How to Market to your Ideal Customers
To whom do you market? ‘The customer’, you answer. But who is this ‘customer’? A faceless purchaser you work so hard to please? How much do you really know about them? Is ‘they’re always right’ your mantra?
We’re all customers and we come in as many shapes and with as many needs as there are products on the market. But who buys your product? This is your target market, and these are the people your marketing needs to capture.
Defining your ideal customer and fashioning a campaign to target them directly is fundamental to good marketing strategy. You’ll be able to focus your resources more sharply when you understand the people who need your product/service.
Targeted marketing is in action on TV every day. Advertisers have long understood the importance of advertising their products during programs they know their target demographic will be watching. Airing an expensive ad campaign to promote your brand of denture whitener during ‘Home & Away’, for instance, would do little to increase your customer base because it would have targeted the wrong audience: ‘Home & Away’ has a teenage audience and teenagers don’t wear dentures. A younger audience would respond more favourably to ads for acne treatment or mobile phones, for instance. Misjudging your audience will prove nothing more than a costly misdirection of funds. On the other hand, if you were to run the denture whitener ads during a show you knew was watched by a majority of older people, you’re more likely to experience a better return on your advertising dollars.
Set aside a little time for some business planning to help you define your target market. Get inside your customers’ heads. What do the people who need your services value? What kind of publications do they read? Do they have families? What marketing strategies have or haven’t they responded well to in the past? What can you say or do to achieve the results you want? What media will they respond to? If your target audience is 35 to 50 year-old professionals, this group may be more easily reached through a national newspaper than a youth radio station.
Discovering your target audience is the tough part, but once yo have identified your ‘ideal customer’ there are a number of channels open to you to get your message out: TV, radio, word-of-mouth, print media, and also direct marketing channels like newsletters and birthday/Christmas cards.
