Target Market

Your target customers are those who are most likely to buy fromyou. Resist the temptation to be too general in the hopes ofgetting a larger slice of the market. That’s like firing 10 bulletsin random directions instead of aiming just one dead center of themark–expensive and dangerous.

Try to describe them with as much detail as you can, based onyour knowledge of your product or service. Rope family and friendsinto visualization exercises (“Describe the typical person who’llhire me to paint the kitchen floor to look like marble…”) to getdifferent perspectives-the more, the better.

Here are some questions to get you started:

• Are your target customers male or female?
• How old are they?
• Where do they live? Is geography a limiting factor for anyreason?
• What do they do for a living?
• How much money do they make? This is most significant if you’reselling relatively expensive or luxury items. Most people canafford a carob bar. You can’t say the same of custom murals.
• What other aspects of their lives matter? If you’re launching aroof-tiling service, your target customers probably own theirhomes.

Once upon a time, business owners thought it was enough tomarket their products or services to “18- to 49-year olds.” Thosedays are a thing of the past. Because the consumer marketplace hasbecome so differentiated, it’s a misconception to talk about themarketplace in any kind of general way anymore. Now, you have todecide whether to market to socioeconomic status or to gender or toregion or to lifestyle or to technological sophistication. There’sno end to the number of different ways you can slice the pie.

Further complicating matters, age no longer means what it usedto. Fifty-year-old baby boomers prefer rock ‘n’ roll to Geritol;30-year-olds may still be living with their parents. People nowrepeat stages and recycle their lives. You can have two men who are64 years old, and one is retired and driving around in a Winnebago,and the other is just remarried with a toddler in his house.

Generational marketing, which defines consumers not just by age,but also by social, economic, demographic and psychologicalfactors, has been used since the early 80s to give a more accuratepicture of the target consumer.

A newer twist is cohort marketing, which studies groups ofpeople who underwent the same experiences during their formativeyears. This leads them to form a bond and behave differently frompeople in different cohorts, even when they’re similar in age. Forinstance, people who were young adults in the 50s behavedifferently from people who came of age during the tumultuous 60s,even though they’re close in age.

To get an even narrower reading, some entrepreneurs combinecohort or generational marketing with life stages, or what peopleare doing at a certain time in life (getting married, havingchildren, retiring) and physiographics, or physical conditionsrelated to age (nearsightedness, arthritis, menopause).

Today’s consumers are more marketing-savvy than ever before anddon’t like to be “lumped” with others–so be sure you understandyour target market. While pinpointing your market so narrowly takesa little extra effort, entrepreneurs who aim at a small target arefar more likely to make a direct hit.