You can’t make your product or service fit for everyone.
Those mass-market days are long gone. So, the sooner you accept this, the better your marketing will be!
People today have so many unique needs, interests and lifestyles. They also demand personalisation or they just don’t pay any attention to marketing. So, to achieve business success, your brand must focus on customers whose requirements, desires and pain points match with what your solutions can offer.
Fortunately, this is where target marketing helps.
Target marketing is a marketing practise that aims to create content and campaigns that specifically appeal to the right segments who are the right match, drive sales and encourage referrals, as well as deliver higher returns in the long run.
It’s like how Nike concentrates its marketing efforts towards athletes and young people who are into fitness, or how high-end brands like Dior, Chanel and Gucci cater to the taste of celebrities, fashion icons and individuals with premium preferences.
By strategically appealing to them, they will be earning sales from the right people.
So, how can you effectively optimise target marketing to increase demand and drive business growth?
Let’s show you how target marketing works and why it’s an important marketing strategy for your business.
What is target marketing?
Target marketing is a marketing strategy that breaks a full market into unique segments that are defined by a practical attribute that’s aligned with your brand or product.
For example:
- you can conduct target marketing using something simple like age or gender.
- Or, it can be more specific, like a well-established Marketing professional who enjoys volleyball.
- Of course, it can be a combination too, like 40+ year-old females with an SMSF.
Target marketing allows you to focus your resources and tailor your marketing initiatives towards one or a few key segments consisting of the customers whose needs most closely match your product or services.
What is a target market?
This target market consists of individuals (for a business-to-consumer company) or businesses (for a business-to-business company) that have similar characteristics and are likely to get the most value from what you’re selling.
At Melotti Media, our target market includes mid-to-large-sized forward-thinking businesses that want to optimise messaging, branding and content marketing to become more relevant in the market - but neither have the time nor the expertise to do so.
What’s your business’ target market?
Why is target marketing beneficial for businesses?
Compared with a mass market approach that is simply too difficult and wasteful, target marketing is more effective and efficient because it enables you to customise more precise promotions, pricing and distribution strategies for each marketing segment.
With target marketing, you can approach the right buyers, generate more accurate demand and earn more profitable conversions for your business.
What are the major steps involved in target marketing?
To help you understand target marketing, we have broken it down into three major steps:
- Segmentation
- Targeting
- Differentiation and Positioning
Let’s discuss them more thoroughly in the next sections.
Segmentation: Defining segments to find your target market
Segmentation is where your market is divided into partitions based on key characteristics and elements that are important to your business.
This enables you to assess which customer groups have the highest potential of buying your products and services.
As such, here are ways you can segment your market:
- Demographic – Considered one of the most important criteria, this enables you to determine which specific age group, ethnicity, gender identity, income level, household size and educational attainment your audience members belong to.
- Geographic – This involves classifying people according to their geographical region or physical location. After all, the area where they live can hugely affect their preferences. For instance, customers from colder continents prefer warm clothing while those who are in tropical places like wearing lightweight and loose-fitting clothes.
- Psychographic – The lifestyle, attitudes, interests and values of customers also affect their purchasing decisions. Just look at how vegetarians and environmentally-conscious individuals become extremely selective when it comes to supporting a brand.
- Behavioural – This involves looking at your brand’s current customers and analysing how they interact with your products and services. Some common areas behavioural segmentation considers include usage frequency, buying tendencies and brand loyalty.
There are also additional segments you can come up with when it comes to B2B segmenting such as operating variables (including technology), purchasing behaviour, situational factors, the size of operation, industry type and organisational characteristics.
Depending on your goals, you can employ demographic segmentation, geographical segmentation, psychographic segmentation, behavioural segmentation or a combination of all.
Essential market segmentation characteristics
When choosing audience segments, the ideal target market must have the following characteristics:
- Measurable – easy to quantify for research and results
- Substantial – enough to provide profits and sufficient opportunities
- Accessible – low in obstacles to reach
- Differentiable – distinguishable enough from other segments
- Actionable – strategies can be formulated to take advantage of the segment correctly
- Predictable – the behaviour of the target market is not sporadic or unmanageable
Targeting: How to choose a segment as a target market
Once you have identified the different segments of your market, it’s time to evaluate them based on how attractive, profitable and accessible they are.
To confirm which subgroups are most likely to be good targets for your products and services, you must assess not only the available opportunities in each segment but also your overall capabilities, assets and objectives to market to them successfully.
Analysing segments can be done in two main ways:
- Top-down – Here, you start by looking at the capabilities and resources of your organisation. Then, you work out how to make the segment match.
- Bottom-up – On the other hand, the bottom-up approach involves analysing the segment and then fitting your organisation to the segment.
Basically put, if a segment is highly attractive and your business has the strength to enter it, then it is a good segment for you to target. However, if the segment looks poor and your organisation is not capable of satisfying its needs, you may want to avoid it all costs.
