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Kick off your marketing by finding your target market FIRST!

Guest post by: Bonnie Harris

Article Overview: I know I need marketing, but where do I start? That’s the first question I get from potential clients. It’s hard to know where to begin….do you get prices for ads, hire a publicist, do a newsletter? It’s so confusing, I’m convinced that’s why many people leave it up to chance. The old “if you build it they will come” idea.

Kick off your marketing by finding your target market FIRST!

I know I need marketing, but where do I start? That’s the first question I get from potential clients. It’s hard to know where to begin….do you get prices for ads, hire a publicist, do a newsletter? It’s so confusing, I’m convinced that’s why many people leave it up to chance. The old “if you build it they will come” idea.

There’s a super easy way to get started on the most important part of your business. What makes all your marketing and PR fall into place is first…a good description of your target customer. Who are they? What do they do? What do they read or watch? Where do they get their information? Sometimes it’s hard to target market because as small businesses, we don’t want to miss anyone. But if you don’t know who you want to reach, how can you figure how where to reach them? And even more so, how do you send a message that you know they’ll listen to?

Need an example? Here’s mine for www.waxcoach.com I came up with some characteristics that I thought would help me find my target media (which is the next step, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.) My customers are this --sole proprietors, authors, inventors and small businesspeople. They like to understand ALL the mechanisms of the business. They are involved in networking groups, want to be worth millions, and are very smart. They read magazines but go online for most of their information. They are between the ages of 28 and 45 and are 75% women, 25% men. (I got that gender split because that’s the percentage of new businesses currently being started by women vs. men.)

Now that I know my target customer, I can figure out where I want to spend my time promoting my business. I’ll decide whether to try for media placements or buy ads later. But picking my media targets should be pretty easy now! You could probably tell me where I should get some mention (and please do if you think of it )

Now I can narrow down my target media, based on my target customer. If I’m a bit off base, I’ll know quickly because I won’t get the response I want. Maybe it will take a few tweaks…. maybe there are more men in my target than I think? Or perhaps the world is full of 50+ entrepreneurs? I’ll knead my target market until I get it right, just like pie dough.

So back to YOUR business. Before you do anything, define your own target customers. Look at your current customers, that should be your first clue. No customers yet? Then use your best instincts to decide and keep it well defined. Trying to hit EVERYONE in the hopes of not missing ANYONE and you’ll spread it too thin. Pick your people, and go for it.

Bonnie Harris is the president of Wax Marketing, a marketing and PR agency for small business. She also operates waxcoach.com, a DIY marketing and PR site for entrepreneurs.. Bonnie can be reached at bonnie@waxcoach.com.

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Article Tags: marketing, public relations, target marketing



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Re: Starting a Online T-shirt Company - I recently started a tshirt printing and embroidery business. We are still in a start up phase but have already found out how important your niche is. We spent a lot of time finding our niche, our customers and how we would reach them. As soon as we attempted to market to our niche we found several flaws in our marketing plan. Luckily we were also able to talk to some people in our related niche and got some excellent ideas on how to market our products. I would suggest that you think about who you are going to sell to, where they buy their clothes now, who your competition is and how do they market to their customers. Then do a test marketing to see if it works. During the test of our marketing is when we found out it would take way too much time and money to market the way we had planned. Now we are marketing to a different market but with the same end customer. An example would be wanting to sell t-shirts with sport team logos. The market appears to be the sports fan. But when you look at marketing to all the sports fans in the country, state, county or school, you will find it very expensive and impractical. But if you have a unique enough of a design you can market it to the sports stores or concession stands and have them sell it to the sports fan. Yes, the money may be less, but the profit will be higher as you will sell more shirts than you could on your own.
Re: How do you earn trust with an online business? - Add VALUE to your target market. How? Well depends. If your business can start by Educating the target market about how your product or Service can add value to their lives. This can be done via Video (hot right now), basic text, audio etc. I've had a lot of success with Video and am using it primarily as a lead generation tool. If done right your Content can add Value and add to your bottom line at the same time while building Trust.
Re: Importance of web accessibility - Ain't that the truth. Idol hopefuls who are SHOCKED! ;0) Its like walking around with food in your teeth and no one tells you. But I think the bigger trick is finding a 'test' group who are actually relevant to your business. Just asking strangers/associates for their feedback doesnt cut it. Try to ensure that your target market or real affiliates will do the audit for you Jude
Re: Offline Marketing V/S Online Marketing - I would say it depends on a business. When the market is limited to local geography then the offline marketing is more important and when you're deal with global market then you must do online market to capture broader audience. Online marketing however is really really competitive, especially search engine marketing. You will be competing with the world for the top 10 google ranks and even the 10th ranked website generate less than 10% of the traffic for the keyword you want to compete for.
Marketing is Marketing - I think what seems to be getting lost here is that marketing is marketing. Whether you use broadcast, print, event marketing, cause marketing, PPC or other internet marketing strategies makes no difference. Your strategy needs to include all the appropriate different outlets. And 'appropriate' is defined by more than just where your market can be found - your budget is also an important factor. The Expedia example is a good one - they do a lot of PPC advertising, but they don't rely on that alone - I see their billboards everywhere, ads in magazines and commercials on TV and radio. That makes sense, they are a business to consumer type of company and they have the budget. However, let's say you are a smaller company or a startup selling B2B, focused on the small business market. With a limited budget, 'traditional' off line advertising can be priced out of your range, but with PPC you can create an advertising campaign that fits your limited budget. Something you might not have been able to do with local print or broadcast media. And depending on your local market and the product/service niche you are in, it might be fairly easy to obtain organic search results. So in this case it would make sense to spend your limited budget on online marketing, strictly from an ROI point of view. Later, when you have the budget a mix of the two would make sense if you can reach your target market through traditional media. The reality is that most people reach for the computer to look up information these days, and if you're not there being found - your potential client will find someone who is. That means that part of ANY marketing strategy that includes advertising needs to have some kind of online component to it.


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