Understanding Your Target Audience

No business can be all things to all people. Instead, you must reach specific customers and satisfy their particular needs. As an entrepreneur, you must identify those customers and understand as precisely as possible what they want. The process of finding and studying potential customers for your venture doesn’t have to be complex or expensive, but it is extremely important. In a nutshell, it requires you to find out everything you can about the customers whom you intend to pursue. Once you have that information, you’ll have a much better chance of capturing those customers for your business. Demographics Begin your research by checking the demographics of the region that you plan to target. You’ll want to know the population’s makeup in terms of age, gender, income level, occupation, education, and family circumstances: married with children, singles, or retired. To find that information, you’ll need to spend some time online. Do a Google search to find the most recent edition of the Country and City Data Book, published by the U.S. Department of Commerce. This research will give you the most recent census data on the area you wish to target. Geographic and Lifestyle Factors Give some thought to where and how your target customers live. Are they urbanites who walk everywhere (foot traffic will bring them into a store) or suburban soccer moms who spend most of their time in the car (do you need to provide a lot of parking space)? What is the weather like? Are people more likely to spend a lot of time outdoors, or are indoor activities more popular? Are these people conservative with their money, or are they spenders? The answers will help determine what you can sell to them, how you should sell it, and at what price. Customer Needs Consider all of the reasons why people might purchase your product or service. For example, if you’re opening a health club, what are the priorities of your clients? Do they want to take exercise classes, work out with a trainer, or play racquet sports with friends? Will you need to be open early in the morning to accommodate commuters who need to leave for work? Are there a lot of stay-at-home or work-from-home parents who need child care services in order to attend classes? Find out by talking to people in the local fitness industry and by quizzing friends or acquaintances who go to health clubs. Then you can design and market your club accordingly. Thinking about opening a coffee shop? Stake out the area where you think you'd like to start the business. Notice the traffic, car and foot, at various times throughout the day to see how many people might frequent your shop. Do people dash in and out of shops, or would they linger? This might help you determine whether you should also sell small pastry items or full meals as well as coffee. Once you’ve considered the key demographic factors, you can begin to assemble a customer profile, a more focused statement that describes your target market in detail. Consult that profile when you make decisions about issues such as what products and services to offer or advertise, how much to charge for various products, and expansion plans.

ABCs of Effective Advertising

AllBusiness, a D&B Company says that if you want your advertising to resonate with prospective customers, it's essential that you appeal to their emotions in some way. Fail to do this and you might as well be throwing money out the window. Effective ads sell your message, company, or product. They may or may not be creative, but if you can package some good creative in with a message that appeals to a strong need or want within your target audience, it will certainly help. Effective ads are convincing. They engage prospects as if you were speaking directly to them, and when you succeed in making this connection your prospective customer's thoughts will become your brand itself. Even if you achieve the enviable position of having a provocative ad execution with an effective message, your work is far from over. In fact, in the world of advertising, your work is never over. Continually exposing your customers, prospective customers, and suspects (those who aren't currently interested in your company or product, but who might be shortly) to the same messaging over a prolonged period of time will lead to stagnation. Eventually, you'll fail not only to inspire brand loyalty, but also to retain it. Even Coke, one of the world's most valuable brands, reinvents its messaging and image when it decides they have begun to lose effectiveness. So how do you create an effective ad campaign? One way is to go with the single benefit methodology, which directly links your brand to a single benefit. If your deodorant lasts longer, tell the world about it. The characterization or personification angle involves creating a character that expresses the product's benefits or personality. The narrative methodology involves developing a narrative story with episodes describing a problem and its outcome. Again, aim to produce advertising that states not only a product's facts, but that also appeals to emotions. Using the deodorant example, you might accomplish this by playing off your customers' fears of having body odor at an inopportune time. Although a calculated and well thought out advertising campaign may do a good job of creating brand awareness, it may fall short of inducing product preference or, the end goal, purchase. For this reason, don't rely on advertising as a complete solution. Instead, support it with marketing and sales promotion to help trigger a purchase. Apply the following criteria to test the effectiveness of your advertising message: 1. The ad intelligibly and simply states a single message. 2. The ad evokes a specific, acute emotion. 3. The ad is being presented in a space where it will likely be noticed. 4. The overriding message is clearly evident. Finally, understand that even a carefully thought out, highly creative campaign with a strong, concise message will fall flat if the product you're advertising just isn't any good. Be honest with yourself on this one. Solicit existing customer feedback. Then decide whether or not it would be a wiser investment if you were to spend the money and time on first improving your product. The better your product is, the less time and money you'll need to spend on traditional advertising. After all, word of mouth advertising is free, and it's often what ultimately makes or breaks a product, brand, or company.