Failure to know who should buy what you have to offer is what wastes promotional investments because you don’t have any target to focus your marketing campaigns on.
Overview
A target customer is a specific, well-defined segment of consumers that a company plans to target with its products, services, marketing, and sales activities. It is more than their demographics and psychographic. It is about what problems do they have and when they are in the market for help solving them.
Yes, knowing the answers to the following questions helps:
- What does your target customer do? (behavior)
- How often and at what volume does the behavior occur? (frequency/quantity)
- Where, or in what factors, does the customer find value? (motivation)
What’s more important is knowing whether your product appeal serves a broad (mass) or narrow (niche) market. If you serve a broad market, it’s less about knowing what your target customer looks like and more about being where they want to acquire what you offer.
If you serve a niche market, you want to have a tight definition of your target customer is and where to find them to improve the cost-effectiveness of getting your message in front of them.
Either way, your target customer is of no value unless you can capture their attention and get them to engage in your sales process.
If you are having trouble identifying your target customer, use the 7-P Framework to help you think through the core principles your business model is built around to back into who benefits most from doing business with you and why.
