Business Advice: Creating Your Target Market is as easy as ABC

When I ask business owners who their target market is, the common answer I get is “everyone can buy my product or service”.  Most businesses use this shot gun approach to target marketing.  Target marketing is more about being laser beam focused instead of using a shot gun approach.  

When you use the shot gun approach you’re hitting areas that are not ideal and you end up with a lot of waste.  For some business that waste could be the difference of thriving, surviving or going out of business.

We forget that everybody buys from us for a different reason, so how do you expect to appeal to all of your potential customers at the same time?  The answer is simply, you can’t unless you have an unlimited marketing budget.  Our marketing must be laser focused for it to be effective and efficient. When we focus on our target market instead of just everyone, our marketing has a better opportunity to be successful.  One way to determine your target market is to first analyze your current customer base.  

I’m sure if you are like most businesses you have some awesome clients.  They buy from you most often, they are a pleasure to deal with, and never fuss over price.  Then you have your basic “bread & butter” accounts.  They buy from you most of the time but not necessarily consistently.  Next, you have the clients that are the ones that are hard to satisfy, don’t spend that much, and are always complaining about something, and just suck up all of your time.  

I call this your client ABC’s.   A = Awesome | B = Basic | C = Can’t deal with

It doesn’t take too much common sense to know that we would want more “A” accounts than “B” & “C” accounts.  Now when you think about it, our clients that we spend the most amount of time with, is our “C” accounts.  When in actuality we should be investing our time nurturing our “B” accounts to become an “A” account, and over servicing our “A” accounts so they never want to go anywhere else.  Since most of our time is being sucked up by our “C” accounts, we have never taken the time to identify what makes a Grade “A” client. 

Isn’t that interesting?  We don’t spend that much time with our ideal accounts because they are easy and we take them for granted. 

How much do they spend?  How often do they spend? Do they refer business? What are the demographics, locations, occupation, hobbies, income, & family status?  It might not be a bad idea to send them a survey and ask them why they buy from you.  This can also help you to you to identify your USP.

Knowing who your target customers are will allow you to aim at the right places to reach them. Often you can have more than one target market or kind of customer.  If this is the case, it’s far better to segment them and target them with different messages. Start with one target and drill deep, then move on to a second later.

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