How To Identify a Target Market in | 8 Steps to Success

To put it simply, the market is the group of people that will be buying your product or service because it fills a need that they have. A target market is the group of individuals your product or service is created for and marketed to. 

Not as simply put, businesses need to scope out their target market’s demographics and other data to get an idea of ROI (return on investment). It also serves as a tool for marketing, which is how your customers discover your product or service — think ads, social media, websites, branding, etc.

For example, let’s look at the shoe and clothing brand Nike. Its target market is not five-year-old girls who love candyfloss and panda bears, but men and women aged between 11 and 55 (an abnormally wide age range for a brand) who have a love of athletics and innovative streetwear.

The latest 10-minute Nike 50th Anniversary video ad campaign is directly aimed at this target market. It stars Spike Lee and Indigo Hubbard-Salk sweeping across US streets playing chess and talking about how Nike has been there for every major sporting event. Two people from two different generations, discussing amazing sporting heroes and heroines.

We’d say that’s the value of knowing your target market.

If you’re thinking, “my product/service is incredible! Everyone will want a piece of it, why narrow down my market when anyone can buy it?” Unfortunately, in order to create a product in the first place, you’ll need to think of your specific buyers and ask yourself some questions:

• Why are you creating this product or selling this service? 
• Who is it serving? 
• What makes it different from competitors? 
• What benefits does it create for users? 
• How does what you’re selling solve the problems your customers face? 
• What are the barriers for your customers?

You’ll also need to ask yourself what your intention is with your business. “To sell and become a millionaire,” you might say. While we appreciate the ambition, business is also about understanding your consumers and using research to reduce your risks.

These questions might feel a bit interrogating, but they’re the beginning of identifying your market — the beginning steps to shaping a customer profile.

This question often gets lumped together with financial markets, but there are three main types of markets:

1. Consumer — when individuals buy things for personal use, i.e., food, drinks, clothes.
2. Industrial — when individuals or businesses buy materials to help them create products that they intend to sell, i.e., woodwork, steel, glass.
3. Reseller — the reseller market mostly consists of retail outlets as they buy products wholesale and sell them on.

So, you might be wondering what are some actionable steps for identifying a target market? Below we’ll take you through each step so you can learn how to identify a target market:

Step 1. Outline Customer Benefits

Before delving into researching your target market, it might be helpful to look at your product or service and outline the customer benefits.

For example, if you have a shower gel that has a new exfoliating ingredient, that is not the benefit!

The customer benefit would be that “it gives you smoother skin and unclogs pores.”

You could start by creating a big table and writing out all of the features and benefits of what you sell. This is formally called a values proposition, and it’s the perfect first step for any business. Here’s a look at an example of that below:

You can use your features (new exfoliating ingredient) as a way to strengthen your marketing, but always lead with the benefits. Look at what you want to sell through the eyes of the buyer — what are they getting?

Not only will this help you identify your target market but it will also help you form a marketing strategy.

Step 2. The Data Collection Stage

Become familiar with what research you’ll be doing to shape your target market. We spoke to our in-house expert Natasha Willett, who offered us these key ways to begin learning about your target market’s identity:

• Eyes on the marketplace — research the market, collect statistics, trends, and begin to outline the competition.
• Needs assessment — put together focus groups, mystery shoppers, online analytics or tracking to gather more data on customers and buying habits and needs.
• Trends and forecasting — use market data and user habits to predict what buyers will do.
• Attitude research — create surveys that target questions towards how products or services make them feel, think, and behave.
• A closer peek at competitors — what are the target markets for similar companies? What are the pain points they have and how might your product or service solve that?
• Target population — the group of people you’ve narrowed down as your target consumer, which we will explain in step three.
• SWOT analysis — stands for Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats analysis. Let’s take a look at what a SWOT might look like for your business.

Step 3. Putting Together a Customer Profile

A customer profile or customer avatar is a framework consisting of your ideal customers’ demographics, geographics, psychographics, wants, and pain points.

Demographics

• Age
• Race
• Ethnicity
• Gender
• Marital/family status
• Income
• Education
• Job & job title

Geographics

• Location
• Timezone
• Cultural components
• Language
• Climate and time of year
• Population type and density

Psychographics

• Personality traits
• Hobbies and interests
• Lifestyle
• Opinions, attitudes, and beliefs
• Values

Wants & Pain Points

• Dreams
• Goals
• Aspirations
• Fears
• Frustrations
• Pains

It’s important to get a good understanding of your ideal customer, going over all of these points and creating a mock profile for them. It might be helpful to get some stock images of people and write out these points along with any quotes you’ve gotten from focus groups.

What Is a Marketing Strategy?

A marketing strategy is a plan you put together based on the benefits your business provides the target customer profile. There are many different tried-and-tested strategies alongside people still crafting their own marketing strategies.

There’s no 100% guarantee with any strategy, as our in-house expert Ross Darragh said it:

More Information

• Remarketing vs Retargeting: Learn more about these different marketing strategies

Segmenting your target market means understanding what divides and categorizes your customers and particular product lines.

Before beginning to do market segmentation, you’ll need to have enough data on your customers and knowledge of your business. Whether you collect it all yourself or get help from a marketing organization to collect it for you depends on your budget.

Our expert Natasha Willett’s tip for beginning your target market segmentation is:

There are so many ways to find valuable data other than just your website or social media cookies — there are government, academic, and industry resources available to you. Below are just a few to get you started:

Statistics

• Eurostat
• Statista
• US census
• The annual abstract of statistics

Quality Research

• Open access publishing
• Google Scholar
• US Pew Research Center

Competitor Analysis

• Deloitte
• Market research agency papers

Although not everybody will fit your target market customer profile, it helps you get specific about your business marketing. Discovering how to identify a target market is the first step to launching your business into the marketplace. We’ve gone over how to:

1. Ask the right questions
2. Identify the three main types of markets
3. Outline the benefits your customers get from your business
4. Gather the data and information you need
5. Create a customer avatar or profile
6. Begin a marketing strategy
7. Start segmenting markets (with examples!)
8. Find extra tools and resources

Now that you know all about identifying your target market, you can put together customer profiles and take your marketing to the next level! A good next step may be to get to know your target audience needs and pain points within your target market. We wish you the very best in your research and look forward to seeing your marketing plans come to life.