The Business Bulletin
Ask the experts Do you have a burning question that you would like the answer to? Or maybe you’re looking for some advice to help your business? In each edition some questions will be shared and answered by some of The Business Bulletin experts.
Q. Is having a target market important? A. The short answer is yes. The slightly longer answer is that if you don’t know who your target market (i.e ideal customers) are, then how will anyone else? You need to know it in order to assess where to market to, what messages to use etc. AND in order to get useful referrals, they need to know who you are after as well. As a graphic designer I can in theory work with ‘anyone’, but this isn’t going to bring ‘anyone’ to mind. If however, I tell you that my ideal customers are: ■ Businesses over five years old ■ With at least five staff ■ Who understand the value of good graphic design ■ Who don’t have the skills inhouse ■ And worry that they are losing ground to their competition because their marketing materials are not good enough That might start the cogs whirring. If I say that they ideally are: ■ Based in Northamptonshire or surrounding counties ■ May have used other agencies but have had bad experiences
44 | Issue 2 – Sales and Marketing
who does the graphics as only
more targetted towards your ideal market(s)
part of their ‘real job’
Mark Coster - Pixooma
■ OR have a member of staff
■ And are in finance or engineering That might start you thinking of specific companies perhaps. Now that description above isn’t even that great, it still needs work, but its a hell of a lot better than ‘Anyone’. And often it leads to someone thinking of a company that fits only some of the criteria, something that wouldn’t happen without some of that detail. And does it mean that I can’t work with new IT startup one-man-bands? Nope. It just makes your marketing
A. A target market is very important and by moving away from “everybody” being your target to narrowing down it will help you rather than hinder you and below are, from a sales perspective, the reasons why. 1. You will be more successful By picking a target market and just working in that arena, you can truly get under their skin and understand their pain points, what their issues are, and why they would want your product. This knowledge helps with the sales process because you will be
