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How to Write a Business Plan: Target Market Analysis

The Business Plan and the Importance of Defining Your Target Market

Susan Ward wrote about small businesses for The Balance for 18 years. She has run an IT consulting firm and designed and presented courses on how to promote small businesses.

Conducting a Market Analysis

Polling your target market, writing the market analysis, online tools for market research, u.s. online market research sources, canadian online market research, local sources of market research, doing your own market research.

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The market analysis is basically the target market section of your business plan . It is a thorough examination of the ideal people to whom you intend to sell your products or services.  

Even if you intend on selling a product or service only in your community, you won't be selling that service to everyone who lives there. Knowing exactly what type(s) of people might be interested in buying your product or service and how many of them reside in your projected area or region is fundamental in creating your market analysis.

Once target market data has been established, you'll also work on sales projections within specific time frames, as well as how prospective sales might be affected by trends and policies.

Research is key and cornerstone of any solid  business plan .

Don't Skip This Step!

Don't skip market research; otherwise, you could end up starting a business that doesn't have a paying market.

Use these general terms as linchpins in research data for the market analysis section of your business plan, and to identify your target market:

But don't stop here. To succinctly define your target market, poll or survey members of your prospective clients or customers to ask specific questions directly related to your products or services. For instance, if you plan to sell computer-related services, ask questions relating to the number of computing devices your prospective customers own and how often they require servicing. If you plan on selling garden furniture and accessories, ask what kinds of garden furniture or accessories your potential customers have bought in the past, how often, and what they expect to buy within the next one, three, and five years.

Answers to these and other questions related to your market are to help you understand your market potential.

The goal of the information you collect is to help you project how much of your product or service you'll be able to sell. Review these important questions you need to try to answer using the data you collect:

• What proportion of your target market has used a product similar to yours before?
• How much of your product or service might your target market buy? (Estimate this in gross sales and/or in units of product/service sold.)
• What proportion of your target market might be repeat customers?
• How might your target market be affected by demographic shifts?
• How might your target market be affected by economic events (e.g. a local mill closing or a big-box retailer opening locally)?
• How might your target market be affected by larger socio-economic trends?
• How might your target market be affected by government policies (e.g. new bylaws or changes in taxes)?

One purpose of the market analysis is to ensure you have a viable business idea.

Find Your Buying Market

Use your market research to make sure people don't just like your business idea, but they're also willing to pay for it.

If you have information suggesting that you have a large enough market to sustain your business goals, write the market analysis in the form of several short paragraphs using appropriate headings for each. If you have several target markets, you may want to number each. 

Sections of your market analysis should include:

• Industry Description and Outlook
• Target Market
• Market Research Results
• Competitive Analysis

Remember to properly cite your sources of information within the body of your market analysis as you write it. You and other readers of your business plan, such as potential investors, will need to know the sources of the statistics or opinions that you've gathered.

There are several online resources to learn if your business idea is something worth pursing, including:

• Keyword searches can give you an overall sense of potential demand for your product or service based on the number of searches.
• Google Trends analysis can tell you how the number of searches has changed over time.
• Social media campaigns can give you an indication of the potential customer interest in your business idea.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has information on doing your market research and analysis , as well as a list of free small business data and trends resources you can use to conduct your research. Consider these sources for data collection:

• SBA  Business Data and Statistics  
• The U.S. Census Bureau maintains a huge database of demographic information that is searchable by state, county, city/town, or zip code using its census data tool . Community, housing, economic, and population surveys are also available.
• The U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has extensive statistics on the economy including consumer income/spending/consumption, business activity, GDP, and more, all of which are searchable by location.

The Government of Canada offers a guide on doing market research and tips for understanding the data you collect. Canadian data resources include:

• Statistics Canada  offers demographic and economic data.
• The  Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC)  offers market research and consulting with industry experts.
• The Canada Business Network provides business information to entrepreneurs by province/territory, including market research data.

There are also a great many local resources for building target market information to explore, including:

• Local library
• Local Chamber of Commerce
• Board of Trade
• Economic Development Centre
• Local government agent's office
• Provincial business ministry
• Local phone book

All of these will have information helpful in defining your target market and providing insights into trends.

The above resources are secondary sources of information, in which others have collected and compiled the data. To get specific information about your business, consider conducting your own market research . For instance, you might want to design a questionnaire and survey your target market to learn more about their habits and preferences relating to your product or service.

Market research is time-consuming but is an important step in affording your business plan validity. If you don't have the time or the research skills to thoroughly define your target market yourself, hiring a person or firm to do the research for you can be a wise investment.​

Small Business Administration. " Market Research and Competitive Analysis. " Accessed Jan. 13, 2020.

