6 ways to define your target market
1. Put yourself in their shoes and think about their challenges. For example, I know some big issues for work-from-home mothers are a lack of time, and juggling work vs home. I know they don’t have time to attend 3 day workshops on home business development, which is why an online resource is a great way to help them.
2. Start with low cost research: Find forums (this can be online in chat rooms and discussion forums or at live events, clubs or associations) where your target market exists and then join them. Find out what they’re talking about, become part of the conversation. You’ll learn a lot about their issues.
3. Demonstrate you know your target market’s pain. You’ve probably heard that people are generally driven by pleasure or pain, and that people will do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. Once you know your market’s pain then market directly to that. Demonstrate what you can to do help ease the pain, what problems they have and how they can overcome them with your help.
4. Create a picture of your ideal customer. In your mind, create a real person with an age, a name, a family, how they dress and what they do. This is the person you should consider whenever you’re making a decision about your business – what would they think of your new product?
5. Constantly refine your products and activities by asking for feedback. Survey your customers to find out what they want specifically and then meet their demand.
6. Make a list of the top 100 problems your target market has.You might think 100 problems is a lot to come up with, but unless you can do that, you probably don’t know your target market well enough.
The more focussed your customer group, the easier they are to sell to. Clarity attracts money — when you’re really clear about exactly who is buying your product you can tailor what you do to suit them.