Target Marketing – Successful Strategies

Target marketing is best understood through brand marketing.  Brand marketing is about making a promise to your business’ target market; it is about delivering that promise consistently.

This is easier said then done because what makes a successful brand is having a unique promise and committing to that promise.  Brand marketing lives or dies on this principle but is often overlooked and “tossed” in the decision bucket of logo and stationary.

A strong brand marketing strategy is a product of truly understanding your target market persona; specifically, the problems the target market experiences.

Target marketing is based on a target market persona; essentially a story about your business’ typical buyer. They represent your company’s real or target audience. Understanding your target market will help to ensure the effectiveness of your sales and marketing strategies.

Target marketing and target market personas are crtical for helping your organization to understand who it is selling to, what their pain points are and how your solution can be applied. By grouping buyers into distinct groups, understanding the problems these groups have and how you can solve them, and documenting what you know about each buyer persona, you will be able to craft a marketing message that speaks directly to your buyers by:

Here are five steps for creating strong target market personas:

Speak to your customers and the people who are in your market; even go as far as to have a formal (but short) interview with them.

“Walk- a-mile” in the shoes of your target market persona; understand their world as much as possible. This means understanding their role and their approach to their job, their education etc.  By trying to comprehend their day-to-day activities, you will be able to outline a picture of their day and expected behaviours.

Give live to your target market persona and name each one; give each one a background. Your goal is to create a memorable persona for the entire company; by naming them and making each background flattering, you will achieve this.  Their background could include their education level, marital status, where they are live.  The intention is to paint a picture that allows your organization to envision each persona.

Develop a written document that outlines each buyer persona. Write each persona like a narrative that outlines that persona’s preferences and background.

Keep everyone in the company up-to-speed with your marketing activity by sharing your target marketr persona.  Be sure to revisit your persona as your business expands into new target markets, or learns more about your customers.

Throwing darts at a dart-board is not easy to begin with; don’t try throwing at the centre of the dart-board without having the target painted on.  If your business’ target marketing persona is clearly defined, the target marketing strategy will be more effective.