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How to Write a Marketing Plan

Marketing starts with your customers.

Your marketing plan details how you intend to meet your customers’ needs and communicate the benefits of your products or services to them. When deciding about market positioning, pricing, promotions, and sales, your customers should be top of mind.

The Four Key Components of Your Marketing Plan

Your marketing plan should describe how you will segment your target market, how you will position your products or services compared to your competition, what your pricing strategy will be, and how you will effectively reach and influence your customers.

The Target Market

Your target market is a group of customers that has a similar need for a product or service, money to purchase the product or service, and willingness and ability to buy it.

To identify your target market and best serve your market, you need to:

• Know your customers
• Understand what your customers need
• Why they buy

Because you have limited time, resources, and budget, you cannot be everything to everyone. To effectively reach customers, you need to segment your target market into one primary market on which you focus most of your energy, and at most three secondary markets.

You can segment your target market along four key characteristics:

Demographic:  Who are your customers? Include information such as:

• Family size
• Family life cycle (single, married with or without kids, divorced)
• Nationality

Geographic:  Where do they live? Include information such as:

• Their country
• Region (e.g. Pacific, Prairies, Eastern seaboard)
• City and density (rural, urban)

Psychographic:  Why do they buy? Include information such as:

• Social class (lower, middle, upper)
• Lifestyle (leisure activities, exotic vacationer, saver)
• Personality (gregarious, authoritarian, ambitious)

Behaviouristic:  How do they buy? Include information such as:

• The purchase occasion (household staples, special occasion)
• Benefits sought (quality, service, economy)
• Consumption status (from never having tried your product to frequent purchaser)
• Usage frequency (light, medium, heavy)
• Loyalty (not, somewhat, devout)
• Readiness to buy (unaware, aware, informed, interested, desirous, intending to buy)
• Attitude toward product (enthusiastic, positive, indifferent, negative, hostile)

Market Positioning

Positioning is the image of your product or service that you create in the mind of your target market. Your goal is to create an image that’s unique, differentiated, and definable in the mind of your customers. To position your product or service, try the following:

It’s essential that all of your marketing materials support the position or image you are creating.

It’s also critical for you to know your present and potential competitors, both direct and indirect. Examine their strengths and weaknesses relative to yours. This will help you select a market position that provides a competitive advantage.

Your overall position should emphasize those factors that your customers value most, and those which make you stand out from your competition.

Pricing Strategy

Price is a very important factor in your marketing plan. It affects:

Key factors that affect your pricing strategy include:

• Competition
• Perceived value of your product
• How much it cost to develop
• Broader economic trends
• Level of market demand
• Income range of target market

Promotion is the activity of informing, persuading, and influencing your customers’ purchase decisions.

The type and scope of promotional activities that you need to undertake will depend on what the promotion is intended to do, and what goals and objectives you want to achieve. There are four general types of promotional activities:

• Advertising
• Sales promotion
• Publicity and Public Relations
• Personal Selling

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BUSINESS STRATEGIES

What is a target market and how to define yours

• Rebecca Strehlow
• Dec 24, 2022
• 10 min read

One of the first steps in starting a business is determining your target market. This step alone can be the basis for what products you create, how you brand your business and ultimately who you market to.

With that in mind, you’ll need to develop assets that resonate with your target market. Start by creating a business website that represents your business and uses language and visuals relatable to your audience. Consider what niche you can fit into and what separates your business from the competition. From there you can create messaging, branding and advertising designed for your target market and convert more leads into customers.

Keep reading to learn more about defining your target market and gain expert tips on how to implement this targeting throughout your business strategy.

What is a target market?

Your target market is your product’s primary consumer. Once you know who this is, you can tailor your branding and marketing efforts toward them.

A target market can be composed of a broad group, such as married men over 40 in the US, or it can be quite narrow, such as urban, health-conscious, vegetarian women in Texas. Your market will depend on the particular consumer needs your product addresses.

The three key aspects of a target market include:

Demographics: Age, gender, income, education or employment status.

Geographics: Primary location of your market.

Personality traits: What they like and dislike, as well as where they shop and their favorite brands.

To pinpoint your target market, you’ll need to analyze data about your product niche, your customers and your competitors. You'll also need to understand more about the specific types of target markets in more detail.

Types of target markets

In general there are several ways business owners can categorize target markets. For the most part target markets are divided into the following four main types: demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral.

Demographic

This type of target market is defined by a number of demographic variables such as age, gender, income, education, and family size. Companies might target specific demographic groups based on their buying habits and purchasing power.

