Starting A Business Abroad: How To Fine-Tune Your Target Market

Posted on 01. Feb, 2010 by Emmanuelle Archer in Blog, Expat Entrepreneurs
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If the target market that you had in mind doesn’t quite meet all the criteria we’ve outlined, don’t be too alarmed. Here are two methods that will help you move forward, even if you’re not 100% sure who you should be marketing to:

From specific to general

With this strategy, you start with a smaller segment of the market, one that you feel you know well, then you expand it as you gain more insight into your client base.

If you’re a bookkeeper, you could offer highly targeted payroll services to small-to-medium restaurants that use QuickBooks. Then, once you’re ready to grow your client base, you can target larger restaurants, or other types of service businesses.

Narrowing down as you go

You could also start with a very wide target market, and narrow it down as you go.

For example, you could initially choose to offer your counselling services to, say, women – that’s a pretty broad market, wouldn’t you say? As you start seeing what kind of clients you tend to attract and work best with, you may eventually decide that the market segment that holds the most potential for you is single mothers, 30 to 45, who are in professional transition.

Let go of the need for certainty

As you will have noticed, these two approaches have one thing in common: they require you to get out there and start getting clients, even if you know you haven’t found your ideal target market yet. There’s no room for perfectionism here – it will only get you stuck. The idea is to get started not matter what, then fine-tune as you go.

This process may surprise you and take you to unexpected places. Allow it to happen. Because as unscientific as it may sound… trial and error is an excellent way to happen upon the right target market for your business.

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Emmanuelle

Image via K’vitsh, via Flickr Creative Commons