A business needs to first identify its target market or market segment to tailor their product marketing message effectively to the consumer at the exact pain point.
Marketing campaigns that target a defined audience can help companies break down larger markets into smaller segments, connecting those defined groups of prospects to a brand.
If for example, you place an ad for your product on a social media marketing platform they don’t use, it’s like taking a sleeping pill to someone in a coma and that results in a waste of money.
No use trying to sell dog food to people who don’t have dogs. Rather do some market research about what your ideal audience uses, and the social media platform they interact with.
Creating a marketing strategy that profiles your marketing objectives can help your business target the right customers.
Implementing target marketing strategies can allow more individuals to discover your brand and attract more buyers to your business to increase sales.
In this article, we discuss what target marketing is, its benefits, and how you can effectively use target marketing to drive quality traffic to promote your business.
What is Target Market?
Targeting is researching, creating, writing, and delivering your marketing and advertising message to a niche of people that match your ideal prospect profile.
To effectively carry this out, you need the following:
#1. Research to know your target prospect profile or profiles.
#2. Creating campaigns around a specific profile
#3. Writing a copy that is persuasive using language that builds trust with that particular prospect
#4. Delivering, using the right media, to get your fascinating message in front of your ideal prospect at a reasonable cost.
Types of Target Market
There are four popular types of market segmentation, they include:
#1. Psychographic segmentation: This category includes beliefs, lifestyle, values, personality, and interests.
#2. Geographic Segmentation: This category includes region, neighborhood, city, area code, and country.
#3. Demographic segmentation: This category includes gender, religion, age, education, race, and marital status.
#4. Behavioral segmentation: This category includes purchasing or spending habits, user status, and brand interactions.
Targeted marketing has many benefits, we will take a look at some of them below
Benefits of Target Market
#1. Connecting directly with a specific Ideal audience
A marketing message resonates better with an audience when you address a target group directly.
Companies with varied customers usually face marketing challenges when using market campaigns that connect them directly to prospects.
For instance, you might find it challenging to address a large segment of people and convince them to buy your brand product.
Break down larger groups into smaller segments, so you can deal with those interested in your brand`s product or services.
Since every user may have a different view of your brand, stories or slogans can resonate with each user differently.
leveraging the target market, you can better understand each customer’s needs and create a marketing campaign that targets a particular audience, so you can meet their expectations.
#2. Saves Marketing Cost
Marketing is an investment, so you are investing money not burying it and you will want to make that money count.
If for example, you have $100 to spend on promotions, but $50 of that budget hits the wrong audiences that don’t care about you or your product (e.g. selling contraceptives to grandmothers), then you are wasting corporate resources when you could be generating a lot more sales and conversions if that same wasted $50 was used to reach your target market.
When you have a narrow target market, you can focus your campaign efforts and resources on a specific group of people who are more likely to purchase from you.
This allows you to create more targeted and effective marketing messages that will save you time and money in the long run.
As a marketer, note that you can’t be all things to all people at any time. You need to focus your limited resources on a defined target market.
Trying to please everyone in the large market is not only a recipe for disaster, but it’s also a waste of time and money chasing shadows.
#3. Saves Marketing Time
A fast path to being assassinated in your marketing campaigns can be speedily achieved by driving useless leads to your sales team (this seriously angers them).
Every brand and team has limited time and patience. If you target precisely, you make very happy salespeople because their effort per sale is little and thus their bonus checks are fat.
#4. Reach the Right Audience
Once you have identified the target market, consider the target audience, and the intended recipient of your marketing message.
Many times the buyer of your product or service may not be the same as the end user so your message needs to be tailored to the user making the purchases.
For instance, everyone in the home benefits from laundry detergent, but it is most regularly purchased by women who buy the family’s groceries.
For that reason, soap commercials traditionally shoot their ads t moms who want their families in clean clothes.
This strategy is sometimes tilted, however. When it comes to an item like toys, kids are the big end users, so it might be more successful to market directly to them.
Even though it is their parents who purchase the toys, kids are super influencers in how their parents spend money in this area.
Messages shot at kids can drive them to persuade their parents to make purchases on their behalf.
#5. Help Marketers to Identify an Under-served Market
Companies of any size can compete effectively by identifying under-served markets. Rather than trying to reach every buyer who could use your product, narrowing a marketing plan to fit a smaller and possibly unreached and unexplored part of the total market can allow you to carve out a niche for your product.
By focusing resources on a defined customer segment, a small business may be able to better serve a smaller group of the market than its larger competitors.
Target Market Strategies
There are three different types of target market strategies you can implement – differentiated marketing, undifferentiated marketing, and concentrated marketing. Learn the differences and choose the right strategy for your business.
#1. Differentiated Marketing
The differentiated marketing strategy is where the company segments and offers different promotions based on small target groups.
Also known as multisegment marketing, this strategy concentrates on targeting each separate segment by offering unique benefits.
Different groups may be based on gender, skin tone, age, etc. The marketing strategy is to lure consumers away from established market players and earn their overall market share.
Small companies win when they address the specific needs of a market segment that most established big players fail to notice or lend sufficient attention to.
Although differentiated marketing may be very effective in increasing overall market share by establishing a customer base whose individual needs are met, it may be very expensive.
Research and development play a strong role in the sustainability of the brand. Each segment targeting a defined market will also require promotions and ad campaigns.
It is worth mentioning that the king of this marketing strategy is Disney. The brand has mastered differentiated marketing and has efficiently launched and sustained its market share in all its different products. So if you are looking for where to draw inspiration, Disney is a great place to start.
#2. Concentrated marketing
Concentrated marketing happens when a company creates a single marketing message for a particular, narrow demographic.
This marketing strategy usually works best for startups and is a natural step for any business looking to find its ideal market or niche.
Concentrated marketing is a strategy in which a company focuses on one specific target market segment for most or all of its marketing initiatives.
Brands that use concentrated marketing place emphasis on how their products can meet the unique needs of their niche audience.
Businesses may define their target or niche customer segment by factors such as gender, race, purchasing habits, personality traits, or interests.
#3. Undifferentiated marketing
Undifferentiated marketing happens when a company creates one campaign for its entire audience, with all groups seeing the same message. This often means the message is more general for it to appeal to such a broad range of people.
Undifferentiated marketing, also known as mass marketing, is a strategy that entails creating one message to serve an entire audience. It allows companies to reach more people at a lower cost and improves brand recognition.
In this case, businesses focus not on how the needs of customers differ from each other but instead on the similarities they share.
This strategy best fits companies that develop products and marketing programs for broad market segments that will reach a ton of people.
Conclusion
Defining a target market allows marketers to conduct appropriate market research that will help them position their product most efficiently.
Marketers will do a better job at creating targeted marketing messages and getting them to the right people on the right platform and at the right time.
Having a definitive target market helps companies focus their marketing efforts on the specific market segment that their business benefits most.
This article unpinned the meaning of the target market, its benefits, and strategies to carry out efficient target marketing campaigns.
