Are You Reaching Your Target Market?

Everyone talks about target market, but how do you know whether you’re actually reaching yours? Learn to gauge the effectiveness of your marketing efforts by answering these questions:

●      Can you describe your target market?

If you don’t know who they are, you have no hope of reaching them. You should be able to identify key characteristics of your target audience such as age, income, occupation, location, gender, and education as well as some behaviorial characteristics such as interests, likes and dislikes, and hot buttons.

●      Have you identified their needs and desires?

In order to attract the attention of your target audience, you must offer something that fulfills a need or desire. Trendy clothes for teens or baby monitors for new moms, for example.

●      Have you gone where they are?

Don’t wait for your audience to come to you. Find out where they congregate and market your business there. Figure out where they will be the most receptive to your marketing efforts. Try out different channels including social media, forums, email marketing and PPC.

●      Do your keywords reflect your audience?

Effective keyword research should point you in the right direction, but it’s important to match your keywords to the needs and desires of your audience. You don’t want your acne medication ads showing up on a site that caters to geriatric patients, for example. Make sure your PPC keywords are specific enough to appear in the right places and that they accurately reflect the content of your site.

●       Does your business really meet the needs of your audience?

This question is really asking whether you’ve identified the correct target market in the first place. It’s important to keep a finger on the pulse of your customers to make sure your understand their needs and that your business can meet them. If you can’t, you need to change either the audience you’re marketing to or the products and services you’re selling.

●      Have you optimized your website for organic search?

Next to paid advertisements, organic search may be the most effective tool for reaching your target audience. Take the time to learn about search engine optimization and discover how you can reach your audience through major search engines, simply by making yourself more visible using appropriate keywords and placement strategies.

If you’ve answered all the above questions and you still have low conversion rates, it’s time to take a look at your website and other marketing techniques to find out how you can optimize them. At that point, it’s fair to say you’re reaching your target market; the next step you need to take is engaging and convincing them.

Additional Resources:

Attracting your Target Market

Writing to Engage your Target Market

Targeting your Target Market