Who is Your Target Market? Tips to Locate Your Perfect Customer

By Alice Seba

Not knowing the type of person that would be interested in your product or services can drastically reduce your chances of succeeding. If you do not understand or know the person, how can you sell to them?

Here's news for you, that's going to be one difficult task until you have researched as to who exactly your target market is, and what it is they need. Okay, so what steps they take to discover the type of person who will readily buy what you have to offer? You'll have to continue reading to discover tips that will help you grow your online empire by simply getting to know your customer.

Talk With Your Old Customers

The first thing you can do, if you already have paying customers, is find out what they really are all about. Determine what they want and need from you. There are many ways to do this. A few of which include:

Creating surveys and asking for their thoughts and opinions on your product or service after they make a purchase.

Another way is to utilize your mailing list and ask them what they would like to see more of from you in an email.

Research Can Still be Completed, Even if You Haven't Made Any Previous Sales

What research process do you use, if you have never sold a product before, and you have no list to speak of? In order to discover who exactly your target clients is, jot down all of your products benefits (not features). Brainstorm a list of things that your service or product does for people. Examples of this would be "makes them more money", "gives them more spent time" etc. etc. Also focus on how your product will fix any problems your client may be facing. What is it that you can do to help your buyer, that would help their lives become easier or higher quality?

As an example, if you sold a beauty cream that re-hydrates the skin and reduces wrinkles, the target market you to aim at would be woman in their late forties. List every last benefit of your product has to offer. This way you will have more of a specific idea of what market to target, and zone in the perfect customer. After testing for results, you may find that you have more than one target market. That's actually a positive thing when you're doing marketing online. When you have results like this, creating more than one site (one for each target market) becomes easy and can be achieved at little cost.

Finding Out What's Already Out There

You can also conduct keyword and/or market research. There are many ways to do this including keyword research, reading magazines, reading reviews and visiting forums, social networking sites and other discussion groups. Browse around and see what it is people are looking for by visiting other websites. Even your competitors can give you great insight.

No matter how you come up with your target market, remember to take the time to put yourself in your potential customer's shoes. Whether you're just starting out with a new product or are making changes to your existing service, don't be afraid to talk to people out there to find out just exactly who the target market for your online business really is.

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