Alright. How to define your target market? This is actually a really
important question. Like extremely important question. If you know the
answer to this, kind of leads to a lot of other amazing things. It took me a while
to figure it out and I'm hoping that with watching this video, you'll be able
to do it a lot quicker than I did. You know I want to tell a story. So, years ago
I had a web design company and there were two different types of web design
clients that I would talk with on the phone. Those that I enjoyed talking to on
the phone and those that were miserable. Like I'd be on the phone for 5
minutes and I mean look I don't wear watches but I'd be looking at the clock
thinking, "It's only about 5 minutes, this is torture."But then there are other
clients that I would literally be on the phone for over an hour and I was totally
loving just helping them and I couldn't figure out what it was. What it took was
I really needed to find who my target market was. Who my ideal client was and
for me, it ended up being I love working with influencers, coaches, speakers,
mentors. Those who have a message. And there were plenty of clients that I just
really didn't enjoy their business and whatnot. And so I introduced it that
way because it made such a huge difference for me knowing who my target
audience was. But I know that there's so many people that have a real difficult
time like I did. Figuring it out. So how do you define our target market and what
are some tips that you can share on how we can do that to really hone in on
this the best market to work with? -Well, it's interesting because I started
taking my first marketing classes almost 20 years ago and this is the first thing
they teach you. -Aren't you...? So, when you're 2 years old? -Thank you so much I'll pay for
that later. But this is the first part. In order to be able to market appropriately,
you have to know who your audience is and they call that a target market. And
you figure out your target market by 3 things. Geographics,
demographics and psychographics. Geographics obviously our location
whether you're a local small, brick-and-mortar business or whether
you're an international company because you're doing things online. Those... That's
the first step. The second piece of it is your demographics. Things that most
people consider like what whether you're best fit for males and females, what age
range, whether people are with their marital statuses, their income level,
their education level. All of those things make up the demographics. And over
time, we've realized that that's not quite enough and we need that third, the
psychographic. So what are people's interests? What are their hobbies? But
then leading to what you are talking about. What types of people do you tend
to work with best? And a lot of people will say well, my product is great for
everyone. But that's not a great target market. The adage in the industry is if
you market to everyone you'll reach no one. Because you have to figure out how
to speak the language of your audience. And the more you can niche and narrow
your target market, the better you'll be able to communicate the messages that
resonate with just them. -Now, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, a big struggle
that I also had was I had lots of web design clients that were dentists. -Hmm.
-And I couldn't find anything wrong with a dentist because their credit
cards didn't decline. They were low maintenance. -Right. -Their websites were
pretty straightforward. I knew quickly how to design them. I just did not enjoy
having Dentist's clients. Which is something... Originally, if you know my background, I
thought I wanted to be a dentist when I grew up. Logically, it might have made
sense from... I rank down the front page of Google for a dentist website designer.
Dental website design. I was ranking on the front page of Google. And yet when I
really went internal about you know, who do I want to work with, where do I get
the most fulfillment, where are my... And this was a big
part to the things that I really wanted to offer my clients. The dentist didn't
want those services. So, it was... That was a big challenge for me. It's like logically,
it made sense. I rank for it already. I had
his clients there were low maintenance. Easy to... Easy to make happy type clients
and you know, make profitable. What advice would you give somebody like me back in
that scenario where I couldn't... Couldn't figure it out. -So, I think the weirdness
that you had was really great that there are some clients you want to talk to and
some clients that you avoid. And I think that part of our target market comes
from figuring out who we interact with best. And that's part of the
psychographics of figuring out who people are. And even if you're good at
something, it doesn't mean necessarily mean that it's the right fit for you. And
so I encourage clients to go back and look at their last 10, 20, 30 clients and
look at the ones that brought them the most revenue and that they enjoyed. And
so part of your target market can niche into other places and hopefully you
enjoy working with expert speakers and authors now and that they're not the
kind of people that you're looking at your watch at part at the time. But some
of our target market comes from experience and comes from going down a
path and realizing that's not what we want. On paper, it can look like this is
the perfect target market. They've got money, their credit cards, don't decline,
they need websites, they're easy to do. But at the end of the day, there's still
a personal element. And so, it's okay to have that awareness and then make an
adjustment so that you can position yourself in the right way. You could say
I could do dentists and I could do experts. But the more you position
yourself for a specific industry, the more those people will feel like you are
best equipped to meet their needs because you're not trying to be
everything to all different types. -Alright. So, I have an idea here. The idea is
that if you're starting brand new, you're just going to have to take your best guess.
