Finding and Knowing Your Target Market

You may be a new business owner ready to provide a product or service to your direct customers. You may own a manufacturing business where your customers are the stores that you sell your product too. You may come up with an idea for a new product, hoping to expand your business. In all of these cases, you must be able to identify your target market. When you are able to do this, your business will succeed.

While you want to sell your product and service to everybody, even if you do marketing on the Internet, this will virtually be impossible to do. Not everybody from different parts of the country-with different income levels, ages and gender-will want your product. Can you imagine, for example, attempting to sell high heel shoes to a male who is in his seventies? Before you start your business, you need to know which markets your product or service will attract. This is one of the rules when you start writing your business plan.

Identify the Product

Identify the product that you are selling. It must be something that you are familiar with and have some knowledge about. For example you have sold cosmetics for years. Then you decide to sell automobiles. You have no working knowledge about cars, except how to drive them. When you are showing the car and have no clue what you are talking about, you will drive your customers away. It is best to stick to a product that you already know.

Need vs. Want

You must determine if the product or service is a need or a want. While customers want to purchase a product, with the increases in costs of living, they will need to take care of their needs first before indulging on their wants. If you sell a product, you have to convince your customers that this product is something that they need.

Market Research

Conduct a market research survey and understand what your customers are looking for. While corporations have an endless supply of money to do their marketing research, you may only be a store owner and cannot pay out a lot of money in this area. You too can research your market withot spending a lot of cash. For example, you may have owned this store for a while. Check out the records of the sales and see what is selling the most. Also, observe who comes into the store and purchases something. For example, you own a book store and notice that most of your customers purchase fiction books. By looking into it further, you notice that teenaged females purchase romance novels.

You have to determine if your customers will have the money to purchase your products. For example, you decide to open a store that sells gold and silver jewelery and similar products. However, the income level of your market has a direct impact on whether the customers will buy from you or not. If you open up the store in an area that has residents who are predominantly at a low income level, the chances of you getting customers are slim to none. You need to determine if the customers can afford to purchase your merchandise. Therefore, you need to sell a different product that is cheaper or relocate your shop to an area with individuals who are at a higher income level.

You can also check other stores that are selling similar products. This is especially helpful if you are just starting out. You can see what the customers have purchased in the past at these stores. While these business owners are you main competition, they may be willing to share their research techniques, especially if you offer something in return. You may come up with ideas of your own, for example, that you can share with them.