Most marketers are trying to talk to everybody and while they do it, they have a difficult time to even grab attention of anybody. This is why targeting in marketing is crucial.

What is target market?  

Targeting in marketing is a strategy to break down a large market into smaller segments to make you concentrate on selling to a specific group. Why do you have to sell your product or service to a specific group when you can reach larger and wider array of customers? The reason is that targeting your marketing will higher your conversion rate – from potential buyers to actual buyers. For example, when you offer an HR service, then you need to focus more on professional hiring managers or executives who need your service instead of more general groups such as marketers, vendors, or street sellers, in order to gain better results.

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Another good reason to start planning your target market is that it allows you to resonate more deeply with potential buyers or audiences. Targeting will differentiate your brand from competitor’s brands as when you focus on a smaller segment, you can stand out better from competitors industry. You will also build loyal consumers by improving your products or services. And most importantly, being focused will help your team get more specific about your marketing strategies and initiatives which will direct more revenues.

Furthermore, market segmentation strategy is commonly used to be more specific about your target market. By using market segmentation you can higher the chance of growing more profits from business by 15 percent annually. 

What to do, now

To have a better market segmentation, you should create a better buyer persona that relies on real and up-to-date data. Buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customers based on market research. There are some factors you need to consider when developing a buyer persona, namely customer demographics, behaviour patterns, motivations, and goals. The more detailed you collect data about your consumers, the better buyer persona you will get.

Tools to use

To create a well-conducted buyer persona, you can either use a traditional approach or a modern approach. In the traditional approach, you can do an interview with your former and current customers. You can also talk to your sales team and find trends they see and experience. While this method is still effective, the modern approach will give you better insights and data as you should use analytics and tools. Here are some of the best tools you can use to set up your target market.

1.  Alexa will help you stand out in a sea of similar products and services. Alexa service includes audience overlap tool to see what websites your audience visits and uncover audiences’ interests, site overview tool to see audience demographics, site keywords tool to look for trends, and keyword difficulty tool to see what industry your audience uses.

2.  Adobe Marketing Cloud will help you create an end-to-end marketing automation and management solution. It provides you insights across a range of analytics, social media management, advertising campaign, social media management, and many more. Adobe service also comprises eight modules which are available as a stand-alone tool.

3.  Marketo focuses primarily on audience engagement. It is capable of giving you insights on marketing automation, cross-channel engagement, personalisation, and other tools to build lasting customer relationships.

4.  Google Analytics will help you understand who your customers are. Google Analytics can also tell you where your customers which improve your chance to build solid facts under a plethora of other stats.

5.  Facebook business page insights will give you an accessible insight to do your quick research about your audience and customers. Facebook insights can also help you create content or product that will actually reach your audience.

How to optimise the marketing

As you understand how and what tools to use to optimise your target persona, now is the perfect time to improve your targeting channel. You can make your brand stand out by focusing your strategy on some of these channels.

1.  Marketing communication to improve and build intimacy with your audience. By using language your audience use, you can create better content or ad words that connect and resonate with your potential consumers.

2.  Content marketing to produce valuable experience between your target and product or service by developing content that specifies your customer’s needs, fears, wants, or desires.

3.  Organic search or paid search to generate traffic to your website using the right keywords aka SEO strategy. Thusly, you can catch your audience attention and convert them to actual buyers.

4.  Guest blogging to catch your audience attention of other sites. Be a contributor to other pages to greater your chance of reaching your target audience anywhere. Guest blogging will also allow you to put your brand in front of your target customers.  

“Understand why you are different and how you help, recognise your target market and give them something they might not even realise they are missing.” – Chris Murray

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