Finding Your Niche through an Effective Target Market Strategy

Selecting the best target market for your business is the most important but difficult part of the marketing plan. But understanding who you best serve can help you form a target market strategy that will attract your ideal client.

Business owners make many excuses when asked why they have not chosen a target. They feel that targeting limits their opportunities or they will leave money on the table.

But in reality, you can’t target everyone. If you don’t focus on the best customer for your business, you are missing out on opportunities to increase sales.

Reality of targeting a niche market

Every business owner believes this marketing myth until they discover that targeting enables you to:

Determine if there really is a market need for your products or services
Attract and work with a more lucrative audience
Develop messages with greater precision, being clear about the value you offer and the benefits of working with you
Become the expert for that niche
Focus your marketing activities to reach your well-defined niche

Being focused on one particular market increases your efficiency and uses your resources more wisely. For example, you can:

Better select which social networks you need to be present and active on rather than try to cover them all.
Go to networking events that target your market and miss those that don’t.
Target your messages, focusing on what’s important to that audience using the language they understand.

When you narrowly define your niche market, your messages are clear, your offerings are precise and your marketing efforts are more effective, even to those not within your target market.

What is a target market?

A target market is defined as the unique groups of people or businesses that a business aims its marketing efforts and resources. It is usually a subset of the total market for your product or service that you can service the best. They usually have the following common characteristics:

Want or need what you have to offer
Know they have a need and understand the value to them of satisfying that need
Willing to spend money to satisfy that need

All three of these have to be present for someone to be a target because if:

There is no need or desire, you won’t get their attention.
They don’t know they want or need what you have, they won’t be paying attention to what you have to say.
They aren’t willing to spend the money, you could be wasting your time and resources that could be better used on those who are.

How to determine your target market strategy

Define your offerings:

What is your primary offering and what problems do you solve?
Why is it better than the competition?
What unique capability can you offer that others do not?

Focus your key offering on what you do best and what you love to do. We all can do many things, but some of the things we do are more supporting than primary services.

Define the audiences that could use your services

What characteristics do they all have in common that you could turn into a segment?
What do they need and what are they lacking?
Why do they do business with you?

Sometimes it is easier to illustrate the concept of market segmentation with an example. Let’s say you are a professional organizer and want to define a lucrative target market that plays to your strengths. You could offer the following services that would appeal to different audiences:

Organizing residential spaces – Single parents and homeowners may wish to hire you to help remove the clutter from their homes
Creating processes – Small business owners may want you to organize the office and create processes that keep it that way
Helping seniors downsize and move to a new residence – Seniors need a trusting resource to help them downsize – a difficult and painful process
Designing efficient work spaces – Home based businesses may need help in setting up an efficient office

In each case, although you are using your organizing skills, each of these services would require different messaging, pricing and promotional strategies to reach those that have the need, know they need help and are willing to pay for getting that help. If you tried to use the same strategies across all four segments, your marketing would be far less effective.

Profile your ideal client

Now that you have identified your target market and its segmentation, you need to define your ideal client – a subset of your target market that you most enjoy working with.

What are the characteristics of your ideal customer?
What customers would you like to work with and can you offer them something that they are willing to pay money for?
Are your current clients what you consider your ideal target market – that is are they easy to work with, love what you offer, and feel that you offer them high value for their money?

By identifying your ideal client and focusing on attracting them, you will:

Develop services that cater to their needs
Clearly define and communicate your solutions
Capitalize on your strengths and become known as the go to expert
Target your messages and make your marketing activities more effective
Eliminate price comparisons
Learn to identify those are not a good fit

Our professional organizer could choose to work with all four segments of their target market, however, in many cases that is not practical. A better strategy would be to choose the one or two segments that you truly enjoy the most and put all of your efforts into satisfying their needs.

Whatever you decide, the point is to help you create a focused segment where you can offer services that you love and effectively market them with such clarity that it attracts clients like a magnet.

Choose the best communications channels

Now that you have your target market, you can select the best ways to reach them with your message. But now choosing the right marketing channel strategy to reach your target audience and create a stronger relationship with them is now more complicated.

A marketing communications channel is the delivery vehicle for your message or offer to your target audience. Combining your messaging with the right creative for the channel can resonate with your ideal customers and encourage them to do business with you.