-Yep. -Because over time, it's through that experience in knowing what works, what
doesn't knowing what you like and don't like. And so, you know, I am a
perfectionist and I like to... I like to start things right from the beginning.
But I've had to come to understand that the tweaks and adjustments just need to
be made over time, mistakes are going to happen and learn from those mistakes. So,
for those of you watching who are wanting to like, "Okay, I'm starting this
business, I'm going to you know, start in the speaking space or this YouTube space."
Where I'm going to start this business. Who are my... Who's my target audience in
the very, very beginning. That... It's especially hard to answer that. We can
take our best guesses. "Oh, I want people to make this amount of income. You
know, in this age range." But... So do you agree with the advice that we could be
flexible over time because it is really important to hone in but we might... We
might start going the wrong direction. -I absolutely recommend for beginners in
some cases to choose two audiences. Now, get clear... -It's like a split test. -Yes, exactly.
It's exactly it. Choose 2 audiences that you can effectively message. One of
the things that I tell my clients is that I define marketing as getting the
right messages to the right masses through the right mediums. And sometimes,
we only focus on that those masses but also that messaging is a really
important part. So, if you can define your target market and say can I message to
these people appropriately? And can I message to these people? The biggest
mistake that I see new entrepreneurs make and new business owners and
marketers is they make their audience so broad that they don't have a good
understanding of if their marketing is working. Where if you go in instead of
saying, "I'll go broad by default." And you say, "Okay, I'm going to pick dentist and
experts and try that and see what works and what doesn't." Even though there are
two very different audiences, you can speak specific to the dental market, you
can speak specific to the expert market and then from that, make decisions about
which ones you like better and which ones you have more success in. But even
if, hypothetically speaking, you are better with dentists than you were with
experts, (And I you're great with experts so this is just hypothetical, of course.)
figuring out what you like better can be part of that process. But in those both
of those cases, some people for example in the health and wellness space will
choose a target market for women or moms and then they'll choose something like
athletic. People who might have sports in injuries or athletic performance for
races. 2 entirely different audiences. And if they can keep both of those happy...
But they're still entirely different messages. And so, in some cases you'll get
to a place where, "Yeah, both of these work." And then 6 months, 12 months down
the road, you to specialize because you really are
meeting the needs of one. And even though you could do both, you can be better at
just really rocking out one target market and expand that area. People are
afraid that if they niche they're losing income. But I found that if you niche, you
can charge more. And so, it's a lot better to test and try to see what works
instead of trying to be for everyone because then you don't really have a
good indication of what is and isn't working. -Yeah, I feel like just really
emphasizing... You've actually you said it earlier. You just repeated it now that
you know, this time you worded it if you niche that you're losing out on money.
Meaning, if you go if you narrow down your audience too much, look at all the
other people you're not able to help and what if that person needs my help. But I
just feel like emphasizing that because there's so many... Maybe that is true. Maybe
if you narrow down you, miss out on this person over here. Maybe that's true but
there's so... The the benefits of narrowing down to a more specific target audience
so far outweigh.... You mentioned... You mentioned one, let's see if we can list
off several. One, that you mentioned is you can charge more because you are more
specialized. I think a huge one is that you can relate more. You can you can hone
your message or hone your your services or your products better to a niche
audience. I mean, something I talk about a lot on this channel is YouTube. And
you know, YouTube videos and I talked so much about keyword research. -Yes. -And how
we want to go for the leaf topics. If you haven't seen those videos, click up here.
I've got several videos where I talked about going to the leaf you know instead
of a branch or a trunk that's broad, go clear out to the leaf topics. Because an
example I share a lot. You know on how to... Instead of how to do push ups, I might
make a video on how to do push ups correctly for beginners. You know, I'm
just going way more specific. So now, I know exactly who I'm talking to and I
know exactly that I need to go back to the basics. I'm not the push up training
expert. But if I were, that would be the specific title. Anyway, just relating back
the more specific my audience is, then the more specific I can talk
to them and I mean, when I'm making a video or and I'm helping them as a client
or when I make a service, they know that that service is really meant just for
them. -Absolutely. And as the customer, you know you're making you the right choice
because they're speaking your language. And so, if it feels like it's for
everyone, you're like, "Well, is that really for me?' But if they're talking to your
specific needs, your specific challenges, it's a lot easier to purchase because...
And also, something that you didn't mention there is the expertise is there.