Geographic target markets are defined, as the name suggests, by geographic variables such as region, state, city and population density.

Psychographic

Psychographic variables such as lifestyle, values, personality, and social class make up the definition of this target market.

This type of target market is defined by consumer behavior, such as the benefits sought, usage rate, and customer loyalty.

It's important to note that a business may choose to target one or multiple types of target markets, depending on their specific business objectives and marketing strategies.

Importance of understanding your target market

Understanding your target market is a crucial aspect of developing a successful business. Below we explore the main reasons why understanding your target market is so important in order to ensure a profitable business.

Better customer segmentation : Understanding your target market allows you to segment your customers more effectively, which in turn helps you tailor your marketing messages and products to meet their specific needs and preferences.

Increased focus and efficiency: Focusing on a specific target market, allows you to be more efficient with marketing resources while avoiding wasting time and money on efforts that are not likely to reach or resonate with your target audience.

Improved brand reputation: Understanding your target market can help you establish and maintain a positive brand reputation by allowing you to align your brand with the values and interests of your market.

Increased customer loyalty : By understanding your target market and delivering products and services that meet their needs and expectations, you will foster a loyal customer base that is more likely to recommend your brand to others.

Better decision making: Understanding your target market provides valuable insights that can inform important business decisions, such as product development, pricing strategies, and distribution channels for marketing efforts.

Target market vs. target audience

Often used interchangeably, target market and target audience are not the same thing. Your target market is the end consumer while your target audience is to whom your company advertises. While your target market might fall into your target audience, who you advertise to may not, in the end, be the one who consumes the product.

To clarify, let’s look at an example: Kids toys, for example, have a very clear target market: children. In addition, toys are often marketed toward children who identify with a specific gender category. Nevertheless, kids don’t purchase their toys, their parents do. So toy companies must focus their advertising strategies on parents (the target audience) to sell toys for their kids (the target market).

For example, Generation Alpha , kids born between 2010 and 2025 with millennial parents, play with much different toys than their parents did because millennials have different consumer preferences than their Baby Boomer parents. Rather than shopping in big-box stores for brightly-colored toy packages, millennial parents are more likely to purchase clean, minimalistic, and gender-inclusive toys from Instagram ads or Amazon. Therefore, toy companies are using Millennial preferences (the target audience) to sell toys to their Generation Alpha kids (the target market).

How to determine your target market

Gather consumer data

Know your product’s benefits

Investigate your competitors

Segment your audience

Write a target market statement

Refine your research

01. Gather consumer data

The first step in defining your target market is to learn more about your customers. Even if you’ve just started an online store and don’t have many customers yet, these practices will come in handy further down the line.

Start by gathering information about current and past buyers and try to identify characteristics that they have in common. This data will help you market your product to people with similar interests. If you are still in the early stages of your business and haven’t started selling your product, look at competitor markets and use that information to determine your target market.

Using website analytics tools, social media and email marketing analytics platforms, here are some data points you’ll want to consider:

Age: Do your customers share a common decade or generation? Are they millennials, older adults, or something in between?

Location: Where in the world do most of your customers live? Consider the different cities, countries, and regions.

Language: Which languages do your customers speak? Remember that your customers’ language isn’t necessarily the dominant language of their country.

Spending power: Consider socioeconomic factors that may be affecting your customers. How much money are they willing or able to spend?

Hobbies and career: What do your customers enjoy doing? What are their professions, and what do they do in their spare time?

Stage of life: Where are your customers in life? Are they college students? New parents? Retirees?

If your company is B2B rather than B2C , you’ll want to look for characteristics of companies, rather than individual consumers. These traits include:

Business size: Are the businesses that buy from you small, medium, or large?

Location: Where are these businesses physically located?

Vertical: Which industries are most of these businesses in?

Budget: How have these businesses raised money ? Consider how much they’d be willing or able to spend on products like yours.

Be sure to track this information in an orderly manner so that you can keep your findings organized and easily identify trends. Analyzing these trends will allow you to identify shared characteristics within your customer base. These characteristics will inform your inbound marketing efforts and steer your strategy toward your target audience.

02. Know your product benefits

The next step is to understand your consumers’ motivation behind purchasing your product, rather than a competitor. You can learn this information by speaking to your customers directly, asking for testimonials, and by doing in depth competitor research to understand the difference between your product and theirs.

Get to know the benefits—and not just the features—of your product or service. The features are your product’s characteristics. For example, if your business sells suitcases, you might describe your product as being small, compact and having multiple compartments. Your product’s benefits, on the other hand, are the advantages it brings to your customers. Think about how your product makes someone’s life better or easier. The compact, multi-compartment suitcase offers the benefits of being easy to carry and pack as a carry-on.

