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Learning About Your Target Market

Reach out to your target market to find out what they really want. You may get some really illuminating answers, but even if you don't, you will further your understanding of these customers – an invaluable advantage.

You need to learn as much as possible about your target market if you hope to serve them optimally. When gathering information you will first look for the basics on your target market customers: their age, gender, marital status, spending habits, etc. Other questions will probably present themselves to you in the context of your particular industry and business. The objective is to build a comprehensive picture of your target market.

Find out which professional, business or community service groups your customers: you could advertise in their newsletters, or get invited as a guest speaker, thereby making yourself a recognized expert in your field. If they read up market publications and magazines, then you should communicate with them in the up market language they prefer. If they read more down-to-earth publications, adjust the tone of your communications accordingly.
The more you know about how your customers think and what they need or want, the better focused and more effective your marketing can become, because you can match your offerings to those needs and wants. You can speak to them in language they will really hear and respond to.

Studying the answers to the questions you ask will also give you a clearer picture of your own business and how you should be positioning yourself to best meet your market. Some customer answers are bound to surprise you; some will open immediate business opportunities by revealing that along with product X you should be selling product Y, because they are complementary.

Investigating customer response can also prompt you to change aspects of your business that are alienating people. For example, your trading hours may be inconvenient. People might find it hard to park near your business. They may find it hard to reach you by telephone because the lines are always busy, and so on. By finding ways to work round these problems you can make your business considerably more attractive and boost sales, often with little inconvenience or extra cost.

In other cases you may not see a way to get an immediate benefit from the information you gather, but it all steadily builds up in your mind a more accurate knowledge bank about those all-important target market customers. The most successful businesses always take the trouble to learn a lot about their customers, and they put that knowledge into action.

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