How to Serve the Needs of Your Target Market

Any marketing guru will tell you that choosing the right target market is one of the most important aspects of marketing. Before you even think of how effective your campaigns and slogans will be, before you even think about how much you should spend on above-the-line or even below-the-line tactics, you have to first ensure that you have the right target market in mind. All of your marketing strategies won’t count for much if you don’t have the right target market, because choosing and understanding your target market is where it all begins.

Making sure you have the right target market is of even more importance when you choose to employ niche marketing. A niche marketing strategy relies heavily on the unique characteristics of a specific target market, and this is why you should make sure it’s properly defined.

Options in Niche Marketing

To choose the right target market when it comes to niche marketing, you have several options:

• Choosing based on demographics

Demographics are perhaps the easiest things to look at when pinpointing a particular market to serve. You can narrow down the age group to something very specific, or you can even base your strategies on something like ethnicity, location and even gender.

• Choosing based on lifestyle

Another option that a lot of people look into these days is lifestyle. There are so many differences in lifestyle that marketers can tap, and choosing a group based on lifestyle is something that a lot of niche marketers have used over the years. For instance, you can look at what hobbies they’re fond of doing in their free time. What motivates their decisions? What are their dreams and goals in life? These are the questions that will be very useful in finding the right niche, and having a thorough understanding of these things will help you craft the right strategy.

• Choosing based on attitude and personality

The attitudes and personalities of people can also be used to identify certain niche markets. People differ in their personalities a lot, and this is actually a very interesting way to segment a market.

• Choosing based on technology

You can also ask questions that are based on technology, because this will help you identify their traits. For instance, it’s probably worth asking whether or not they are receptive to online channels. What kind of media channels do they respond to best? Do they go on the Internet often?

Serving the Needs of Your Target Market

Once you’ve chosen your target market, a very important thing to do is to keep them interested. You need to understand the needs of this target market fully in order to serve those needs best. Even if you already have a defined target market, your market research shouldn’t end there. This means that you have to keep yourself informed about what your target market is doing and what their current situation is. When things change, you also have to respond accordingly and change your strategies to go with the times.

WEST OF THE SUN By Edgar Pangborn	INNOCENT AT LARGE  by  POUL ANDERSON, KAREN ANDERSON	AMBITION  by  WILLIAM L. BADE