It’s vital to understanding how your product fulfills its target market’s specific needs. For the suitcase company discussed above, for instance, the target market would be people who benefit from a lightweight, carry-on suitcase—such as business travelers who take short, frequent trips.

03. Investigate your competitors

Hone in on your target market even further by taking a look at which your competitors are targeting. Of course you won't have access to their customer analytics data, but you can understand their customers with a SWOT analysis .

Take a deep dive into competitor websites, blogs and social channels. Consider who their target market is based on their website content, content marketing strategy, and social media branding. You’ll likely be able to infer details about their audience based on their brand language and tone. You can also check for comments on their social media pages to see which types of people are engaging with their posts.

Take an especially close look at their most successful social media and blog posts. Do these pieces of content have anything in common in terms of their offering or branding? Which interests or needs do they address? Use this information to consider what kinds of qualities or advantages appeal most to consumers within your industry.

04. Segment your audience

At this point, you’ve gathered some information about the characteristics and interests of your target audience. Now, it’s time to use that information to clearly define your customer types. This is going to form the basis of your target market.

The best way to do this is through market segmentation. This involves dividing your customers into different groups, or segments, based on their shared qualities.

You can divide your customers based on:

Geography: Physical location, whether it’s your own city or a different part of the world. Note that if your customers are located around the world, you may need to create a multilingual website, as well as localized ads and marketing materials.

Demographics: Characteristics such as age, gender, race or ethnicity, income level, or marital status.

Psychographics: Inner qualities such as personality, lifestyle, or personal values. These are often a product of geographic and demographic factors such as location, generation, or stage of life.

Behavior: Perceived qualities based on online behavior, such as buyer readiness or frequency of use.

If you’re a B2B company, use similar characteristics but apply them to business. Consider firm demographics—known as firmographics—such as industry, location, customer size, business structure, and performance.

To gain a deeper understanding of your segments, you can also create buyer personas. Also called user personas, buyer personas are imaginary characters with traits and behaviors similar to those of typical customers. Ultimately, these fictional characters represent your target market, helping you gain insights into the needs, desires, and lifestyles of your actual customers.

05. Write a target market statement

Now that you’ve determined the defining features of your audience, it’s time to put your findings on paper. Write a target market statement that focuses on the most important audience characteristics you’ve identified in your research. Your statement should include:

Demographic information about your target market, such as gender and age.

Geographic location of your target market.

Key interests of your target market.

Then, sum it up in a single sentence. For example:

“Our target market is women in their 30s and 40s who live in the United States and enjoy casual, comfortable fashion.”

Doing this will keep your brand identity and marketing efforts consistent. It will also come in useful as you adapt your company’s mission statement to be as relevant as possible for your audience.

06. Refine your research

Defining your target market is based on thorough research, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be perfect the first time around. Even after you identify your market, you’ll still need to continually test and experiment to get an increasingly precise picture of your customers. Staying on top of your market research can also help you keep up with the times, as consumer interests change over the years with technological developments, generational attitudes and passing trends.

To narrow in on your audience, you’ll need to assess your business success and test your targeting efforts. Take a look at who is actually buying from you and which specific products or services they are purchasing. Try to understand how you can adapt future product development or modify your branding or marketing efforts to better fit your customer base.

Utilize A/B testing with your marketing efforts to test the same ad on different audiences and see which version performs better. Alternatively, you can develop two different creatives, each with their own look and language and compare your audience’s responses. Based on the results, you might need to either adjust your business strategy or revise your target market statement. The bottom line is to build a brand that resonates strongly with your audience. Remember, the more targeted your content, the more effective your lead generation strategies—and the more customers you’ll bring to your brand.

Target market examples

These website examples clearly cater to their target markets. Take note of the phrases and visuals these websites use.

01. Amanda Darby

Let’s take a look at how nutritionist Amanda Darby appeals to her target market. She aims to address people looking to make healthier food and dieting choices. To do this, she’s created a website that fosters a sense of joy and personal empowerment around food. The light and airy background, coupled with the cheerful images of cooking and eating, instantly makes it clear that she targets people looking for a healthy lifestyle.

She also hones in on her audience even further, using phrases that directly appeal to middle-aged women. In the section of her homepage that discusses her nutrition coaching: “You will be the mom who loves food, her body, and knows life isn't perfect, but is perfectly happy living the life she has vs. waiting for the life she will have when she reaches her goal weight.” By directly addressing the concerns of her target market, Amanda helps her audience feel heard and understood. This strengthens their trust in her brand and persuades them that she is the right coach for their needs.

