4 Reasons Why You Need To Clearly Define Your Target Market

Posted on 03. Feb, 2010 by Emmanuelle Archer in Blog, Expat Entrepreneurs
5 comments

For all the discussion about choosing your target market, you may still be wondering if it’s such a good idea. Do you really have to narrow it down?

After all, if you can get business from all sorts of folks, why would you want to limit your potential market? Isn’t that kind of shooting yourself in the foot?

These questions are perfectly valid, and you’re not the first entrepreneur to struggle with them. In order to help you make an informed decision, here are the top 4 reasons why I recommend that you define very clearly who your potential clients are.

4 benefits of narrowing down your target market

1. Save money

You get far more bang for your marketing buck when you know exactly who you want to reach. For one thing, you keep your costs down by placing fewer ads or sending less direct mail. Besides, your response rates are usually better, since your message is more relevant to your potential clients.

You can also track the results of your marketing efforts much more finely when they’re highly targeted. Is your printed ad in that narrowly specialised magazine not getting you any buyers? Cancel it, and put the money toward a banner ad on a relevant niche website instead.

2. Save time

Let’s say that you use blog comments and guest posting as a way to gain more exposure. There may be several hundreds of generalist blogs in your field. You simply don’t have the time to make significant contributions on every single one of them.

But when you set your sights on a more narrowly-defined client profile, and then focus on the top 15 blogs that these clients read, you can become a well-known community member and a valued contributor in a relatively short time. The trick is to stop spreading yourself too thin.

3. Build stronger relationships with your clients

Have you ever visited a website, or read an ad, where it sounded like the business owner knew exactly what was on your mind, and was talking to you personally? Do you remember how you felt that this company knew what it was talking about, and was the logical choice for someone like you?

The key to being this personally relevant to your clients lies in being specific. You must speak to them in their own words, provide examples that ring true, and show that you’ve been thinking long and hard about the problems they need to solve. You can’t build this type of connection when you try to be all things to all people.

4. Make it easy for people to remember you

When you’re specific about your target market, you give people a reason to remember you – it’s like a memory hook, especially if your target is a little unusual or unexpected.

If your products are designed for left-handed redheads, you can bet that even right-handed brunettes are going to a) remember you, and b) send business your way the next time their flame-haired friend complains bitterly that nothing’s ever designed for left-handers. With a bit of luck, you may even get some word-of-mouth advertising out of it, just because your target market is so unique.

It’s like writing: general tends to be boring and dry, whereas specific is more colourful and engaging. If you don’t believe me, replace “left-handed redheads” with “a certain client profile” in the paragraph above… I rest my case!

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Emmanuelle

Image by ***Karen, via Flickr Creative Commons