Who's Your Market
Who's Your Market
At times, it’s easy to get confused. When you first start your business, your market is defined as anyone who will pay you money for your products or services. After you’ve been in business for a while (whether it be a few months or a few years), you’ll have some very valuable market data. You have a list of customers who have actually parted with their money to acquire what you sell. That’s something that someone just starting out can’t claim to have no matter how much market research they do!
Marketing is inherently stooped in research. Defining first who is your market, then identifying where you can go to communicate with that market and discovering what message resonates with that market. If you do all three of these things well, you’ll have plenty of potential customers contacting your business. And if you have a good sales system, you’ll get your share of those potential customers to turn into actual paying customers.
Here are a couple of ideas for how to help you identify who exactly is your market:
1. Define what is a good customer for your business. Consider things like how often they buy from you, the actual dollar amount they spend, how quickly they pay you, etc.
2. Run a report to show sales by customer by year for the past 3-5 years. This report should be relatively easy to get with most of today’s accounting packages (e.g. QuickBooks). If you can’t figure out how to do it, ask your accountant or bookkeeper for help.
3. Analyze that sales report to try to group those customers by common characteristics and/or demographics. For examply, if you sell to businesses, try to see if there are any patterns in terms of industries where you have multiple good customers or if certain types of customers buy one particular product or service over another. If you sell to consumers, is your typical customer male or female? How old are they? Where do they live? What is their income level? Etc.
4. Interview some of those top customers to understand why they buy from you. Remember, your customers do have a choice and they have been choosing you. It’s your job to understand WHY!
Depending on the size and complexity of your business, you may already have all that information in your head. Even so, I would strongly encourage you to get it down on paper. It’s amazing how you’re able to glean new information from data once it’s on a piece of paper or on a white board and you slice and dice it in different ways. If you can confidently explain who is your market, you’ll be heads and shoulders above most of your competitors.
Whos Your Market - To learn more about this author, visit Adam Sonnhalter's Website.
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This is one of the age old questions of business. If you have an idea for a new business, who will buy your products or services? If you have an existing business, who has actually been giving you money for your products or services? Let me say that again, who has actually paid you for your products or services…not who you would like to have you pay you for your products or services.
At times, it’s easy to get confused. When you first start your business, your market is defined as anyone who will pay you money for your products or services. After you’ve been in business for a while (whether it be a few months or a few years), you’ll have some very valuable market data. You have a list of customers who have actually parted with their money to acquire what you sell. That’s something that someone just starting out can’t claim to have no matter how much market research they do!
Marketing is inherently stooped in research. Defining first who is your market, then identifying where you can go to communicate with that market and discovering what message resonates with that market. If you do all three of these things well, you’ll have plenty of potential customers contacting your business. And if you have a good sales system, you’ll get your share of those potential customers to turn into actual paying customers.
Here are a couple of ideas for how to help you identify who exactly is your market:
1. Define what is a good customer for your business. Consider things like how often they buy from you, the actual dollar amount they spend, how quickly they pay you, etc.
2. Run a report to show sales by customer by year for the past 3-5 years. This report should be relatively easy to get with most of today’s accounting packages (e.g. QuickBooks). If you can’t figure out how to do it, ask your accountant or bookkeeper for help.
3. Analyze that sales report to try to group those customers by common characteristics and/or demographics. For examply, if you sell to businesses, try to see if there are any patterns in terms of industries where you have multiple good customers or if certain types of customers buy one particular product or service over another. If you sell to consumers, is your typical customer male or female? How old are they? Where do they live? What is their income level? Etc.
4. Interview some of those top customers to understand why they buy from you. Remember, your customers do have a choice and they have been choosing you. It’s your job to understand WHY!
Depending on the size and complexity of your business, you may already have all that information in your head. Even so, I would strongly encourage you to get it down on paper. It’s amazing how you’re able to glean new information from data once it’s on a piece of paper or on a white board and you slice and dice it in different ways. If you can confidently explain who is your market, you’ll be heads and shoulders above most of your competitors.
Whos Your Market - To learn more about this author, visit Adam Sonnhalter's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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 Adam Sonnhalter (Visit Adam's Website) Adam Sonnhalter is a Partner of Maximum Value Partners, a business coaching firm based in Northeast Ohio that works with companies across the U.S. with anywhere from 1-25 employees. Adam has been involved in professional services his entire career including nearly a decade on Wall Street as an Investment Banker helping people buy and sell companies as well as raise money for their companies. Adam grew up with an entrepreneur at the dinner table and has been advising business owners for well over a decade. Adam's partner in MVP is Jack Mencini. Jack has personally owned and operated several companies, 5 of which he bought and subsequently sold, the others were started from scratch, including MVP and one that made the Weatherhead 100 list of fastest growing companies in Northeast Ohio. All of this came after 17 years working for a couple of large public companies in Northeast Ohio that exposed him to business throughout the world. We currently work with companies throughout the U.S. either in person or virtually. More information is available about Adam and Jack and their business coaching at the MVP web site www.maximumvp.co m and their blog www.AskTh eBizCoaches.com .
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