02. Curtinsmith Guitars

From the very first image that appears across the top of this website, it’s clear that Curtinsmith Guitars is crafting something unique. By displaying photographs of their workshop and describing their guitars as “custom” and “handmade,” they directly single out a target market of those looking for unique, one-of-a-kind guitars. This target market is likely musical, appreciative of craftsmanship and not afraid to spend their money on their passions.

The About Us section of the site confirms this targeting. The owner, Paul, writes, “I find it quite profound to create something which, in itself, will continue to create. It is an absolute joy crafting these instruments and it is my prayer that they continue to be a joy for those who play them and listen to them, for many generations.”

In this statement, the brand makes it clear that it targets musicians who value the creative process. They also allude to the quality of their product, portraying them as long-lasting heirlooms with sentimental value.

03. Lima Cakes

Sona Karapetyan uses her artistic vision to create showstopping celebratory cakes. The About section on her website says that Sona “was always experimenting with graphic art & design” and, “When Sona decided to embark on the cake art journey, she experimented with different textures, shapes and architectural elements to create a unique design language.” It also states that she never creates the same cake twice so each cake is unique to each client.

Her neutral-colored web design and sophisticated copy narrow her target market down to mature individuals who appreciate art. Her website also features images of her cakes, clearly displaying her skills to her potential customers. The prices of her custom-made cakes will reflect the effort that goes into each one. These details show that she likely targets an educated, older, affluent crowd with an appreciation for modern art and design.

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How to Define Your Target Market

4 min. read

Updated October 27, 2023

One of the most powerful tools of small business marketing strategy is defining and addressing your target market—the audience that you think is most likely to buy your product or service. The key to identifying this customer base is market segmentation, or figuring out the demographics of your specific market.

Common sense makes it seem obvious from afar. You can’t (and shouldn’t) try to sell your product to everyone in the world. You’d waste a lot of money and resources very quickly.

But how do you figure out who your target audience is? Who or what should it be? How would you know? Here are five tips to help you figure it out.

• 1. Don’t try to please everybody

Strategy is focus. Say you’re planning to start a restaurant ; which of these three options is easier?

• Pleasing customers 40 to 75 years old, wealthy, much more concerned with healthy eating than cheap eating, appreciating seafood and poultry, liking a quiet atmosphere.
• Pleasing customers 15 to 30 years old, with limited budgets, who like a loud place with low prices and fast food.
• Pleasing everybody.

I really hope you chose one of the first two, and not the third. This is the essence of target marketing—divide and conquer. Different groups of people have different pain points and different desires. Most of the time, efforts to please everyone end up pleasing no one.

• 2. Learn market segmentation

It’s about segments, like pie segments or orange segments—except that in this case, it’s segments of a total market, or TAM .

In my “divide and conquer” example above in the first point, the specific age ranges, wealth, and atmosphere preferences describe particular market segments.

In the illustration here below, U.S. census data divides the population into demographic segments. Demographics are the old standards like age, gender, and so on.

You’ve seen market segmentations referred to frequently in business articles, interviews, and discussions. People will appeal to certain age groups, genders, income levels, and so forth. Divide and conquer is a simple concept; market segmentation is how you make it practical for your business.

Let’s say you think your target market is age 40 to 75 years old, wealthy, and interested in healthy eating. How do you validate your assumption that that demographic will be your ideal target customers? That’s where market research comes it. Talking to customers and potential customers is one of the best ways to do this kind of research, but there are many approaches.

What’s your biggest business challenge right now?

• 3. Use segmentation creatively

Don’t limit your target market strategy for market segmentation by age, gender, and economic level.

For example, when I was consulting for Apple Computer, we divided the market into user groups:

• Small business
• Large business

I also liked a shopping center segmentation that divided its market into so-called psychographic market segmentation:

• Kids and cul-de-sacs were affluent upscale suburban families, “a noisy medley of bikes, dogs, carpools, rock music, and sports.”
• Winner’s circle were wealthy suburban executives, “well-educated, mobile executives and professionals with teen-aged families. Big producers, prolific spenders, and global travelers.”
• Gen X and babies were upper-middle income, young, white-collar suburbanites.
• Country squires were wealthy elite ex-urbanites, “where the wealthy have escaped urban stress to live in rustic luxury. Affluence, big bucks in the boondocks.”

I knew a business that segmented its business customers into decision-process types as well:

• Decision by committee
• Decision by functional manager
• Decision by owner

And I call this final example, for lack of a formal definition, strategic intersection.

