Are Your Target Markets Specific Enough?

All advice about marketing plans will tell you that the first thing you have to do is to find your target market. (Even articles on this site say this.) But what or who exactly is your target market?

You see, unless you are selling only one product, which happens to be a very specific product, then chances are your generic target market will actually be a grouping of many other smaller niche market audiences.

Just like a dart board can be considered to be the entire target, it is comprised of many different sub-segments or sub-groups. Although hitting anywhere on the board will score you points, you aim for a specific area depending on what game you are playing.

The same goes for your target market. Knowing your general target market for what you are selling is great, but in order for you to aim your advertising and make it more effective, you need to know exactly what sub-groups are in your target market.

Take for example the owner of a bicycle shop. Who are his marketing targets? Well obviously anyone who wants to buy a bicyle in town. But does that really help him in figuring out how to go about his marketing efforts? Not really, it is too broad a group. He sells many different kinds of bicycles and so the type of person willing to purchase a bike will also be different depending on what kind of bike they need.

Let's break his targets into sub-groups then. We have the professional cyclist who will need a very high performance ultra lightweight model, there is the cycling enthusiast that may have high standards but doesn't need to pay as much as a professional, we have the teenager that needs a bike to ride around town with his friends, then there are the bikes for children who are just learning to ride.

So you see, each product will have a different target market within the larger context of 'some one who wants a bicycle'.

Once you have divided all your potential clients by categorizing them into sub-groups, you can now start to focus your marketing efforts. You see how much easier it is to think about where to reach your customers once you have them as specific as possible. Your advertising money will be spent much more effectively once this is done.