How Narrowing Your Target Audience Will Expand Your Market Share

How Narrowing Your Target Audience Will Expand Your Market Share

When you started your business, your first step was obviously to develop your product or service. Right behind that, you likely started to identify who your target customer is: their age, what they look like, where they live, what they do for a living, their income
. When you get to the bottom of this target buyer, they probably pretty closely resemble you and your friends, right?

This isn’t uncommon. Often, a buyer persona or a ground-level look at a desired target audience will be pretty flat and lack specificity. Certainly, recognizing basic demographics is helpful, but to enhance your processes and results, you have to get more specific. Your first shot at your target consumer is probably a superficial look at a generalized individual — a look at someone who’s everyone and no one at the same time — and you’ll have a really hard time getting anywhere with this person.

So once you’ve landed on “Male, 30-45, married, middle class, interests include DIY projects, lawn care, and pick-up hockey games,” where do you go from there? 

To properly understand your core demographic, you need to create a “Client Avatar”. In creating this avatar, you’ll define your audience as a series of single individual “characters,” who most closely resemble both your most active customers as well as those you wish to attract. The Client Avatar is made up of various pieces of demographic information, and you want to be sure you are as clear and precise as possible. Use these four identifiers to focus in on who you’re looking for.

1. Age

Thinking outside the box when it comes to your buyers’ age ranges can bring you more creative ideas. Consider the Pedialyte phenomenon: a drink that was made for dehydration in young children is often used by adults in the same way sports drinks are. In turn, Pedialyte updated their marketing to speak directly to hungover adults, and they developed new products (think: branded t-shirts and powder packets to mix in with water) to serve this new audience. Consider how you can skip the highly saturated 18-34 market and offer your product or service to a different demographic and the results it could yield. Research your competitors and look into the demographics of people who are seeking products and services similar to yours. This will help you narrow down the “why” of your target age range and the products they look for, and help you speak more intentionally to that audience.

2. Cultural Identifiers

Once you have a solid understanding of your age ranges and what their interests are, you need to take a step back and review additional cultural identifiers that narrow down the picture of an Avatar further. A product can appeal to a range of cultures for different reasons. Consider how your product or service meets the needs of a variety of communities — and how your communication speaks to people, too. Bringing cultural awareness and diversity into your messaging, product, and service will enhance both your efficacy as a brand and your customer experience.

3. Income and Willingness To Purchase

Income is a piece of your target audience puzzle, but you can leverage it even more strategically when you consider a buyer’s willingness to purchase.  While you certainly want to do some research on the income levels of the audience you have formed thus far, there are more factors associated with willingness to purchase than their level of income. Motivation is a big factor in making decisions for purchase. If your product truly answers a real need, there will be more reason for your audience to buy. A person with income outside your target may still look into your service if it’s a high-demand product for them. For example, a serious runner may purchase an expensive running shoe that may be outside their means if it affords them the comfort and support they need for their runs. This can be true in a variety of industries; willingness to purchase can outweigh disposable income.

4. What They Actually Like

What does your audience actually like? Are their consumer decisions a result of their actual interests, or are they just things they feel like they’re supposed to like or consume? Invest in actually identifying your target market’s interests and wants. These can make a huge difference in how you choose to communicate. Dive deeper into what other brands they purchase, what media outlets they use, and where they shop. Learning these behaviors will help you gain a more well-rounded picture of who your potential buyers are. 

When brands take risks and expand their perception of who their real audiences are, they can find new ways to engage with those consumers and make sure that none of their potential leads are falling through the cracks. This more detailed personal discovery can lead to more intentional messaging, wider outreach, and more successful results, because when you really look at who your audience is, you’ll probably find the missing piece your marketing needs.

 

An earlier version of this article was previously published on Forbes in August, 2018.


Stop relying on “Random Acts of Sales & Marketing”!

Stop Relying on "Random Acts of Sales & Marketing"!

Three weeks ago, Marie and I each had two prospect meetings. As we debriefed, it was as if we had the same meeting but on two different topics. Marie’s was marketing and mine was sales. In both cases what we heard was a lot of wishful thinking, and lots of money spent with virtually no real strategy, process, or plan to ensure 2017 is better than 2016. Guess what the 3 musts to success in sales and marketing are?

1. Strategy

My business partner, Marie uses the phrase ‘random acts of marketing’. I sure know what those look like and you might be doing some of them yourself. It’s that knee-jerk reaction to the so-called social selling craze. The MUST to be on Twitter, Periscope, Snapchat, etc. It’s the belief of “if I only had a better website, then they would call me.” Producing videos that don’t speak to the audience and futilely grasping at the latest and greatest. Or worst of all, handing over a fist full of cash to the nice guy in your networking group that convinced you he had the magic wand, but now you want to punch him every time you see him!

These investments rarely work and can almost always guarantee to be a waste of money, time, resources, emotions, and opportunity costs. Unfortunately, businesses run like this all the time and the ownership wonders why they struggle with market awareness, consistent messaging, and real Marketing Qualified Leads.

How do I fix it? Take the time to get QUALIFIED consultation and recommendations for strategy. Then, be sure to understand the strategy and make a commitment to follow through on the complete strategy. Marie has a hard and fast rule: it’s a no-go if it has to be done in under 6 weeks. That goes for a conference, an email campaign, or anything else that you want ROI from.  We offer our clients strategy, implementation, ongoing execution, automation, and ultimately TRACKABLE and QUANTIFIABLE REVENUE. Isn’t that what marketing should be doing?

2. Process

I take tremendous pride in doing my job to the best of my ability, both selling and teaching sales. It makes me sad when I hear my profession be diminished and criticized. Then I quickly realize that we have no one to blame but ourselves because most salespeople are ill-equipped to succeed. They are often poorly trained (if at all), poorly led, poorly coached, poorly managed, and incentivized in horribly outdated ways.

Simply ask yourself, would you go to a dentist that wasn’t trained or had no plan? Send your kids to a teacher with no certificate? Trust a doctor, mechanic, jeweler, dry cleaner, or a pilot who is ‘winging it’?

Of course not! So what makes anyone think that you want to buy from an untrained and unprofessional sales person who lacked a process? What makes us think we should be selling when we’re not properly equipped with a process? Look, sales is a profession - one that should be respected and appreciated by those of us who sell (EVERYONE READING THIS) and those of us who buy (EVERYONE READING THIS). If you’re a lawyer, accountant, chiropractor, plumber, or any other professional service, stop your ‘random acts of sales’ and get trained to be the best you can at client acquisition.

3. Plan

Are you set for 2017? Do you expect 2017 to look like 2016 or does your plan insist that it will be better? Listen, don’t get caught looking back at the end of Q1 and see that you’ve done nothing new to ensure your success. Here are a few points to consider:

A. Is my networking really working or do I waste my time ‘net-eating’, ‘net-drinking’, and ‘net-chatting’? Networking needs to bring you ROI! If it doesn’t then stop, re-evaluate, and realign to a new group. If you need help, let me know.

B. Set very specific goals and then set the course to achieve them. There is nothing worse than being on the hamster wheel of business only to run and run but fail to advance.

What I want you to do now is simply decide: are you going to try something new and talk to with a successful sales and marketing team or do you want to forge ahead on your own? @Revenue offers a variety of training, education, and full consulting services. So the real question is: are you failing to plan, or planning to fail?