In the diagram here, the social media services that Have Presence offers are targeted to small business owners who:

• Want outside help with their social media; and
• Value business social media; and
• Have a budget to pay for the service.

Any of these creative segmentations can help you set a target market, and can also be a jumping off point for putting together a user or buyer persona —another useful tool for understanding your target audience and developing better marketing messaging.

• 4. Consider your own unique identity too

Your business probably reflects who you are and what you like to do, as well as what you do best. Marketing to people you like as the target market is an advantage. If you like the feel of small business better than the big corporate giants, then you’re probably better off setting the small business as a target market.

As Palo Alto Software, the host of Bplans, grew up and grew our business plan software, its founder (that would be me) was more comfortable with the do-it-yourself entrepreneur and business owner than the high-end consultants, so we ended up targeting the do-it-yourselfers in business.

So, somebody who loves fine food, tastefully prepared and served, is probably more comfortable with an upscale target market than with price-sensitive young families.

• 5. Define your target market early and revise as needed

Do it well as soon as you can, and keep reviewing and refreshing as you go along. You shouldn’t think of your target market as set in stone. As you learn more about your customers, how you define your target market will probably change.

The right target market increases your chances of success because you can communicate better with a well-defined group, and that holds expenses down and makes results better.

See why 1.2 million entrepreneurs have written their business plans with LivePlan

Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software , a co-founder of Borland International, and a recognized expert in business planning. He has an MBA from Stanford and degrees with honors from the University of Oregon and the University of Notre Dame. Today, Tim dedicates most of his time to blogging, teaching and evangelizing for business planning.

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Target Markets: Why They Aren't Just for Marketers [A Quick Guide]

Published: August 08, 2022

Sales teams and entrepreneurs need to know their target market. You can get there by asking yourself, "Who is the ideal fit for my offering? What are their interests and priorities?"

Answering these questions can help you prioritize the deals you're most likely to win. But how can you really understand the ins-and-outs of your target market?

Let's take a closer look at what a target market is, go over how to conduct a target market analysis, see some helpful examples, review target market segmentation, and look into how sales teams can leverage target markets.

Table of Contents

How to analyze your target market, target market analysis example, target market examples, target market segmentation.

How Sales Teams Can Leverage Target Markets

What Is a Target Market?

A target market is a group of customers for which your products and services are aimed. First defined by an industry (i.e., healthcare, travel, technology, etc.), it represents a specific subset of the broader market the industry covers. It's usually based on factors like behavioral tendencies, geographic location, and demographic characteristics.

Let's say you've created a B2B software product that helps remote construction teams. In that case (and to state the obvious), you'd probably focus on companies within the construction industry. But defining your target market doesn't stop there.

You know your industry, but there's no one-size-fits-all mold for the businesses within it. If you were pinning down a target market for your product, you'd have to start with business characteristics — for instance, scale would be a good place to begin.

Your product will suit certain companies better than others, and selling to a Fortune 1000 company isn't the same as a small construction business with less than 100 employees.

In this case, you'd want to pin down the size of your ideal customer's business — and this number would be the start of a target market analysis.

Let's take a closer look at what that process looks like.

• Analyze your product or service.
• Check out the competition.
• Choose criteria to segment by.
• Perform research.
• Track and evaluate your results.

As the name implies, target market analysis is the basis for identifying your target market. Here are the five steps you can take to do one of your own.

1. Analyze your product or service.

Take a look at what you're selling to understand which consumers would get value from your product. The questions below will help with the brainstorming process:

• "What need does your product or service fill?"
• "Are there any problems or pain points it solves for?"
• "Who would benefit most from your product or service?"

Once you've answered these questions, you might want to consider getting feedback from current customers. Conduct a focus group or ask your service department about their common problems.

Analyzing your product or service in this way will help you better understand your target market. In fact, you might learn that your current customers aren't the people you're trying to target. If you notice a disconnect in this process, you'll want to better align your target market with your actual marketing goals so you can realign.

2. Check out the competition.

Perform an analysis of your competitors to see who they're targeting. Take a look at their customer base, and see if you can find an area of the market you could focus on that they might be missing.

The best way to do this is to conduct a competitive analysis . This entails researching who your competitors are, what they offer, and even review their sales tactics.

Looking at your competitors will even help you identify target market gaps that you can fill. Are there any target markets they do not focusing on?

This could lead you to expand into new markets geographically or develop new products to target a different market.

3. Choose criteria to segment by.

A target market can be segmented by a few different variables. Consumers can be split by demographic, geographic, and behavioral factors.

