Guide to Target Marketing

Targeting a specific type of customer allows your company to:

1. Plan marketing initiatives more effectively.
2. Allocate marketing dollars more efficiently.
3. Hone in on and eliminate sales tactics that aren't working.
4. Learn more about your customers' preferences and habits for use in future promotions.

Tips & Tactics
Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• Pay attention to what similar firms are doing in terms of direct marketing and advertising to their customers.
• Customer surveys – even brief ones – can tell you a great deal about their preferences. Asking "How did you hear about us?" with every online or telephone order could help you hone in on ways to market in the future.
• Examining your best selling product or service is a good way to "back door" target market research. Study the people who buy your most popular products and determine how to more effectively sell to them.
• Consider a test run campaign to a smaller market segment before doing a complete overhaul of your marketing initiatives.
• Targeting via segmentation holds nearly endless possibilities: age, gender, income, geography, etc.
• Utilize local chambers of commerce and marketing or other industry trade associations to find market data in core customers' communities.

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