You can build expertise around a really solid small target market. And from that
expertise, like I said, be able to charge more money. Speak the language of the
people and help them to know that you truly are the go-to source for even this
really small tiny but valuable audience. -Okay, so hopefully that helped emphasize
why it's so important to narrow down your target audience. Are there any other
final tips that you can think of Michelle on how to do that? -Yeah. So, I
would say let's look at those 3 again. The Geographics, the demographics
and the psychographics. The first question to ask in the geographic space
is how much... Where... How big is your audience geographically? Local businesses
may be only served 2 or 3 cities. Regional businesses like publications
and other groups that have like restrictions on travel for some way
shape or form might choose just a state or even just a series of states that are
close by where people can get to them. And then there's obviously, the national
and the international business. And it's okay to pick one to start. It's okay to
pick local. And even if you intend to go international in the end, I always say
start small and then go big because you can use that experience to grow. Because
it's hard to go big and then go back down. So... But you can pick one and
obviously, some businesses are truly international. But knowing that will
change the way that you market. So, that'll cover the geographics. -I want to
throw in just... Just the kind of to add to the conversation, YouTube. So, if we're
making a YouTube channel, YouTube channels can be great for local
businesses but you have to... You have to be strategic about it because YouTube is
not a local thing. -Right. You'll make a video and if you use the
right keyword strategy, you're answering somebody's question no
matter where they are. And so oftentimes... You know, we've got lots of followers in
India because I talk a lot about outsourcing to the Philippines. They've
got a lot of a lot of followers in the Philippines that watch watch this
channel. On some of our other channels will get you know, big followings in
Europe and whatnot. Knowing the geography of your target audience will
really play a big part in your marketing strategy as well. Or because YouTube's
also a really a long-term play. So if you think, "Well, you know, right now I want to
start locally. But I could see myself, it doesn't have to be confined locally." And
so, let's start with YouTube knowing that one day YouTube might be the tool that
will help take us nationally or internationally. -Right. And sometimes if
the geographic question is a gray area for now, you can always default to the
demographics. And then ask yourself, "Okay. Well, maybe I'm international or maybe I'm
regional or maybe I'm national. But who are my people? Am I more suited for
males or more suited for females?" What is their age range?" And again, this is one of
those things where you're like, "Okay, I can do males and I'm going to do 18 to 64."
Well, that's an entirely different range of audience and a different wage of
messages that will reach those people. Are you really talking to Millennials?
Are you talking to empty nesters and retirees. They have different challenges,
different problems. So, get as narrow as you can on the age. I tell people to
consider income level to based off of if they're selling products and services.
Obviously, it's hard to sell homes to people who are still going to school
because they don't have an income yet. So, it doesn't necessarily have to be... It
just is a way for you to have more information about your buyer to make
those decisions. And then if you are looking for kids, obviously maybe marital
status and kids. Make a difference but also know that kids are not a target
market. Kids might have money but they're not the ones that you go after. You go
after the one who buys. And so, those demographics can help you really narrow
your messages as well. So, maybe a question to ask to wrap up this video is
a lot of times we might have an idea of a product or or of a service of a need
that we perceive and so, as I've got this great way. And so then, we
then create... The temptation is to create a target audience.
-Sure -...For our product. Instead of finding a group that has a need. Do you see
pitfalls in that? -Well, it's hard because innovation and people creating products
usually create them for their own personal need. And in some cases, they
create them because they know there's an audience for them and that other people
will purchase. But if you do it reverse, that's fine. Sometimes you can look at a
group and know their demographics and their psychographics and their
geographical some go, "Oh, they really need X." Speakers who really need lighting or
microphones or something versus moms who might have a unique challenge the thing
to take care of. But if you do it where you create the product first, just make
sure there is an audience and I encourage people to go through this
process. You know, woman who wanted to sell hair bows. Lots and lots of hair
bows which is great. And her target market was obviously moms that had girls.
But in order to be able to make the kind of money she wanted, she'd have to make
5,000 hair bows a month and she didn't want to do that. And so sometimes, you
have to think through the circumstance and your audience and the income that
you want above and beyond, "Is this product awesome? And Who am I going to
get to buy it?" You have to consider all of those aspects before you go to market.
-Awesome. Well hopefully, got some good tips in this video. If you have any ideas
of especially how to shortcut the process of honing in on your target
audience or different things that you can add, definitely leave them in the
comments below. I do read those. Be sure to subscribe and
we'll see you tomorrow.