first step should always include a strong definition of your target market.

Below you will find ten of the most important tips you should use when defining your target market.

Analyze your Product or Service

An easy way to start narrowing down your target market is to fully analyze your product or service. By figuring out the problems your product or service addresses, you’ll be quickly on the way to figuring out your target market.

Start Broad and Narrow the Focus

It’s usually easiest to start very broad and start to narrow the focus of your target market. For example, if you’re selling a product in the health & fitness industry, your broad market may start out as anybody interested in health & fitness. However, this is a very large market and not very targeted. As you look closer at the different sectors of this market, you will find a more focused group for your product or service.

For example, if you’re selling a weight-loss product, you won’t want to target those looking for information on body building. You can also take this product further by figuring out if it appeals to men, women or both and by defining an age range.

Use Demographics

An easy way to define your target market is to use demographics. Start by defining a gender, age range, income level and maybe a location. Once you have some of the basics down, you may be able to narrow your market even more by looking at the marital status of your customers, education level, occupation and even the ethnicity.

Using the weight-loss product example, maybe you’re system is a diet designed for women between the age of 35 and 45. If your product is rather expensive, maybe $399.00, you may be able to narrow the market by using an income range.

Who’s Your Competition?

Often, if you define your competitors, you’ll easily find your target market. Since your market will be similar to theirs, understanding your competition can lead you to the target market for your product or service.

How are You Different from the Competition?

Defining your competitors may only lead you to a broad sense of your target market. However, once you figure out how you’re different from your competition, you may just find your target market. For example, maybe you’re competition has a weight-loss product aimed at 35 to 45 year-old women, too, but yours is actually designed for women after they just had a baby and your competitor’s product is designed for a more general audience.

Use Current Customers

If you’ve already sold your product or service, you may be able to define your target market by who is buying. Maybe your product seems to appeal to women over the age of 40 with an annual income of at least $65,000. When you create a customer profile of current buyers, you can use it to help define the target market for your product or service.

Define Psychographics

By defining the likes and dislikes of your customers, the lifestyle they lead, their values and even the TV shows they enjoy, you can narrow your focus. This may not be as easy to define, but may also lead you to the exact target market you’ve been searching for. Learning what your customers like and don’t like and why will tell you more about them than just about any other tip on this list.

Using Your Own Goals

Your target market may also be defined by the goals you have for your company. For example, if you run a residential landscaping business, but you’d like to expand into the commercial market, your target market may be commercial businesses in need of landscaping services. This will be far different than the definition you will come up with from analyzing current customers and competition, but it fits perfectly with your expansion goals.

Don’t Buy Your Assumptions

Most business owners have an assumption of their target market. However, they may be surprised to find out their product or service appeals to a different audience. Challenge your assumptions before you start marketing and you’ll better define your real target market.

Create a Buyer Persona

You will need plenty of data to form a good buyer persona, but once you do, you will have a very focused target market. This is a fictional character showing the traits of your average buyer, which will include things, such as gender, age, education level, income and many other factors.

There are several ways to better define your target market. Before you launch into a ton of marketing, make sure you take the time to create a full description of your actual target market.

How To Create Buyer Personas