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When you are in a business, knowing your target market is very important. When you know who you are marketing to, selling becomes easier! How do you define your target market? Listen in as we discuss how to define a target market in today’s episode.
Alright. How to define your target market? This is actually a really important question. Like extremely important question. If you know the answer to this, kind of leads to a lot of other amazing things. It took me a while to figure it out and I’m hoping that with watching this video, you’ll be able to do it a lot quicker than I did. You know I want to tell a story. So, years ago I had a web design company and there were two different types of web design clients that I would talk with on the phone. Those that I enjoyed talking to on the phone and those that were miserable. Like I’d be on the phone for 5 minutes and I mean look I don’t wear watches but I’d be looking at the clock thinking, “It’s only about 5 minutes, this is torture.”But then there are other clients that I would literally be on the phone for over an hour and I was totally loving just helping them and I couldn’t figure out what it was. What it took was I really needed to find who my target market was. Who my ideal client was and for me, it ended up being I love working with influencers, coaches, speakers, mentors. Those who have a message. And there were plenty of clients that I just really didn’t enjoy their business and whatnot. And so I introduced it that way because it made such a huge difference for me knowing who my target audience was. But I know that there’s so many people that have a real difficult time like I did. Figuring it out. So how do you define our target market and what are some tips that you can share on how we can do that to really hone in on this the best market to work with? -Well, it’s interesting because I started taking my first marketing classes almost 20 years ago and this is the first thing they teach you. -Aren’t you…? So, when you’re 2 years old? -Thank you so much I’ll pay for that later. But this is the first part. In order to be able to market appropriately, you have to know who your audience is and they call that a target market. And you figure out your target market by 3 things. Geographics, demographics and psychographics. Geographics obviously our location whether you’re a local small, brick-and-mortar business or whether you’re an international company because you’re doing things online. Those… That’s the first step. The second piece of it is your demographics. Things that most people consider like what whether you’re best fit for males and females, what age range, whether people are with their marital statuses, their income level, their education level. All of those things make up the demographics. And over time, we’ve realized that that’s not quite enough and we need that third, the psychographic. So what are people’s interests? What are their hobbies? But then leading to what you are talking about. What types of people do you tend to work with best? And a lot of people will say well, my product is great for everyone. But that’s not a great target market. The adage in the industry is if you market to everyone you’ll reach no one. Because you have to figure out how to speak the language of your audience. And the more you can niche and narrow your target market, the better you’ll be able to communicate the messages that resonate with just them. -Now, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, a big struggle that I also had was I had lots of web design clients that were dentists. -Hmm. -And I couldn’t find anything wrong with a dentist because their credit cards didn’t decline. They were low maintenance. -Right. -Their websites were pretty straightforward. I knew quickly how to design them. I just did not enjoy having Dentist’s clients. Which is something… Originally, if you know my background, I thought I wanted to be a dentist when I grew up. Logically, it might have made sense from… I rank down the front page of Google for a dentist website designer. Dental website design. I was ranking on the front page of Google. And yet when I really went internal about you know, who do I want to work with, where do I get the most fulfillment, where are my… And this was a big part to the things that I really wanted to offer my clients. The dentist didn’t want those services.
