Lately, I have been doing a fair amount of writing about customer service and personal relationship here in the Home Business blog. I realized, however, that when it comes to running a home business—if someone was to ask me how to get a business back on track, I would probably advise that she bring her efforts back to targeting her marketing and efforts. When in doubt, pay attention to your target market and figure out how to reach them and cultivate those prospects.
Of course, this requires that you actually take the initial step and identify what your target market is. Using market research, surveys, or other basic techniques for figuring out who is likely to buy your product or service and what sort of individuals these people are—you can figure out who your market is likely to be. Once you do that, and you’ve identified what your business purpose and mission is, you can work on getting that message out to the identified population—this is target marketing.
You want to reach your people in the best possible way that they want to be reached. If they respond to e-mail, then e-mail marketing is the way to go. If they are the sort of people that still respond to mail or print marketing, then that should be your approach. Layer your contacts and outreach efforts and continue to send a strong, consistent message to your targeted population—this is target marketing.
What target marketing does is it helps us to consolidate our already meager resources and focus in on the people and areas where it will do the most good. Instead of dabbling here and there or broadcasting a big net over a wide area, you can concentrate on those individuals and those types of individuals who are most likely to use or purchase your product or service—this is target marketing.
And, target marketing works.