Target Marketing: Absolutely Your Most Important Task

One of the most costly errors novice marketers make is to spend too little time understanding their market and then matching the characteristics of that market to the correct media choices to communicate their message. This is your key to marketing success! You can have a great idea, tell the wrong people, get little or no support, and go out of business -- all in the blink of an eye!

You may be thinking how obvious this sounds ...that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to grasp. But, ineffective targeting is the single biggest and most costly mistake marketers make. Everybody wants to move past essential market research and into the advertising glitz and glamour. It's got far more sex appeal than sitting in a library, going online or getting on the phone researching a marketplace.

But please research. It’s far better to be a month or two later at getting to market, so you have a better opportunity to truly get to know and understand that market, than to rush into marketing implementation tactics like advertising or sales, without knowing who you really need to reach, what your competitors are doing, or how the market is changing.

You may have heard some of the terms like demographics and psychographics, but now you'll need to thoroughly understand them, and how to use this information to better target your market.

Demographics is the identification of common characteristics of a population, especially those of age, sex, income, education, and race.

Demographics allow you to determine whom you should address your appeal to, while psychographics tell you what type of appeal may be most effective in reaching your prospect.

Targeting your market through the use of demographic data will help you get the most out of your sales and advertising efforts. But, in order to determine where and how your marketing communications programs will be implemented, you need to understand exactly who your prospect is.

Think about your own situation. Is the product or service you offer geared to a consumer, a business, or a government agency? Can everyone in that consumer or business group use your product, or is there a particular type of business or individual that is more apt to purchase it? Does age, sex, income level, or lifestyle of the business or individual indicate a more qualified prospect? For instance, if you know that families with incomes under $20,000 per year typically do not buy your product or service, it would be too costly to direct a general advertising campaign. Instead, identify and pursue higher income families. By targeting your promotional materials to those prospects most likely to buy your product, you will obtain a higher response rate at a lower cost.

Every market will have different requirements for targeting. Let’s assume you have a product or service that appeals to a wide age group. If you create a direct mail piece or display ad, say to appeal to the higher-income, age 45 to 55 bracket, the appeal used for that group probably won't work at all for other age brackets, because people relate best to people similar to themselves.

Psychographics: the lifestyle characteristics of a target market such as hobbies, preferences, social groups, etc. Psychographic profiles can even be based on the types of credit cards consumers carry or the purchases made with them.

Psychographics can help you reach a given market even more effectively than demographics alone.

Psychographically correct messages have a positive influence on your target market and so they increase sales. The opposite is also true. If you use incorrect psychographic content, it'll serve to drive the market away from your product or business as the correct psychographics drives them to you.

American Express ads present an example of the way psychographics are effectively utilized. These ads typically show an upscale business person or couple vacationing or doing business with their American Express card. American Express knows its market. And its ads communicate directly to that market through the use of appropriate visuals and words to which their market can best relate.

Television advertising, in general, is probably one of the best places to study psychographics. Notice the football games. Their advertisers are typically car companies that feature a more "macho" car like Jeep, or other four-wheel drive vehicles. You’ll also observe many beer commercials, most of which relate directly to football, while positively promoting the image of the fans who enjoy watching it.

Similarly, golf program commercials, if not directly selling a golf-related product, will show a golfer using the featured product.

As another example, let’s assume for a minute that you’re promoting memberships to a local community exercise/health center. If you have determined through your psychographic analysis that a great many of your prospects are 25 to 40 years old, then you’d use models in that same age group to promote your center, since the bulk of your market wouldn’t relate to someone older or much younger. People relate best to people and images that are like themselves. They will either not notice a commercial or ad that uses psychographically incorrect images and messages, or, if they do notice it, they’ll not be influenced by it, and many times will dismiss the viability of the product.

Organization Demographics

If you sell to businesses or organizations instead of individual consumers, you may be wondering if the demographics and psychographics of individuals are really important to you. Well, the answer is "Yes." In addition to understanding the demographics of the organization, you must profile both the demographics and psychographics of individuals in the decision-making team, so you can relate to them personally, as well as the organization’s executive. It is said that 80 percent of all buying decisions are made for personal emotional reasons, then justified through facts about the product or service.

Even organizations have demographics, which include such things as age, number of employees, Standard Industrial Code category (SIC codes are issued by the Federal government to classify businesses), gross sales, geographic location, etc. Older organizations often act and react differently than newer ones.

To be successful, you must build a relationship with the buyer or the individuals on the buying team.

Table of Contents l Next - Market Segmentation