Insanely Clever Marketing

Do you know how to eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Which means you need simple ways to segment your market. The biggest marketing mistake small business owners can make is trying to cover too much ground at once.

Business owners may say ”Oh, I can sell to anyone” and that may be true. However, the way you communicate with an older man will differ from how you communicate with a young woman, in a marketing sense. There are simple ways to segment your market so you can formulate marketing messages that resonate with a particular target audience.

Bite One: Who Are You Targeting?

Who generally buys your products and services. Think about who is the decision maker and who is the influencer. It’s common for an adult to make the decision to buy a toy for a child, but that child usually influences that decision.

Your audience may include business, government, suppliers, children, men, women, siblings, parents, grandparents, single parents, etc. So break your target audience down into more manageable bites.

Bite Two: Who Are They Really?

You can identify a market and then be more specific by creating a sub-set based on gender, geographic location, income, special interest or age.

Drill down further based on other specifics; young, old, high or low income, city or rural dwellers, renters or homeowners, pet owners, night club goers, vegetarians, fitness fanatics and many more segments.

Bite Three: Where Are They?

Don’t be overwhelmed by having to think about selling “all over the country”. Decide on a geographical location that suits your purposes, budget and ability to provide the product or service. That could be your suburb, city or state; or some other geographical area. Keep it manageable.

Bite Four: Build A Picture

Build a picture of your target audience from bites one to three. Marketing is not an exact science and it’s not one-size-fits-all so you’ll be constantly tweaking your marketing to ensure success and growth.

Formulate your communications for a specific target with a specific message or purpose. You can always change the communication for a different group.

Bite Five: How Do They Receive Communications?

Varied demographics will prefer varied ways to receive their information – face-to-face, social media, website, SMS, brochure, newspaper, specialist magazine, radio – so it may require some research on your behalf. If your target is high-income women, investigate business magazines or a radio segment that also targets your target. Fish where the fish are.

I’ll be posting the second part of Segmenting Your Target Market tomorrow.

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