It is not uncommon to interact with SMB owners and discover that they really do not know who they are marketing to. SMB owners often use a "backhoe" approach to marketing: They shovel all the market ground around them and see what they can scoop up in their bucket. As a SMB owner which market, shown below, would you choose for your product or service:
A. Well-educated couples between the ages of 25 to 45 with high incomes? B. American women who use makeup? C. College-aged women with body tattoos and blue hair? D. Men, who have, or are, serving in the military? E. Children under the age of 10?
Would it surprise you that the best answer is C? The tattooed woman with blue hair tell us quite a bit about who they are with demographics and behavioral information:
Their general age (in a narrow range)
Their gender and probable marital status
Their income levels based on their age
Their educational levels or aspirations
Their lifestyles
Their individuality
Even their hair color choices
The point is to refine your target audience, and then, market specifically to them.
Your SMB target audience Niche marketing
Defining your target market means identifying your business value inside a niche market. Niche marketing entails going from the general marketplace to the specific. The function of this marketing is to:
Focus on knowing your target market
Providing a world or geographic-view - the Platinum Rule - "Treat others as they would treat themselves."
Solve problems for customers at "pain points"
Listen to what customers say
Evaluate short and long-term goals against market conditions
Test by getting something of value out into consumers hands
Being good with these actions means that the SMB:
Knows the current customer base
Knows the competition
Knows the strengths and weaknesses of the product or service
Defining a target audience
The graphic below could also contain information about lifestyles, geography and specialty needs and wants.
Demographics
Psychographics
Behaviors
Attitudes
Personas
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Your SMB and your target audience
Digital marketing is about establishing conversations and building relationships based on trust and value. The prevalent Internet business marketing theory is that a company must, "Give a lot, to get a lot." Experts suggest SMB's forge relationships by:
Creating empathy through problem-solving
Presenting a clear offer of value inside the market
Knowing the customer base thoroughly to improve traffic and conversions
For digital marketing the SMB owner must understand 3 types of consumers:
People who will pay
People who influence the people who will pay
People who support what the business does or provides
Target Audience FAQ's
Why is the target audience so important?
Segmentation means that a company has divided markets into different but similar groups so the marketing team can build custom products or services for those groups and improve CX. A company will probably not survive if it attempts to target a mass market.
Is there an easy way to understand a target audience?
There is no shortcut for understanding a market segment. But, a small business can help define its market opportunities by thinking about customers in terms of their demographics, behaviors, lifestyles and geography.