Starting A Business Abroad: One Last Thing About Your Target Market

Posted on 05. Feb, 2010 by Emmanuelle Archer in Blog, Expat Entrepreneurs
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Are you still reluctant to narrow down your target market for fear of leaving money on the table? If so, let me clarify something:

Your target market represents the people you are actively marketing to. But your target market doesn’t limit who you are selling to.

For example, my target market, narrowly defined, is people who are currently living abroad, and who are entrepreneurial- or career-minded professionals. These are the people I market to.

However, my client list also includes young travellers on a work/holiday visa, stay-at-home accompanying spouses, and potential expats who are in the process of deciding if life abroad is the right choice for them. Sometimes, Vancouverites who know that I work with expat entrepreneurs will hire me for business coaching or marketing consulting, even if they themselves have no intention to move overseas.

So I work with all kinds of people – but because I can’t be everywhere at once, I only market my services to a clearly defined group that has a specific set of challenges and needs. Makes sense?

Choosing a target market means that you focus your marketing efforts in order to achieve greater overall impact.

Once you make your mark on your well-defined market, even those who are not part of your initial target will give you their business, if your products and services meet a need of theirs.

Far from driving clients away, narrowing down your market will actually boost your business by making you more attractive to buyers, whether you’re actively targeting them or not. I know it seems counterintuitive, but it definitely works.

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Emmanuelle

Image by gordon2208, via Flickr Creative Commons