by The target marketing process provides the foundation for selecting the target market a chosen segment of the market that an organization wishes to serve. It consists of the 3-step process of:
Market Segmentation
The first step is market segmentation, which involves dividing a market into a distinct group of buyers with different needs, characteristics, or behavior who might require separate products or marketing mixes.
Market Targeting
The second step is market targeting. Market targeting is the process of evaluating each market segment’s attractiveness and selecting one or more segments to enter.
Marketing Positioning
The third step is market positioning. Marketing positioning involves arranging for a product to occupy a clear, distinctive, and desirable place relative to competing products in the minds of target consumers, which is accomplished through formulating competitive positioning for a product and a detailed marketing mix.
Steps
- Identify Your Customer Base
The first step in defining your target market is to understand what interests your current customers and identify why they continue to support your company. As you review the numbers, you must be sure to pay attention to what type of customers generate the most business and what products and services they gravitate towards. This will help you understand how to better cater to your current customers as well as how to reach out to others like them.
- Know Your Competition
You must take the time to thoroughly analyze your competition. While it may be distracting to spend too much time focusing on the competitors, it is important to know who else is competing for your business. Which companies are stealing customers away from you and why? Asking and answering this and similar questions will help you pinpoint where and how you should be reaching out to your audience.
- Review Products and Services
As you look for ways to reach your target audience, it is incredibly important to review your business’ products and services. In order to understand how to entice new customers, it is imperative that you know all the ins and outs of the services that you are offering. That means knowing what you’re selling as well as knowing what the customer expects to receive. Similarly, you must understand what occurs in the aftermath of a customer’s purchase from your company.
- Identify the Demographics of Potential Customers
This step in your marketing process requires you to reach out to your community and new customers. By thinking about varying factors like location, gender, education level, income level, age, marital status, ethnic background, and the like, you will be able to better identify the types of customers that may be more inclined to do business with your company.
- Target Potential Demographics
In order to understand which demographics are more likely to turn to your company, we should use polls, trials, samples, and other methods of market research. This will help you effectively determine whether or not your company is the best match for your chosen demographic,
- Analyze the Psychographics
The psychographics of a potential consumer includes the values, attitudes, personalities, hobbies, interests, behavior, and lifestyle of the person. This will allow you to determine when and how a potential customer uses your service or product, as well as which method of marketing is most effective on a person-by-person basis.
- Make a Decision
All of the research in the world will be of no help if you can’t figure out how to use it. The last step in finding your target audience is making a decision on who you will reach out to. With the best data and analyses, you will be able to comfortably choose the correct demographic to market to.
As you work on making a decision you must be sure that your audience can afford your company’s products and services. Additionally, you must determine if there is a need for your company among the chosen demographic as well as enough diversity among your products and services that the target audience doesn’t lose interest.
