Marketing in Connecticut without a clear target is like throwing darts in the dark—you might hit the mark occasionally, but its more luck than strategy. Target marketing is essential for effective marketing. Here’s how to pinpoint your ideal audience and tailor your efforts to influence them.
Target marketing: why it’s important
Understanding your target market is the first step in making your marketing successful. It lets you focus your resources, fine tune your message, and become known by your best prospects throughout Connecticut.
Analyze Your Existing Customers
Start with the people who already use your products or services. What do they have in common? Look for patterns in demographics, behaviors, and needs. If you’re selling to businesses, consider their industry, size, and challenges. Your current customer base often provides valuable clues about who else might benefit from what you offer.
Why do they need you?
Take the time to learn about your current customers: why do they need you? What’s the problem or challenge they want to solve? Why do they need you today, and not yesterday or next month? For instance, if you sell ergonomic office furniture, your target market may include professionals working long hours at desks or businesses prioritizing employee wellness.
Crowdsourcing: start asking customers
Market Research is a fancy name for just asking questions, so it’s time to start. Ask long time customers about what they’re buying today. When the phone rings, ask potential customers where they learned about you, and how you can help them today. If you’re ambitious dive deeper with surveys, focus groups, or social media polls to learn about your audience’s preferences and pain points.
Come up with a list of common characteristics
Develop profiles for your ideal customers. If your customers are individual comumers try to paint a picture of a great customer, that could (but might not) include their age, income, location, interests, and buying behaviors. Go further by identifying their motivations and objections. In marketing this is called a “persona” and it helps you craft messaging that resonates on a personal level.
Prioritize
Your audience probably includes more than one group. Prioritize them based on profitability, ease of reaching them, or long term profitability. Focus your initial efforts on the segment most likely to deliver results quickly: they’re the “low hanging fruit.”
Test and Refine
Marketing is not static. Test your campaigns with smaller groups to gauge response, and refine your approach based on what works. Keep tracking changes in your market and adjust as needed.
By zeroing in on target marketing, you can craft marketing message that speak directly to their needs and motivations. Not only will you save time and resources, but you’ll also build stronger connections that lead to loyal customers.
How do you deliver a targeted message in Connecticut?
Call us and let’s talk about your best prospects, and we’ll give you three (or more) cost-effective ways to deliver your message to them. In Stamford or Bridgeport or Hartford, call us at (203) 655-3920. Outside Connecticut call toll free (800) 862-8896. Or click here to email us.
