Stepping into an already competitive market with a new product, service, or brand is risky. That’s why it’s important for new businesses to understand the marketing landscape to minimize the risk involved and ensure that their marketing efforts go in the right direction.
One of the most crucial parts of creating an effective marketing strategy is to identify your target market, or we can say target audience that will be genuinely interested in things you offer.
Therefore, before you start strategizing your marketing efforts, you must identify your target market for a successful eCommerce website promotion.
If you are new to the world of online marketing, you may take the help of a digital marketing company. In case you want to carry the process yourself, here are a few steps you can follow to determine your target market:
Look at your current customer base
Who are your current customers, and why do they prefer buying from you? Look what things are dominating their buying behavior. This will help you improve your products and services and attract more customers to your online store.
Check what customers’ problems you can solve
Another thing that you need to understand to determine your target market is what customers’ problems your products and services can solve. Customers are more likely to spend on things they can benefit from. By getting a view of the problems, you can find what market segment suffers from them and target your marketing efforts in the same direction.
Create a picture of your target audience
Dig out the demographic and psychographic data and list out all the customers facing the problems your products can solve. Once done, create a picture of all those customers and group them based on their location. Define all the groups in a relevant way and how well you can meet their needs.
What customers will benefit the most from your product or service
Question yourself:
- For whom these problems are most troublesome?
- Who will suffer the most if not able to deal with these problems?
- If the cost of not solving the problems is more than the cost of dealing with them, then your business case becomes compelling.
Also, take aspects like stress, anxiety, emotional upheaval, the risk to reputation into account while implementing your solution to make up the value in your offering.
The market segment you have to deal in
No matter what products or services you deal in, it will fall into a particular category. That’s what will be called your niche.
For instance, we no longer remain the slave of the television schedule. Any individual can watch what they want at their convenience from anywhere and at any time. The access to personalized viewing experience has revolutionized the entertainment industry.
Likewise, the internet offers customers the ability to get everything personalized as per their requirements. By delivering personalized products and services to your customers, you can stand out from the crowd in your market segment.
Additionally, instead of sticking to the traditional marketing tactics, be part of the modern wave and start building your reputation the best way to gain more customers.
The expertise you can offer to your customers
One of the best ways to identify your target market is to check whether you have the right expertise to cater to their needs. For instance, do you have the experience or professionals to deal with the legal aspects of the market? Do you have knowledge of a specific geographical location? How good are you at convincing certain types of people?
All these things will allow you to establish an attractive offering for your target market.
Along with focusing on the target market, you must keep an eye on the competitors, latest updates & trends, and changing interests of your customers.
Find out who all are your competitors
In the marketing landscape, you must know who your competitors are and what products or services they offer. This will help you have a clear picture of the following things:
- How unique your product or service is, and
- How effectively you will be able to solve the customers’ problems
If you fail to see the picture, you may be concentrating on the wrong market or the wrong offering. Therefore, more efforts need to be made before you start targeting the right audience.
Get the demographics right
After finding out the need for your product or service, also find who is more likely to buy it. Evaluate factors like age, gender, education level, income level, location, family or marital status, occupation, and ethnic background.
All these details will help you target the specific group of people who are more likely to become your customers.
Consider the psychographics as well
Along with the demographics, you must also take psychographics into account. It includes the personal qualities of a person, such as interests, values, attitudes, personality, behavior, and lifestyle.
This will help you know how your product or service will fit into the lifestyle of the target audience. With the right information, you can target your product at the right time, promote more appealing features to customers, and choose the best marketing channel for your eCommerce website promotion.
Conclusion
It’s Identifying your target market can be challenging, but when the task is done, it becomes easier to find what medium you can use to reach your target audience and what marketing channels will work best for you. Knowing your target market will help you focus your marketing efforts on those who are more likely to become your customers and get the best return on investment.
