Do You Really Know Your Market?

How well do you know your target market? Have you been able to reach out to your customers and have you been able to establish a strong presence in your industry? If you do not market effectively it can lead to a lot of customer fall-out problems and many other concerns. Marketing is one of the biggest hurdles for some companies as they may not understand their target market and could have a hard time getting their message out to them. How well do you know your target market?

What is a target market?
As you are looking to find your target market you need to sit down and really assess your target market. Who is your target market? How can you get in touch with them? Why do they purchase your products? Understanding your target market is vital to the success of your company. While you may think that you have a broad target market you could be surprised to learn that it is actually much smaller than you realized. Using market research surveys you can find out your target market. You will learn things about them based on gender, age, income, social status, and many other things. Each of the different categories can then be broken down into smaller groups, which helps you with new marketing methods to reach out to them. Sometimesa group that is based on gender will be more than just "women" or "men" and it will be "single mothers" "women in their 30s" "working women" "stay at home mothers" etc. Breaking down all of the categories will help you to understand really who your target audience is so that you can effectively market to them. You don't want to be too general to too broad when you are trying to figure out who your target market is.

Speak to your customers!
When you are working on identifying your target market and sending out the right type of information to them you need to really look at how you are speaking to the customers. Customers want to build relationships with the companies that they buy from. You should focus your efforts on really speaking to your customers as this will help them to feel connected to the company and makes it much easier on them to buy from your company. If you use customer surveys and things to ask for their opinions, acknowledge some of your findings. This will help the customers to feel a special connection to the company and gives you a chance to really branch out to your customers. It gives you a competitive advantage as your customers will become loyal to your company because you personalize everything that you do.

What do they want?
There are too many companies out there that end up giving customers what they THINK they want. Do not try and guess what your customers want and focus more on learning about your customers and asking them what they want. When you find out from them what they want it will make your selling process a lot easier.

Changes in the market
When it comes to marketing you also need to pay attention to the economy. There are a number of factors that can change your customers buying patterns. You must watch the economy and adjust your marketing program as there are times when price is going to drive everything. You need to always be aware of these changes so that you can market accordingly. Incomes will change and people always cut out the unnecessary things first. You need to find a way to keep your products as part of your customers budget.