Business 101: Effective marketing starts with ID’ing your target audience

By ANDREW VAN HORN
Business Columnist

Editor’s Note: Willisburg-based business coach and consultant Andrew Van Horn will be writing columns for the Nelson County Gazette offering tips and strategies for business owners and entrepreneurs. Send your business questions to him by e-mail andrewvanhorn@actioncoach.com or call   (859) 940-5517      .

ANDREW VAN HORN

Monday, Feb. 13, 2012, 9 a.m. — Improving our marketing and sales is a guaranteed way to improve our bottom line profits when it is done correctly. One mistake that many small and medium business owners make is not identifying their target market correctly. Failing to identify your target correctly results in many lost marketing dollars. So, how do we identify the target market?

To identify the target you need to look at your current customer base and what makes them unique. The simplest method to accomplish this task is to ask your customers. Ask them to fill out survey sheets, ask them during the sales process, or ask them when the opportunity arises. By finding out the unique traits of your ideal customers you can build a profile of who needs your product or services.

Once this profile is built you have a picture of the best way to reach other buyers that fit that demographic. You can start to write your advertisements in a way that only the people who might buy your product pay attention to it. People pay attention to advertisements that are targeted to them specifically. The ads do not need to be clever, unique, and they do not have to be professionally produced. All the ads have to do is hit that target customer.

You hit that target customer through a headline that gets them to stop and read your ad. My target for advertising is business owners. I use a headline that reads Success Oriented Business Owners. This simple headlines excludes consumers and targets business owners that want to be successful and learn to grow their businesses.

Another example that would target a specific set of consumer would be Attention Food Connoisseurs. By using this word choice I automatically exclude certain parts of the market to a focus on more adept eaters. The people who care more about quality and presentation that just filling their stomach.

The headline or announcement needs to hit your target or no one is reading or listening to your advertisement. It is ideal to run a couple of different ads at the same and have a different way to measure the effectiveness of each ad. That way you know which ones work and which ones do not.

Hit the target and your advertising is effective.

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