There is one thing that hundreds of previous clients have not done that has cost them sleepless nights and many hours learning to use the latest social media fad, but to no avail—they haven’t taken the time to define their target market.
I understand it to a point; some people think they have already done that and don’t want to waste time doing it again. And there are other seemingly logical reasons not to spend time defining their target market. They get confused about how to do it. Or, they decide that everyone in the world is their target market and they don’t want to leave anyone out.
After deciding not to define their market, their next step is to jump into the latest popular social media way to market their goods or services. Then they spend hours learning how to use the latest fad. They master it and boom; they find they have no more clients than they did before.
Here is the easiest way to define your target market. It’s so easy you just haven’t thought of it. The key is to look at the demographics and psychographics of your customers.
Demographics include: age, ethnicity, education, marital status, employment, household income, number of children, and geographic location.
Psychographics is the study of personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests and lifestyles. In the use of psychographics, you are looking for why your customers want what they want from you, why they buy from you.
The best way to find out about the demographics of your customers is do a simple survey.
And the best way to find out the psychographics of your customers is to interview them. You can tell them why you are doing this and of course, anything that they tell you is confidential. Here are some questions to ask your customers, keeping in mind that the questions relate to your offering: What do you like about my product? What do you not like about it? What had you buy this product? What would have you NOT buy this product? Ask questions that will elicit your customers’ personalities, values, opinions, attitudes, interests and lifestyles. You are developing a profile of you target customers, and once you have that profile you will then know how to best reach them and market to them. They will tell you how.
Taking the time to do the research to define your ideal customer will save you many sleepless nights and useless social media postings.
If you get stuck, I am here for you.
