So you’ve been an entrepreneur for a while. Managing a business is no easy feat, but the journey in itself can be rewarding. The competition in retail marketing can be quite intense, and meeting sales targets has become more challenging amid the ongoing pandemic. Consumer confidence is not high, and a lot of Filipinos are facing job insecurity.
However, not all hope is lost. While there are many marketing strategies such as retail signages that you can try, there’s one crucial factor you should take into account as you develop your marketing campaigns. Before anything else, you need to have a good understanding of your target market.
First of all, what is a ‘target market’ anyway? According to Investopedia, this refers to a group of potential customers to whom a company intends to sell its products to. In layman’s terms, this is the group of people you plan on selling to.
Before you get to understand your target market though, you need to be able to define your target market. How exactly do you do that? Here are some tips to get started
1. Analyze your current customers
Who are the people currently buying from your company, and what is the motivation behind their purchases? Take a good look at their characteristics and interests. Then, decipher which ones bring in the most business to your company. While your products may appeal to a wide audience, there’s usually a segment of people who buy your products more. These kinds of people are your potential new buyers. There’s a good chance that other people of the same demographic would be interested in your products.
2. Check out your competitors
If you’re in retail marketing, there’s a big chance that other companies sell the same or similar products as you. In fact, you might already be monitoring their marketing tactics to see how you can one-up them.
Analyze their target market, and don’t target the same group of people. There might be a demographic that they’re overlooking. If you target the same target market, it’ll be more difficult to win them over. By trying to win over an untapped demographic, you have fewer competitors to worry about, and you help your company stand out among the competition.
3. Take a good look at your products
Write down a list of your products, and then identify the benefits they provide to people. Once you have all these listed down, make another list, but this time of people who have a need for the benefits that your products have to offer.
Basically, you need to put yourself in the shoes of your customers. What would they stand to gain or benefit by purchasing from your company? You need to identify why your audience would buy your product and capitalize on those benefits.
4. Choose a specific demographic
Unless your products are very niche or specialized, there’s a huge chance that your products can benefit different groups of people. That’s why you need to narrow it down by identifying who’s most likely to buy from you. Some of the factors you should consider are their age, location, gender, income level, education level, marital or civil status, occupation and ethnic background.
Then, you can focus on the specific group of people your company wants to win over. This will help you streamline your campaigns and tactics in order to maximize your time, effort and budget. This will also help your team come up with a campaign that would compel them accordingly.
5. Take into consideration the psychographics of your target audience
This is the crucial part. You need to decipher the personal characteristics of the people you intend to sell to. Thus, you need to take a good look at their personality, attitudes, values, hobbies, lifestyle choices and behavior. In short, you need to understand how your customers think.
Aside from understanding their psyche, you need to take into consideration issues that may be relevant to them. If you’re eyeing students, you need to keep in mind that students currently study at home. You also need to identify what makes them tick as well as avoid things that may be sensitive to pain point to them.
Having a better understanding of your target audience will help your marketing team streamline its efforts, as well as stop activities that may not be doing the company any good. That way, you can manage your marketing budget better, and make better decisions moving forward.
In line with this, it is important for your company to have partners that have a good understanding of your target audience as well as deliver top-quality products to help you get more customers. A great example of which is Brandmaximizers.
From roll-up banners to promotion stands, lightboxes to tabletop banners, Brandmaximizers can help you reach your goals and even expand your marketing efforts today.
