Target Practice: How to Market to Your Ideal Customer

If you had to describe your perfect, most ideal customer, would you be able to do it? If not, your marketing is likely not reaching its full potential.

Executing a successful marketing strategy will hinge on how you reach your target market. The problem that many businesses run into is that they have never determined who exactly their ideal customer is. Without knowing your target market, you can’t hope for your marketing to be fully effective.

What Is a Target Market?

A target market is a group of people with a few defined characteristics:

• They want or need what you’re offering
• They can spend the money to buy what you’re offering
• They know the value of what you’re offering

Your ideal customer represents your target market. The marketplace is flooded with companies who are trying to appeal to everyone. By making that mistake, they are diluting their brand and their message. By identifying their ideal customer, you are ensuring that your marketing efforts reach the people who are likely to buy what you’re selling.

Finding Your Ideal Customer

There are two ways to identify your ideal customer:

1.    Demographics: Information like age, gender, location, marital status and ethnic background.

2.    Psychographics: Certain behavior characteristics like desires, needs, habits and attitudes.

The demographics will show who your customer is. The psychographics will show why they buy.

The best customer profiles can combine demographics and psychographics. For example, your ideal customer may be single women aged 23-35 who are adventurous trendsetters. Your product and your marketing should be geared for that sort of profile.

Finding your ideal customer requires that you look at who is currently buying your products (or products from other companies that are similar to yours), what motivates them to buy, and what needs are being met when they make the purchase.

Talk to your client base

Ask your current customers what makes them tick. Find out what motivated them to buy from you. Ask about their attitude, their aspirations and their fears. You can do this by sending a customer survey. Honestly tell them that you’re looking to better understand what your customers care about. Many of your clients will have no qualms opening up to you.

Look at Your Site’s Analytics

Look behind the curtain to see how people are interacting with your site. By reviewing your analytics, you can see what compelled visitors to take an action—whether it be clicking the buy button or entering their email address to sign up for your newsletter. This will require that you test different elements on your site, but it can reveal some significant insight into what motivates your site visitors.

As a business owner, you need to be laser-focused on the customers who want and need your products. The most successful companies know who their ideal customers are, and they know how to reach them. To take your business to the next level, you need to know the same. 

If you have any questions, about targeting your ideal customer, feel free to reach out to us at 778-285-2288.