Thursday, February 19, 2009

Who is Your Target Market? Tips to Locate Your Perfect Customer

By Alice Seba

Not knowing the type of person that would be interested in your product or services can drastically reduce your chances of succeeding. If you do not understand or know the person, how can you sell to them?

Unfortunately, that's pretty darned difficult until you have determined who your target market is and what they want and need from you. So, how do you find out what type of person readily buys your products or services? Keep reading for tips to aid in growing your online business by getting to know your target customer.

Talk to Your Current Customers

Initially, if you already have a good base of previous customers, start to investigate their personalities. Find out what it is that they desire and want. There are a few methods usually used to complete this task. Here are a few ideas:

Design a survey and request their ideas or opinions on your previous products or services they purchased.

Another idea is to communicate with your mailing list on a personal note, and simply ask them what it is they would like to see more of when you e-mail them.

If you haven't sold any products, and you need to do some more research - how is it done? One good way to find out who your target market is, is to list down every benefit of your product you can think of. Come up with some ideas as to what your product or service does to help people. As an example, a couple of benefits may include losing weight or saving them time. Especially concentrate on benefits that help fix their particular problems. What does your product or service offer that enables your buyers life to become better or easier?

Once You've Came Up With Some Ideas, Evaluate Them

When your list is complete, evaluate it. Let's say for instance you sold beauty products that reduced wrinkles and made your customer look younger. Your target market would probably be women in their 40s or older. By listing even more benefits you can go even more specific with your market and really zone in on the perfect customer for your beauty products. You might even realize you can have more than one target market and that's ok, especially since you are doing business online. This makes advertising and creating more than one site for each of your markets easy and inexpensive.

Discovering Information That's Already Out There

You can also conduct keyword and/or market research. There are many ways to do this including keyword research, reading magazines, reading reviews and visiting forums, social networking sites and other discussion groups. Browse around and see what it is people are looking for by visiting other websites. Even your competitors can give you great insight.

Whatever method you use to locate your target market, the next step would be to try and put yourself in the prospects mindset. If you are improving your current product line, or coming up with something completely new - never be afraid to talk to people, and find out their personality traits in order for you to build relationships with your clients.

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