This is essentially the process of creating a buyer persona . You'll divide your target market into several target customers — also known as (you guessed it) buyer personas.

For example, perhaps your target market is midsized companies looking to purchase marketing automation software. You could divide your target customers into several groups, including marketing department leaders, sales leaders, founders, or CEOs.

Here are some of the most common ways to segment a target market:

4. Perform research.

As you begin narrowing your market, the research phase doesn't end there. What marketing strategies should you use to reach your potential target market? Is the target market large enough for your product or service? Market research will help you learn more about your target market.

Picking the right target market can tell you a great deal about your business. Are you looking to become a true velocity business, or do you see yourself as a steadier flow of pipeline with enterprises and consumers?

5. Track and evaluate your results.

Target market analysis should never be static — you don't just conduct one, be immediately content with the results, and stop there. It's an ongoing process. You need to continuously track your results, evaluate what you see, and iterate on the conception of your target market to more effectively appeal to it.

Let's imagine a company that sells inexpensive, "function-over-form" athletic footwear that stresses comfort and arch support instead of trendy aesthetics.

1. Analyze the product or service.

When conducting its target market analysis, the business in question would have to start by taking a thorough, objective look at its product to get a solid grip on its value and differentiating factors.

The company would likely find that its shoes are better suited for day-to-day wear instead of legitimate athletic competition, lack trendy appeal, and can help with sore feet while standing.

This initial insight can help shape the personas that the company will ultimately target. It would have a better picture of how to construct its value proposition. In this case, the business might find that suburban men over 50 who don't exercise regularly appear to be the most likely to buy its shoes.

Next, the company would dig into its competitor's products, how they were selling them, and any noticeable gaps in their potential target markets. After conducting a competitive analysis, the company might find that its competition was ignoring some geographical trends embedded in its target markets.

Let's say its competitors' retail locations and store placements were primarily in cities — ignoring locations like suburban strip malls and local "mom and pop" retail stores. With that information in mind, the company in question could have a starting point for appealing to a target market its competition is ignoring.

Here, the company would begin to string more detailed personas together. Again, it would base its segmentation criteria on its product analysis and refine it according to its competitive analysis.

In this case, a significant portion of the criteria would revolve around age, social class, location, and interests — making one of its personas older, working class, suburban consumers who prioritize function over form.

After creating its target persona, the company would conduct a market analysis, survey consumers that fit its target market bill, potentially employ more direct tactics like hosting focus groups, and take any other strides it sees fit to ensure that it has a thorough understanding of its target consumers.

From there, it can shape a thoughtful value proposition that will guide its sales messaging, outreach strategies, pricing structure, and other crucial sales-related factors that influence how it reaches consumers.

5. Track and evaluate results.

Once the other steps have been covered, the company would continue to monitor how its efforts resonate with its target persona. If sales aren't where they need to be — or it appears the company might have other personas it can cater to — it might restart this process and shift gears on its messaging, strategies, or target market as a whole.

Let's look at some of the best-in-class companies — both B2C and B2B — to see how they set up their target markets.

1. Atlassian Target Market

Atlassian offers a suite of collaboration tools designed to help developers and product leaders take their projects from concept to completion.

Like most larger companies, Atlassian uses target market segmentation to look at different markets and break up its unique value propositions, terminology, and values.

By diving into one segment, like retail, we see they're working with several large companies — especially with their support-related products.

This tells us that while Atlassian can work with almost anyone doing software development, it recognizes how its value proposition changes depending on the market segment in question.

Even the same product for two different customer types creates different levels of value.

2. Nike Target Market

Nike offers products to athletes and other consumers who want to exercise regularly. They offer apparel, equipment, shoes, and accessories.

They work with athletes and a fitness-minded audience, but we know a good target market definition can't be that broad. Let's break two of their segments down:

• Young athletes — Kids who get frequent exercise and play sports growing up are a huge, growing category for Nike. Nike engages with this market through sports leagues and associations and with endorsements from popular sports stars like LeBron James.
• Runners — With a focus on new types of shoes, Nike shows it targets consumers based on both demographic information and lifestyle. Nike launches shoes and apparel designed to help the avid runner stay on the road a bit longer.

3. Starbucks Target Market

Next time you're sipping your cold foam Cascara cold brew, ponder the target market of the top coffee destination in town: Starbucks .

Many of their locations have been remodeled and offer a hip, contemporary look. Not that surprising since about half of their customers are between the ages of 25 and 40.

If you spend more than five minutes sitting and drinking your coffee, you'll probably hear a barista shout, "mobile order!" The mobile process now accounts for 24% of Starbucks' transactions which shows they're catering to a tech-savvy crowd.

