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Targeting Your Customers
Every business needs
customers - and how to get in touch with these customers on a
limited budget is one of the essential skills for a business
owner. Marketing your business can be as broad or as targeted
as you choose; but most business with small marketing budgets
find they get the best results when they target their
customers. Before you can do this, there are a number of
questions that you need to answer for your business.
Who are your customers?
Some businesses (like traffic light suppliers) have a
naturally limiting factor to their potential customers. Others
(like take-away food) could answer this question with
“everybody.” For the traffic light suppliers, target marketing
is fairly easy. For those who have a product that with broader
appeal, they will probably have to decide on who (out of all
their potential customers) do they want to target. If they
don’t, their limited marketing dollars will be spread so thin as
to be useless.
What do they have in common?
If you know what your target market customers have in
common, you can sometimes identify the best way to market to
them. Are
they of similar ages, professions, the same gender, income level
or location? Do they have the same buying motives and/or habits?
What interests them?
Once you have identified your target
customers and what they have in common, the next step is to
identify their concerns, interests and priorities.
- Do they have
concerns about safety, security, their quality of life, their
community, health (theirs & others), the environment, having
the latest?
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- What are their
priorities? (For example, retirees might put a higher priority
on financial security than a 20 year old entering the
workforce.)
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How will you
reach them?
Knowing what your targeted customers have in common can help
you decide on the most effective way of reaching them.
If they are all members of the one profession, you could market
through their professional group. If you are targeting a
certain age or income group, you might look at where people of
that group tend to socialise. If they have the same interests
or hobbies, think about advertising in their newsletter.
Depending on their common interests and preferences, you can
decide if the best method to reach them is telephone, internet,
direct mail, pamphlet, signage, general media or something less
conventional.
What’s your plan?
It generally gives better results to target one area heavily
than many thinly. For most businesses, this means that they can
only focus effectively on one target market at a time. This is
why you need to have a plan that forces you to measure, evaluate
and, if necessary change your target market if you’re not
getting results.
What will get their attention?
Whenever any customer first looks at
any marketing material, they are looking for the answer to the
question “What’s in this for me?” You should answer this
question as quickly as possible if you want their attention.
The great thing of your research into your target customers and
their common concerns is that it tells you how to grab their
interest. For example, if you know that one of their main
concerns is security, then your marketing will tell them how
they can improve their security in the first line.
The first step
If your target marketing works, you have successfully completed
the first of four steps in a successful sale. These four steps
are: attention, interest, desire, action (the AIDA model). Once
you have the customer’s attention, it is crucial to follow
through to convert this interest into a sale. |
© 2005
Ryan+Associates Australia. Ryan+Associates Australia is a member of
Synergy Partners. |
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