Take note that all areas in the middle are questionable and quite risky for your business.
Market Differentiation and Positioning: Communicating with your target market
Now that you understand the requirements, preferences and behaviours of your ideal customer groups, it will be much easier for you to create content and leverage marketing campaigns that can grab attention and generate more sales.
But to stand out in the ever-changing and highly competitive business landscape, it’s essential to highlight that your service is the best solution your target customers need for their pain points and concerns.
This is where the last step of target marketing comes into the picture.
Differentiation and positioning enables you to form and execute a communication plan that advertises and promotes the unique features and benefits of your products or services, allowing you to effectively capture your target market.
What is market differentiation?
Differentiation is all about finding your competitive advantages.
This can be through:
- product differentiation (e.g.: greater performance or design)
- service differentiation (e.g.: better training or delivery)
- image differentiation (more desirable branding or events) or
- personnel differentiation (superior skills and training).
The correct competitive advantages must be chosen to create a unique selling proposition tailored to your target market. The criteria for deciding which differences to promote depending on how important, communicable, superior, distinctive, profitable, affordable and pre-emptive these differences are to the target market.
Want to articulate the unique value your business provides? Copywriting can help you earn the attention you deserve, despite the crowded market.
What is product positioning?
Product positioning is how you market your product or service to give it a specific image or reputation in your audience’s minds. The better you position your brand to a specific audience, the more top of mind it will become, for all the right reasons.
So, once you have identified your different competitive advantages, you can now select the most desirable attribute from the viewpoint of the customers and then communicate this effectively with your target market.
Just make sure to highlight the feature, attribute, brand or other factors that your product or service offers as something that’s more favourable than the rest of your competitors.
At Melotti Media, we know How To Develop A Marketing Message Strategy For Your Brand.
How to optimise target marketing to achieve business success?
Target marketing works with your ideal audience in mind. It bridges the gap between you and your target market, allowing your brand to remain relevant in your prospects’ lives.
But how do you effectively take advantage of target marketing to earn more sales and realise your vision as a business?
Here are 5 ways you can use target marketing to boost your business’ success:
- Give your overall marketing more direction and clarity.
With well-defined target marketing, your team have more of a guide towards how they should develop marketing plans, strategies and initiatives to attract a specific group of customers. Target marketing also helps efficiently allocate budget, so no resources are wasted.In addition, target marketing puts everyone on the same page to ensure brand consistency and the alignment of goals.
- Create content that resonates and brings results.
Target marketing allows you to create content and marketing messages that are more relevant, relatable and value-adding to your target market. You’ll also be able to avoid generic blogs, social media posts and visuals that do not speak to their desires, fears and interests.Addressing a specific group also leads to acquiring higher-quality leads who are ready to convert and advocate for your products or services.
Also read: How Content Marketing Can Help Move Your Customers Up The Loyalty Ladder
Reach more targeted customers through improved communication and more effective SEO.
Target marketing improves communication by allowing you to connect on a more personal level.
With target marketing, you’ll also be able to determine what keywords, topics and language to use. This enables you to be more searchable and accessible to people who need your solutions the most.
Here are 6 Ways To Make Your Web Pages Search Friendly Using SEO Copywriting.
Spur innovation.
Through target marketing, you’ll have clear insights into what customers really need and want. This enables your business to provide more add-ons, improve features and deliver more innovative solutions.You can then use targeted ads and retarget marketing to promote your products or services as well as increase sales.
Offer a better customer experience.
Through target marketing, you’ll be able to provide more tailored experiences, personalised support and customised solutions that address your target customers’ exact needs and expectations.With target marketing, you also constantly get customer feedback and suggestions. Because you are keeping them involved, your business will gain their trust and foster their loyalty.
For more, read: 8 Ways To Step Up Your Customer Service With Effective Marketing and Copywriting
As you can see, target marketing equips you with so many business advantages.
However, it requires not only lots of time, effort and resources – for target marketing to succeed, you also need creativity, a flair for copywriting and marketing expertise.
Fortunately, you can trust us at Melotti Media to help you.
With us, you don’t just get copywriters – you get reliable content marketing consultants, too.
Check out some of our client success stories here!
How can Melotti Media help you?
We understand that you want to achieve business success through target marketing.
But you may find that you’re time-poor and spread thin or you still have a lot of unanswered questions.
You don’t need to worry!
At Melotti Media, we can help you create the right kinds of content for customers who matter most to you – your target market.
So, let’s start earning the results your business deserves through copywriting and content marketing!
To speak to your trusted message marketers and copywriters, email us at enquire@melottimedia.com.au or phone 1800 663 342.
We can sharpen your words to achieve your goals today!
The Melotti Media Team
Melotti Media | Copywriting & Message Marketing Bureau
www.melottimedia.com.au
