Taking Aim: How to Identify Your Target Audience

What's your mark?

Your business – and every business – has a singular driving goal: capturing more customers and, ultimately, owning your market. Today, owning your market doesn’t require you to spend more on marketing and promoting your business than your competitors. However, it does require you to have a more efficient marketing and promotion engine in place that yields maximum return for every dollar and every hour you invest. The process of building this engine doesn’t begin with tactics; rather, it begins with identifying your target. No business – yours included – can afford to market to everyone. Of course, it’s tempting to try to reach as broad an audience as possible in the hopes that no potential customer will slip through your fingers. However, in actuality, this approach will cost you much more money and deliver far less satisfactory results because you’ll have greatly diluted your chances of reaching those whose needs you truly serve. It’s important to understand that your target audience does not encompass anyone who might possibly ever buy your products or services. Rather, your target audience is comprised of those who are most likely to buy and, therefore, become the primary focus of your marketing efforts. Identifying the right niche provides the foundation for success in all aspects of marketing and promoting your business:

• It allows you to focus your efforts on those tactics and mediums that are most effective in reaching this particular group.
• It allows you to tailor your sales message to focus on the needs and concerns that are of greatest relevancy and urgency.
• Most importantly in today’s marketplace, it allows you to build a strong community around your brand comprised of people who love what you do and happily serve as your fans and evangelists.
• And in real dollars and cents, it’s the difference between sending thousands and hundreds of thousands of postcards to achieve the same end result.

Here are the steps you should take to ensure that you’re targeting the right audience:

Segment your customer base.

Who are your customers? Of course, there are many different ways to answer this question. Often it’s easiest to begin by examining your sales data and segmenting your customers into groups based on demographic factors, including age, gender, income level, education level, marital and family status, industry and geographic location. In working though this process, you’ll likely find that a particular group or groups emerge as those who buy from you most often. This simple step can also help you identify how best to market the same product or service to different groups. Some market segments may be better reached at trade shows while others can be reached at home with a direct mail campaign.

Dig deeper.

Breaking your customer base down into groups based on basic common characteristics like gender and income is only step one. To reach and engage with these groups effectively, you’ll need to develop a deeper understanding of both their lifestyle and their motivations. Start with one of your products or services and evaluate it through the eyes of the customers that exist within each group you’ve identified. Make a list that includes every possible reason this type of customer might want this particular product or service. Maybe they are trying to solve a problem, maybe they just want to feel good about themselves or to satisfy a basic need. Going through this process will help you drill down to the specific benefits and outcomes that should be the core focus of all your future communication with this group. Secondly, think about the routines of their day-to-day lives and how this communication will be best received. Do they frequently read the paper? Do they spend a lot of time in the car listening to the radio? When searching for news and entertainment, do they turn on the television or pick up their iPad? Are they likely to be active on social media platforms and, if so, which ones? This type of analysis is essential to ensuring that you choose the right vehicles and mediums to capture their attention.

Keep digging.

At this point, you’ve established a solid foundation of knowledge about your target audience. But if you dig a little deeper, you might uncover additional information that will allow you to sharpen your approach even more. Now that you’ve segmented your market and gained an understanding of what drives your customers, see if you can identify which group or groups offer the most marketing bang for your buck. For example, of all those who are most likely to buy your products or services, which groups represent the most profitable? In the B2B world, these are usually the clients with the greatest longevity or those who utilize services with the greatest profit margin. Also, who are the customers or clients that send you the most referrals? These are your very best customers because they do the work of selling for you, so make sure you are not only reaching your existing customers who fall into this category but also others like them because they represent a group whose needs you are particularly good at serving. Finally, it would be a mistake not to examine who your competitors are targeting. This is not so that you can just copy their strategy and run with it. To the contrary, what you’re really looking for is any gaps in the market that they might be overlooking so you can swoop in and grab these underserved segments.

Put your target to the test.

Now that you’ve identified your audience, it’s time for the rubber of your marketing plan to hit the road of execution, right? Not so fast. You need to put your construct of your target audience to the test to ensure that it’s one that can sustain and grow your business. This process is often called a SWOTT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunity, threats and trends) analysis. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Are there enough people within the audience you’ve identified to support your business?
• Can they afford your product?
• Will they see a legitimate need for it?
• Where do your prices fall in regard to their expectations? Too low? Too high?
• Are there opportunities to upsell other related products or services to this group?
• How much competition already exists in the marketplace for this group?
• Are there any trends you can identify of which you should be taking advantage?

While the process of identifying your target audience may seem complex, these steps hold the keys to competing effectively in today’s marketplace. When you clearly understand who buys from you and why, only then can you find the channels they frequent and become one with your tribe. And wouldn’t you rather own your target market than merely shoot arrows into the dark, hoping one will land?

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Naughty or Nice?

If you’re guilty of committing these marketing no-nos, you may well be receiving a lump of coal from your customers this year.

