In today’s blog, I’ll explain how to identify the ideal target market for your services and what to do next.

Scattergun or Sniper Rifle?

You’re in a battle against a long-distance foe. Which of these options sounds better to you:

1. Firing a load of grape-sized balls of iron at your target from a scattergun, which sends a spray of munitions in the general direction of the enemy, or,
2. Using a high-powered scoped rifle to zoom in on your target and take them out with a precisely aimed and timed round, where it’s going to do the most damage?

If you’re desperate, either option may be preferable to none. But if you had the choice, I bet you’d go for the sniper round. 

The same could be said for your marketing: you can either fire your ads wide, attempting to hit a larger group of people with a broad offer, however who are less likely to actually need or want it, (missing the target, if you will) or, you can precisely hone in on a specific audience who are your ideal clients and customers, and more likely to want what it is that you offer. 

This is where knowing and understanding your target market is crucial. 

What is a target market?

Your target market is the group of people that are most likely to firstly need, want and pay for whatever it is that you’re offering. 

This could be a certain age group, geographical location, level of income, whether they’re businesses or individuals, or any other defining feature. 

Why knowing your target market is important

It’s tempting when starting out in business to try to appeal to as many potential clients as possible. 

The issue with this approach is that almost your entire marketing strategy hinges on pinpointing what your potential clients will respond to, what their habits are, how they’ll be exposed to your marketing, how you describe your products and services, and a host of other factors. 

How to identify your target market

Here are my four steps to identifying your target market, which you can easily do yourself, from wherever you are, in a relatively short amount of time. 

Consider your offer

First things first: give some thought to what it is you offer. Try to distil it down to a single sentence. 

Try to go deeper than the immediate and obvious answer, such as “I install boilers for people in Norfolk”. Consider the problem you solve, what makes you unique or special, and why you’re better than your competition. Do you only use a certain brand of equipment? Are you less expensive than the competition, or do you complete the work in less time? 

Also consider your own expertise and knowledge. Do you have any particular interests or competence which you can niche down on?

Knowing this specific detail will help you to pinpoint exactly who is most likely to need what you can supply.

Scope out the Industry 

Consider the wider industry that you’re hoping to break into. Aim to determine:

• Who are your main competitors?
• Actual ideal customers- think about who you would most like to work with. Try to create a list of potential clients in order to quantify and profile them. 

Start Profiling

Once you’ve pinned down in your mind (and hopefully on paper too) exactly what it is you do, and why it’s going to stand out from the crowd, you can determine what your target market actually is through a profiling exercise. 

You will have started this already when scoping out your ideal customers. Categories to organise, describe, or rank clients may include:

• Age
• Gender
• Race
• Marital status
• Health status
• Location
• Income
• Geographic location
• Buying intent
• Family size
• Employment status

You can also consider their psychographics, i.e. how they think and feel. For example, their:

• Personality
• Core values (what is important to them)
• Key aspirations (what do they want from your service?)
• Lifestyle
• Attitudes and opinions
• Social status

Once you’ve done this work, you can start to filter and arrange your list to identify the trends. You may find that your ideal customers are all of a particular age group, or have a similar world view, or another characteristic. 

Assess the competition 

You should have started this already, and similar to the profiling- it makes sense to get this stuff recorded. 

While scoping out the competition, you need to get an idea of factors like:

• What they’re doing well and/or are good at
• What they’re doing differently to everyone else, and to what you’re offering
• How much they’re charging

You can do a similar designation and ranking exercise to that of your ideal clients, as this will help you to pinpoint any trends. 

Once you have this information, you can again consider your offer, determine what your unique selling proposition is, and whether your offer exceeds that of your competitors. 

What’s next?

From this basic exercise you can work on refining your offer to make it as appealing as possible. Here are some basic initial steps to get you started:

1. Refine your niche- find your corner of the market which you can effectively meet, and is unserved by the competition. 
2. Product development- review your offer as required to ensure that it meets the needs of your new-found target market. 
3. Review pricing- everything could be perfect, apart from the price. You could have the ideal product, and a client who are eager to buy from you- if only your price was reasonable. Obviously there’s a fine line here as you mustn’t undersell yourself- but it’s important to be realistic, especially while starting out in business. 
4. Create a specific offer. Often it’s better to offer fewer services, however execute them to a higher standard, than attempt to provide a large range of options that are all mediocre. Taking this approach enables you to offer top selling, high performance services that you can charge more for, as you’ll be the expert in your field. 
5. Start Marketing! Use your new knowledge to define things like:
   1. Channels and platforms- older generations may respond better to facebook ads, for example.
   2. Style- things like the vocabulary and vernacular, level of humour, format of content (i.e. video/meme/long form/short form) will all be defined by your target audience.  
   3. Timing- if you’re posting to social platforms, you’ll be at the mercy of the dreaded algorithms. In this case, timing is one of many factors that will influence engagement. So the day of the week and time of day should factor in to when you publish any marketing material, and should be defined by your target audience demographics.  
   4. Type of marketing- there are loads of different funnels and approaches you could take, however they’re influenced heavily by the target market habits. 

Targeted Marketing From Lead Flow Engineers

Once you know who you’re aiming to sell to, we can curate a bespoke marketing strategy that will appeal to your target audience. This will cover everything from lead generation, to nurturing the relationships, to closing the sale. 

Not only this, but we can help you to implement your marketing strategy with automated systems that work in the background, saving you time and money and growing your business and profit.

This starts with a chat to make sure A) we can help you B) we both want to work together. If you’re ready to take the next step in growing your business, then get in touch to book a call.