To be successful, a small business must know its target customer market.  The reason you should be concerned with identifying your target customer is because it makes strategies for designing, pricing, distributing, promoting, positioning, and improving your product, service, or idea easier, more effective, and more cost-effective.

Advertising that produces results, in my experience, is based on 5 key criteria. These criteria’s are:

1) Audience

Who, specifically, do you serve? If you have not clearly identified your market(s) then you have no chance of selecting the right media to use or message that will resonate.

2) Market Conditions

Are there any market conditions, positive or negative, that could influence results? Get into your audience’s world so you really know both the trends and the special conditions that may affect their receptivity to you message.

3) Message

Have you sufficiently compelled your audience to stop and listen to you AND given them a compelling enough reason to see you as the one viable solution for the product or service you sell? Do you know your Unique Selling Proposition that differentiates you from your competitors? Does your marketing/advertising make a clear and compelling case for the W.I.I.F.M. (What’s In It For Me? - ie... the BENEFITS your audience will experience by doing business with you)? Or, are your messages feature-laden and self-congratulatory.

4) Media

Are you advertising in the publications that the audience reads? Are you networking and setting joint venture relationships up with those who already service your audience? (Marketing is about more than just paid media ... networking is key) When you do pay for advertising, is it only in media with audited circulation? (Many local publications overprint thousands of copies that they report as readership, which are placed at the doorstep of many local retail establishments and subsequently thrown in the trash.)

5) Offer

Do you have a two-step offer that compels your audience to find out more, or form a “trial relationship” with you? Asking for too much commitment before your audience “knows you, likes you and trusts you” is like asking for a marriage before you ask for a date.

Written by: A Marketing Guru