Know Your Customer: How to Find Your Target Market
Have you ever been in those awkward conversations with a stranger, wherein you pretend to sound interested while the other person goes on about something you know absolutely nothing about? In any case, it’s pretty easy to understand what’s going on. You were simply not the right person to talk to. You probably have also experienced being on the other end of the conversation as well.
Communicating with other people is a natural aspect of doing business—buyers may want to know what you are selling and for how much, while you try to market the things they can buy from you. Doing this successfully over and over again is a key step to business success.
When marketing your product, you don’t want to be the awkward stranger. With many kinds of people, how would you know who to talk to or sell to? Luckily, the field of marketing can give you an answer and the lesson for today is figuring out who your target market is.
What is a target market?
To put it simply, a target market is a group of people who you want to sell to. To be more specific, these are people who may be realistically interested in your product and can afford to buy it. Marketers dig deep into this and actually research people’s interests, hobbies, and activities, among other things, to analyze how the people can be convinced to buy a product and how much people are there to sell to. You might ask, ‘Why do I need to learn about this?’ The answer is, because little things can drive big results.
Let’s take McDonald’s India. Before, India was no man’s land for McDonald’s because of one problem: many Indians are either Hindu or Muslim. In the Hindu religion, cows are considered sacred and so beef is a big no-no. In Islam, on the other hand, pork is considered unclean. This means that you can’t have cheeseburgers and Big Macs with pork or beef patties.
Amit Jatia, the man behind the success of McDonald’s India and a vegetarian, found the solution. Instead of beef or pork, McDonald’s India would sell burgers with chicken patties, which fits the diets of its target market of both Hindus and Muslims—thus, the Indian Big Mac was born. Dubbed the “Maharaja Mac”, it became a favorite McDonald’s India menu item along with the McVeggie, McAlooTikki burger, and the famous McCurry pan.
This success was possible because Jatia was able to find a way to cater to people who previously won’t buy McDonald’s—and that is the power of knowing who to sell to: your target market.
This is an example of how researching target markets can really make the difference. As a small business owner, you can use simple insights as clues for effective marketing techniques to better reach out to your customers.
Observe your buyers
Different people have different wants and needs. For sure, not everyone will buy your product simply because it doesn’t really fit their wants or needs. But there will be some who will. Every customer has his or her reason for buying your product— maybe your food is the most convenient, or maybe it’s really that tasty.
Make a list of traits of the people who are buying from you. Some of the things you would want to take note are:
- Age
- Location
- Gender
- Occupation
- Education level
- Income level
- Family status
You can base this off your real observations, observing competitors, or by making guesses. You can further expand this list by writing down:
- Personality
- Attitudes
- Values
- Interests
- Lifestyle
- Behavior
Even when no one is buying, you can make guesses about your target market which will help you choose a better way of selling your products.
Note: In the long-run, guesses aren’t as effective as real information. It is better to use a feedback form or review system to get actual sentiments from your customers.
Analyze
With the information gathered, make basic questions like “Can they afford my food?” to more complex ones like “Will they actually benefit from my product?” and so on. This will help you narrow down the window of who you should sell to.
For example, you own a new ramen place in Makati. Abby, a 24-year old young professional from Makati who loves exploring new food and can spend quite a lot. She might be the ideal customer for you, but Aling Lita, a 48-year old store owner in Parañaque City is probably not.
By creating these personas, you can innovate a way how to market your products—from changing your name, changing where you advertise your product, changing your price to choosing another target market.
Observe your competitors
In any line of business, competitors are unavoidable. Your competitors don’t just include businesses who are selling the same products as you, but also businesses who fulfill the same customer needs and wants as you.
Fried chicken, pizza, burgers, and donuts, for example, are usually offered by different food chains. But they fulfill almost exactly the same desire: convenient food that can be purchased in less than 30 minutes.
But you can also use competitors’ as a meter to determine what your customers want. Find out: Who are they selling to? Why do customers buy their products? Can buyers afford their products? This way, you can answer questions about your own business and sell your products slightly differently from your competitor. Buyers have to see the “point” of your product.
Decide
At this point, you should have a good idea of who to sell your product to. The only thing left to do is to decide: should you remake your product? Should you use social media instead of print ads? Should you sell online? All of these and more could be answered by nothing less by simple observation and analysis.
By keeping a keen eye on the market and trends, you can make a better decision that will guide you to greater success. You might not be able to do it perfectly the first time around, but eventually, you will be able to hone your senses to tune in sync with the flow of business.