Making constant demands of your customers

All too often, marketers act like petulant children, making incessant demands of their customers without providing any real service or value in return. “Buy now!” “Call today!” “Read this email!” “Share this on Facebook!” All your customers hear is, “Me! Me! Me! Give me what I want right now!” And what’s their reaction to such self-interested yapping? At best, it's a collective yawn; at worst, a complete tune-out. So what should you do instead? Fame Foundry friend Gary Vaynerchuk suggests hitting your customers in the face. Wait…let us explain. You see, about once a week, Vaynerchuk poses this question on Twitter to his one million followers: “Is there anything I can do for you?” And he does mean it literally. For example, when one of his followers in Canada wrote “Just ran out of Tabasco,” Vaynerchuk overnighted eight bottles. Image via Warren Weeks When another in Minnesota responded with a request for a cheeseburger, he opened the door the next day to find a delicious cheeseburger hand-delivered from one of his favorite restaurants. So what’s in all of this concierge-like servitude for Gary? It’s part of an approach that the always-colorful Vaynerchuk calls “jab, jab, jab, right hook” (which is also the name of his latest book) According to Vaynerchuk, a jab is anything of value — a joke, an idea, an introduction, and yes, even a meal. After he delivers a few jabs, he can then justifiably hit you with a right hook: a request to buy something. In other words, “jab, jab, jab, right hook” means “give, give, give, ask.” Note the emphasis on giving. You must give first and give generously before you ever ask for anything in return from your customers and prospects. As he explains in the book, “Your story needs to move people’s spirits and build their goodwill, so that when you finally do ask them to buy from you, they feel like you’ve given them so much it would be almost rude to refuse.” It’s a philosophy as simple as it is effective: put your customers first, and they’ll return the favor. As Vaynerchuk says, “If you’re in business, first and foremost, you have to be nice. Show your customers that you care.”

Insulting our intelligence

It’s 2013. We’ve all seen more than our fair share of advertising. We all have the Internet. So stop insulting our intelligence with your “candid interviews” and “medical experts.” After all, how many mornings have you found yourself leisurely chatting about the joys of breakfast cereal with an unseen interviewer? And, Post Foods, you really cannot be serious with this! Nobody’s buying it, and nobody wants to buy products from companies that don’t respect our ability to discern fact from fiction. If you want to engage with us, authenticity is the only way to get (and hold) our attention.

Playing to dirty motivations

Image via Amusing Planet This one is something of a corollary to insulting our intelligence. We all know that sex sells. We all want to be thinner, richer and more attractive. But we’re also savvy enough to recognize when we’re being manipulated by marketers. Take this ad for the Dodge Big Finish Event, which ends with a keeping-up-with-the-Jonses challenge: “Let’s see the neighbors compete with that!” Is that really the best selling point you have, Dodge? Similarly, this spot implies that the secret to unlocking popularity, confidence, masculinity and sex appeal is the keys to an Audi. If you really want me to drop upwards of $80k on a car, you’re going to need to do better than that. Educate your customers. Show them how your products and services will make their lives better, easier, more efficient or even more fun in a real way. Not in an aspirational, wink-wink, don’t-we-all-want-to-be-Kardashians way.

Committing a blatant money-grabbing maneuver

Contrary to the unforgettable line uttered by the infamous Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film Wall Street, greed is not good. While customers don’t begrudge any company the need to turn a profit, when they smell a blatant money-grabbing maneuver, they’ll quickly blow the whistle. For several years now, major retailers have been attempting to get a jump on Black Friday spending by opening on Thanksgiving day – a move that has been viewed by many as a morally questionable practice of allowing consumerism to encroach on one of our nation’s most revered holidays. This year, however, Kmart took a giant leap over the line of good judgment when they announced that they would open at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving day and remain open for 41 consecutive hours. The public backlash was swift and sharp. Within hours of the announcement, hundreds of Kmart customers took to social media and threatened to boycott the store if it didn't reverse its decision so that its employees could spend Thanksgiving with their families. People called the decision "heartless," "greedy," "shameful" and "disgusting." Image via The Huffington Post "Shame on you, Kmart. I will never set foot in any of your stores again," wrote one now former customer on the company’s Facebook page. "I have family members that work in retail, and because of greedy retailers like you will not be able to spend the day with us." Another added: “Maybe Kmart should have shown they are thankful for their loyal employees and let them be with their families on Thanksgiving. I realize you are a corporation, and your goal is to make money...but sometimes you need to show and prove that people are important, too." So what lessons can you take away from Kmart’s Thanksgiving PR travesty? In your quest to own your market, always proceed with caution. Today’s consumers are not only smart but selective; they shop with their heads and their hearts. They want to deal with companies that demonstrate their dedication to serving the best interests of both their customers and their employees. They won’t trust their business to those whose only master is the all-mighty dollar, so make sure you always err on the side of ethics and in everything that you do, prove that it’s you who exists to serve the needs of your customers, not the other way around.

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