So, it was… That was a big challenge for me. It’s like logically, it made sense. I rank for it already. I had his clients there were low maintenance. Easy to… Easy to make happy type clients and you know, make profitable. What advice would you give somebody like me back in that scenario where I couldn’t… Couldn’t figure it out. -So, I think the weirdness that you had was really great that there are some clients you want to talk to and some clients that you avoid. And I think that part of our target market comes from figuring out who we interact with best. And that’s part of the psychographics of figuring out who people are. And even if you’re good at something, it doesn’t mean necessarily mean that it’s the right fit for you. And so I encourage clients to go back and look at their last 10, 20, 30 clients and look at the ones that brought them the most revenue and that they enjoyed. And so part of your target market can niche into other places and hopefully you enjoy working with expert speakers and authors now and that they’re not the kind of people that you’re looking at your watch at part at the time. But some of our target market comes from experience and comes from going down a path and realizing that’s not what we want. On paper, it can look like this is the perfect target market. They’ve got money, their credit cards, don’t decline, they need websites, they’re easy to do. But at the end of the day, there’s still a personal element. And so, it’s okay to have that awareness and then make an adjustment so that you can position yourself in the right way. You could say I could do dentists and I could do experts. But the more you position yourself for a specific industry, the more those people will feel like you are best equipped to meet their needs because you’re not trying to be everything to all different types. -Alright. So, I have an idea here. The idea is that if you’re starting brand new, you’re just going to have to take your best guess. -Yep. -Because over time, it’s through that experience in knowing what works, what doesn’t knowing what you like and don’t like. And so, you know, I am a perfectionist and I like to… I like to start things right from the beginning. But I’ve had to come to understand that the tweaks and adjustments just need to be made over time, mistakes are going to happen and learn from those mistakes. So, for those of you watching who are wanting to like, “Okay, I’m starting this business, I’m going to you know, start in the speaking space or this YouTube space.” Where I’m going to start this business. Who are my… Who’s my target audience in the very, very beginning. That… It’s especially hard to answer that. We can take our best guesses. “Oh, I want people to make this amount of income. You know, in this age range.” But… So do you agree with the advice that we could be flexible over time because it is really important to hone in but we might… We might start going the wrong direction. -I absolutely recommend for beginners in some cases to choose two audiences. Now, get clear… -It’s like a split test. -Yes, exactly. It’s exactly it. Choose 2 audiences that you can effectively message. One of the things that I tell my clients is that I define marketing as getting the right messages to the right masses through the right mediums. And sometimes, we only focus on that those masses but also that messaging is a really important part. So, if you can define your target market and say can I message to these people appropriately? And can I message to these people? The biggest mistake that I see new entrepreneurs make and new business owners and marketers is they make their audience so broad that they don’t have a good understanding of if their marketing is working. Where if you go in instead of saying, “I’ll go broad by default.” And you say, “Okay, I’m going to pick dentist and experts and try that and see what works and what doesn’t.” Even though there are two very different audiences, you can speak specific to the dental market, you can speak specific to the expert market and then from that, make decisions about which ones you like better and which ones you have more success in. But even if, hypothetically speaking, you are better with dentists than you were with experts, (And I you’re great with experts so this is just hypothetical, of course.) figuring out what you like better can be part of that process. But in those both of those cases, some people for example in the health and wellness space will choose a target market for women or moms and then they’ll choose something like athletic. People who might have sports in injuries or athletic performance for races. 2 entirely different audiences. And if they can keep both of those happy… But they’re still entirely different messages. And so, in some cases you’ll get to a place where, “Yeah, both of these work.” And then 6 months, 12 months down the road, you to specialize because you really are meeting the needs of one. And even though you could do both, you can be better at just really rocking out one target market and expand that area. People are afraid that if they niche they’re losing income. But I found that if you niche, you can charge more. And so, it’s a lot better to test and try to see what works instead of trying to be for everyone because then you don’t really have a good indication of what is and isn’t working. -Yeah, I feel like just really emphasizing… You’ve actually you said it earlier. You just repeated it now that you know, this time you worded it if you niche that you’re losing out on money. Meaning, if you go if you narrow down your audience too much, look at all the other people you’re not able to help and what if that person needs my help. But I just feel like emphasizing that because there’s so many… Maybe that is true. Maybe if you narrow down you, miss out on this person over here. Maybe that’s true but there’s so… The the benefits of narrowing down to a more specific target audience so far outweigh…. You mentioned… You mentioned one, let’s see if we can list off several. One, that you mentioned is you can charge more because you are more specialized. I think a huge one is that you can relate more. You can you can hone your message or hone your your services or your products better to a niche audience. I mean, something I talk about a lot on this channel is YouTube. And you know, YouTube videos and I talked so much about keyword research. -Yes. -And how we want to go for the leaf topics. If you haven’t seen those videos, click up here. I’ve got several videos where I talked about going to the leaf you know instead of a branch or a trunk that’s broad, go clear out to the leaf topics. Because an example I share a lot. You know on how to… Instead of how to do push ups, I might make a video on how to do push ups correctly for beginners. You know, I’m just going way more specific. So now, I know exactly who I’m talking to and I know exactly that I need to go back to the basics. I’m not the push up training expert. But if I were, that would be the specific title. Anyway, just relating back the more specific my audience is, then the more specific I can talk to them and I mean, when I’m making a video or and I’m helping them as a client or when I make a service, they know that that service is really meant just for them. -Absolutely. And as the customer, you know you’re making you the right choice because they’re speaking your language. And so, if it feels like it’s for everyone, you’re like, “Well, is that really for me?’ But if they’re talking to your specific needs, your specific challenges, it’s a lot easier to purchase because… And also, something that you didn’t mention there is the expertise is there. You can build expertise around a really solid small target market. And from that expertise, like I said, be able to charge more money. Speak the language of the people and help them to know that you truly are the go-to source for even this really small tiny but valuable audience. -Okay, so hopefully that helped emphasize why it’s so important to narrow down your target audience. Are there any other final tips that you can think of Michelle on how to do that? -Yeah. So, I would say let’s look at those 3 again. The Geographics, the demographics and the psychographics. The first question to ask in the geographic space is how much… Where… How big is your audience geographically? Local businesses may be only served 2 or 3 cities. Regional businesses like publications and other groups that have like restrictions on travel for some way shape or form might choose just a state or even just a series of states that are close by where people can get to them. And then there’s obviously, the national and the international business. And it’s okay to pick one to start. It’s okay to pick local. And even if you intend to go international in the end, I always say start small and then go big because you can use that experience to grow. Because it’s hard to go big and then go back down. So… But you can pick one and obviously, some businesses are truly international. But knowing that will change the way that you market. So, that’ll cover the geographics. -I want to throw in just… Just the kind of to add to the conversation, YouTube. So, if we’re making a YouTube channel, YouTube channels can be great for local businesses but you have to… You have to be strategic about it because YouTube is not a local thing. -Right. You’ll make a video and if you use the right keyword strategy, you’re answering somebody’s question no matter where they are. And so oftentimes… You know, we’ve got lots of followers in India because I talk a lot about outsourcing to the Philippines. They’ve got a lot of a lot of followers in the Philippines that watch watch this channel. On some of our other channels will get you know, big followings in Europe and whatnot. Knowing the geography of your target audience will really play a big part in your marketing strategy as well. Or because YouTube’s also a really a long-term play. So if you think, “Well, you know, right now I want to start locally. But I could see myself, it doesn’t have to be confined locally.”
And so, let’s start with YouTube knowing that one day YouTube might be the tool that will help take us nationally or internationally. -Right. And sometimes if the geographic question is a gray area for now, you can always default to the demographics. And then ask yourself, “Okay. Well, maybe I’m international or maybe I’m regional or maybe I’m national. But who are my people? Am I more suited for males or more suited for females?” What is their age range?” And again, this is one of those things where you’re like, “Okay, I can do males and I’m going to do 18 to 64.” Well, that’s an entirely different range of audience and a different wage of messages that will reach those people. Are you really talking to Millennials? Are you talking to empty nesters and retirees. They have different challenges, different problems. So, get as narrow as you can on the age. I tell people to consider income level to based off of if they’re selling products and services. Obviously, it’s hard to sell homes to people who are still going to school because they don’t have an income yet. So, it doesn’t necessarily have to be… It just is a way for you to have more information about your buyer to make those decisions. And then if you are looking for kids, obviously maybe marital status and kids. Make a difference but also know that kids are not a target market. Kids might have money but they’re not the ones that you go after. You go after the one who buys. And so, those demographics can help you really narrow your messages as well. So, maybe a question to ask to wrap up this video is a lot of times we might have an idea of a product or or of a service of a need that we perceive and so, as I’ve got this great way. And so then, we then create… The temptation is to create a target audience. -Sure -…For our product. Instead of finding a group that has a need. Do you see pitfalls in that? -Well, it’s hard because innovation and people creating products usually create them for their own personal need. And in some cases, they create them because they know there’s an audience for them and that other people will purchase. But if you do it reverse, that’s fine. Sometimes you can look at a group and know their demographics and their psychographics and their geographical some go, “Oh, they really need X.” Speakers who really need lighting or microphones or something versus moms who might have a unique challenge the thing to take care of. But if you do it where you create the product first, just make sure there is an audience and I encourage people to go through this process. You know, woman who wanted to sell hair bows. Lots and lots of hair bows which is great. And her target market was obviously moms that had girls. But in order to be able to make the kind of money she wanted, she’d have to make 5,000 hair bows a month and she didn’t want to do that. And so sometimes, you have to think through the circumstance and your audience and the income that you want above and beyond, “Is this product awesome? And Who am I going to get to buy it?” You have to consider all of those aspects before you go to market. -Awesome. Well hopefully, got some good tips in this video. If you have any ideas of especially how to shortcut the process of honing in on your target audience or different things that you can add, definitely leave them in the comments below. I do read those. Be sure to subscribe and we’ll see you tomorrow.