Do You Know Your Target Market
If you have an online business or website and wish to bring in more customers and visitors, make sure that you only target the right individuals.
It would be a waste of time to randomly advertise to just anyone and have individuals come to your page for only a couple of minutes before exiting immediately.
If you want to know how to target the right market, you need to know the places where they are frequently visiting then start your campaign from there. You can boost sales and gain loyal customers by following these tips.
Target Market – 5 Helpful Tips
1. Define your target market. You will have an easier way targeting the right people if you understand their specific needs and interests. What is the age range of your target market? Where are they located? Are they male or female? What is their average monthly salary? What websites do they frequently visit? What items are they most interested in? Are there related topics that will also grab their attention? These are some of the questions that will help you define the people that will mean the most to your online business.
2. Related websites. There are several websites that your target market will frequently visit to buy products and gain updates and information. Try to determine what makes these online places highly popular then determine the features that make it more convenient for the target market to purchase and navigate. You can create your own site based on the available features. Try to study the color scheme, theme and layout of objects. How often do these websites update content? What are the most interesting sections? Learning the specific points that make the website so popular will help you with your own.
3. Visit the forums. Online forums, blog sites and discussion boards are very useful places where you can meet a lot of potential customers. The forum may be existent solely to cater to a particular target market such as Ford car enthusiasts, wakeboard hobbyists, baseball card collectors, computer programming experts, etc. There are also more general forums that are divided into categories wherein people can join and talk based on their particular interests, hobbies and needs.
4. Create a reputation. When you visit these related sites and forums, make sure that you establish yourself in the market by building a good reputation. You have to present yourself as a rich source of information and reliable supplier of particular goods or services. Start by registering to a few of the most popular websites. Include a photo then choose a name that your target market can easily recall. You can also fill in some details like your business email address, your business phone number and a signature.
5. Provide information. You can only attract the target market if you can provide people with useful and content-rich information. This can be done by answering queries and joining discussions in the forums. You can also write blogs and articles that will increase your reputation and help you build your niche in the market. Over a few weeks or months, people will be looking forward to your writings and updates. Make sure you provide updates every week or so to keep the potential customers interested.
Target Market Wrap Up
Internet marketing isn’t as easy or hard as some people talk about. The main thing to remember is that you need to target the right market. My right market and your right market may be 2 different markets even though we are in the same business. The better you know yourself the better you will know your market.
Great suggestions. It all rests on maintaining relevance. Whether you are active on a forum or linking to other related sources, it’s important that everything you do is relevant to what you offer (and thereby targeted at your intended audience).
Hi Jon, thanks for stopping by and commenting..
I completely agree it is an absolute waste of time to start marketing before defining and understanding your target market. It’s like walking into the jungle blind folded and being expected to find your way out with no guides, no nothing.
Real businesses target their market, if you want a real chance at being successful in a business, not only do you need to know why you are business, your purpose, goals, etc… But you have to know who your target market is and where to find them.
I couldn’t of said it better 🙂 !
Those are really helpful information. It would be probably a waste of time to advertise over and over again without knowing the best priority.
Thanks for the comment Mika…
Larry,
Your tips are spot on. I think that in any business venture whether online or offline, focus is the key. We set goals and targets but sometimes we easily lose focus. Whatever endeavor, we should always keep our focus to get to where we want to be.
Thank you!
Good piece with a lot of good strategies. Your marketing is masterful and people could and will learn a lot from listening and watching what your doing.
Here is one my moves-I troll places that have face book likes to try and connect with my target market on a more personal level.
hahah you troll you!!!!!
Just teasing 🙂
Larry,
Excellent advice! I recently had to regroup with the redesign of my home page I plan to pre launch shortly. I realized that I have a few target markets and that I need to design more than one home page and campaign to draw the appropriate people to my site.
Sometimes you have more than one target market. If that is the case, then you should not use one page to try and capture all your target markets. For instance, keywords that attract prospects that want to learn how to make money online more than likely would not be attracted to keywords that target people already successful in their business, but need other ways to promote it.
Some of the points you bring up will help me focus even more on what I need to do to make sure the campaigns I run are more successful.
Thank you for the well written article. Keep up the superior work!
Hi Selina thank you and thanks for commenting 🙂
Hi Rick thanks for stopping by and commenting.. I think a mistake newbies make is they don’t first establish themselves as an authority in their niche so they don’t know who their target market is.
That is why I like telling people first just be yourself. The right person for you will find you..
I always analyze the market that I’m going to “assault” by writing a list of similar website,social media presence and advertisers/business owners already in the market
Hi Albert, thanks for stopping by and commenting.
Hi Larry,
Forum involvement is one proven way to look for potential customers. All you have to do is to look for a discussion that is related to your niche and offer solutions to their problems. If you’re products or services will help them sort out their problems then you’ll have a chance of making a sale. Another way is through social media sites. You need to create a business page and interact with people who has the same interest as your niche.