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Know Thy Target Group!

Know Thy Target Group!

You need to understand who they are and what motivates them. You want to paint a picture of who these people are – their habits, vital statistics (demographics), their character or personality (psychographics) and their buying habits.

Let me expand on demographics and psychographics.

Demographics for individuals are their vital stats such as age, gender, marital status, education, income and so on.

In terms of businesses, the demographics would be size of company, type of industry, number of employees, gross sales, geographic locations and so on.

Psychographics are more about what makes a person tick. You can have two 35 year old men with the same basic demographic make-up but they could vary significantly in terms of their outlook, personality etc. For example, traditional versus modern, conservative versus liberal, down-to-earth versus sophisticated, bargain shopper versus impulse buyer, and so on.

Psychographics are usually expressed in terms of adjectives like frugal, homebody, cutting edge, sporty, creative and so on.

The idea is to look at your target groups’ demographics, psychographics and anything else you can find out about them, and then distill it down to a descriptive paragraph or two of your target or niche market.

For example, you may be a financial advisor/planner and your niche market is defined as:

Affluent couples in their late 40’s – late 50’s who live in the New York area and have children. They are looking for specific help with their retirement planning and they intend to retire early. As well, they are interested in legacy issues around the family money and their children, plus the possibility of setting up a charitable foundation. They are well educated, liberal minded and responsible. They support arts and educational endeavors in their city and give generously to various charities that help the city youth.

After reading the above paragraph, you get a pretty good idea of who the target market is. Your descriptive paragraphs could be similar or even more detailed depending on your product and services.

See how you can really paint a picture of your target or niche market? The more detailed you can be, the better marketing message you can craft and the more powerful your marketing communications will be.

You may have a good understanding of your target group already – via past and present experience with clients, research you may have done, or your customer database.

If you don’t feel you understand your target or niche group, then talk directly to your clients and ask them. Ask your salespeople or receptionist for any insights they’ve gained from dealing with customers. Take a look at any client data you may collect and try to figure out patterns and similarities from that.

If you don’t have clients yet or don’t know a lot about your target group, then do some research. Check out competitors’ websites, magazines, trade publications – anything that talks about people in your niche or target group.

Take the time to understand your target or niche group and your marketing and business success will reflect this effort.





Know Thy Target Group - To learn more about this author, visit Jody Gabourie's Website.

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Jeff Foster
WebBizIdeas.com is a Minneapolis website design company founded to help people start an internet business by providing them with website, business, and internet resources that help foster the growth of successful online businesses and develop innovative Internet business ideas.  We specialize in internet consulting & internet marketing
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John Alexander
John has taught keyword research and SEO skills to small groups of business owners and Webmasters from over 80 different countries world wide since 2002. John is also the Director of Search Engine Academy ; Co-director of Training at Search Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with his partner SEO educator Robin Nobles, author of the very first comprehensive online search engine marketing courses at SEO Training Online and the SEO Workshop Resource Center.
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Cheryl Matthynssens

Cheryl is a life skills coach, licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor and a 20 year entrepreneur.  Cheryl's dedication to achieving a life of balance led to her expanding her teaching from the simple managing of life's daily challenges to adding financial well being as well.  A direct marketer with DrinkACT, she is gaining ground in the online community with her concepts of making sure business owners, entreprenuers and employees have well rounded life styles.  She opened up a small affiliate site - The Balance Guide-  to help others find resources for mental and emotional well being.  Visit Cheryl's blog to see more of the diversity beyond business she has began offering online at www.thebalanceguide.blogspot.com

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Stephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals.

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Dave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website

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John Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website


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Jody Gabourie
(Visit Jody's Website) Jody Gabourie, Marketing Plan Queen, helps entrepreneurs and small business owners get unstuck and into marketing action fast with done-for-you products and services such as her Ready Made Marketing Plan™ ebooks. She offers special reports, teleclasses, how-to articles, virtual workshops and personal strategic consulting that helps people just like you do inexpensive online marketing that GETS RESULTS for their business. You can learn more about these valuable resources at www.marketingplanqueen.com. A lover of marketing, Jody spent 19 years in the corporate world of advertising and broadcast doing a variety of marketing, research and sales positions helping large and small business owners attain success. Jody started her own company, Maven Solutions in 2006, to help small business owners and entrepreneurs achieve the marketing success they and their companies want. She feels very strongly that marketing is something small business owners can do, do it well, and use it to achieve the life and business they desire and deserve! Jody also believes that marketing can be an authentic action and people can learn to view marketing as an opportunity to honestly share themselves and their knowledge with people. For FREE tips and to be notified of upcoming teleclasses and events, sign up for Jody's weekly ezine Marketing Plan Queen Ezine at www.marketingplanqueen.com/freetips .html, and follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/JodyGabourie&nbs p; Jody has been featured in dozens of online publications including Small Business CEO Magazine and she's a contributing author to the 2009 published book The Business of Being Virtual: Industry Leaders Reveal Their Secrets.

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