Welcome back!
As an introduction to my upcoming free bazillion marketing tips report for self-employed entrepreneurs (working title at the moment), I thought I’d start with a topic that is near and dear to my marketing heart – your target market.
Or your target audience, niche, target group, whatever….it’s who you are looking for to be your customer/client. This can be such a challenge to narrow down that I’ve seen business owners reduced to swearing and tears as they struggle to get a handle on it.
There can be a lot of pressure to get this right. After all, your ENTIRE MARKETING STRATEGY hinges on it! WHAT you say, HOW you say it, WHERE you say it…it all depends on WHO you say it to.
The WHO dictates WHERE you market. In the old marketing construct, the WHO determined what magazines, TV shows, radio stations, events and direct mail you advertised with. Those channels are still relevant, but they’ve become highly segmented. Add websites, forums, social networking sites and blogs to the mix and it becomes even more critical to clarify your niche. Where are you going to spend your marketing time and money?
And I’m going to guess that you may not have the biggest marketing budget to take advantage of, making it even more important to choose wisely and carefully the WHO, WHERE & HOW. There’s that pressure again!
I’ve only just scratched the surface of this topic and I do plan on blogging further about it because it is such a big part of your marketing foundation. Think about demographics, geography, socio-economic factors, psychographics (interests, attitudes, behavior and opinions) and their comfort level with technology. Lots to think about, yes?
But if you have something you want to add, or maybe this is an area you struggle with yourself, let me know how you settled on your niche…or not. What’s your challenge around defining your target audience?
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