The next clue we have on their target market is the location of their shops. By positioning its locations in heavily urban areas, Starbucks is attracting on-the-go professionals. To recap, here are a few of Starbucks' target markets:

• 25 - 40-year-olds — Remodeled locations accommodate their largest demographic base.
• Tech-savvy adults — Their mobile app has caught on and lends itself to a forward-thinking crowd.
• Working professionals — Their urban focus tells us the type of lifestyle they're catering to.

4. Apple Target Market

What about a company that occupies both the B2B and B2C spaces? How can it develop a target market with such a broad set of customers? Apple is the textbook case for innovation and product design.

But how does that apply to finding a target market? With its wide array of product offerings, Apple has a little something for everyone. Here are two of their target markets:

• Tech enthusiasts — A customer category that launched Apple's brand decades ago, technology enthusiasts still get attention from the company. With launches of new tech categories (including wearables, Apple TVs, and HomePods), Apple has shown it's still creating value for this segment. There is also a tremendous ecosystem where owning a suite of Apple products enables better interoperability among your tech.
• Healthcare — One market Apple has its eyes on is healthcare. By focusing on the appeal of having information right at your fingertips with mobile and the iPad, they've positioned healthcare workers to more conveniently communicate with patients.

Apple doesn't seem to exclude many people from its target market and has positioned itself to benefit both consumers and businesses — even with the same products like the iPad.

Its success has been more about understanding the value of its different segments rather than excluding people from them.

5. McDonald's Target Market

McDonald's target market is broad and encompasses a wide variety of customer personas. Younger professionals represent one of the chain's more prominent target market segments — and that trend is reflected in many of the company's location remodels. Several McDonald's franchises have been revamped to look sleeker, more modern, and better suited for millennials.

Image Source: Community Impact

"Full nest" families with children over six represent another key base for the chain. The franchise takes many strides to appeal to this specific segment, primarily reflected in its Happy Meal options.

But there's another factor that underscores virtually every target market McDonald's tries to appeal to — social class. The chain makes a conscious effort to resonate with lower, working, and middle-class patrons.

Pricing is the basis of McDonald's value proposition. It tries to bill itself as an affordable alternative to more expensive options in the spaces it attempts to sell in. For instance, when promoting its McCafe line, the chain stressed the brand's particularly low price points as a major selling point.

Image Source: McDonald's

Ultimately, the franchise's target market isn't singular and clear-cut in terms of most demographics — but it is specific in terms of its various personas' economic circumstances. Its value proposition fundamentally rests on the fact that its food is inexpensive.

Target Customers

A target customer is an individual that's most likely to buy your product. And it's a subset of the broader target market. For example, if your target market is female athletes between the ages of 13 to 25, a target customer could be female athletes in the specific age range of 13 to 16.

You need to have a firm grasp of your target customers if you're going to develop pointed, effective value propositions. The success and viability of your sales messaging, prospecting efforts, and broader sales process rests on your knowledge of who's buying your product or service and the mindset that makes them do it.

That starts with target market segmentation.

Target market segmentation is the process of partitioning your target audience into more focused, identifiable, and approachable groups (or segments). It's a broad concept that can take on a lot of forms, including:

• Geographic segmentation — Dividing your target market based on geographical boundaries
• Firmographic segmentation — A practice specific to B2B sales where firms are divided based on characteristics like company size or number of employees
• Behavioral segmentation — Dividing your target market based on behavioral tendencies and decision-making patterns
• Demographic segmentation — Dividing your target market based on factors like income, education, race, gender, or occupation
• Psychographic segmentation — Dividing your target market-based elements like personality traits, values, and opinions

How you elect to segment your target market will be specific to your company's needs and interests. In many — if not most — cases, you'll employ more than one of the segmentation methods listed above when defining a target market.

When you identify the customers you want to serve — and the ones you don't — ask:

• "Do my target customers have different problems they're solving with my product?"
• "Do my target customers get different value from my product?"
• "Are either of these things related to demographic, geographic, or lifestyle components?"

In order to segment effectively, you must have a decent way of measuring the value you provide to the market. Then, identify if certain groups are getting more value than others.

This will power the positioning of your product. Suddenly, you can pinpoint pain for your customers while speaking their language.

This helps you refine your position in the market and connect on a deeper level with your customer. Having a target market (or target customer) is all about relevancy and relating to the person on the other side of the cash register.

How Sales Teams Can Leverage Target Markets + Segmentation

Segmentation poses several benefits for sales teams. If you know who will be most receptive to your product or service, you get a leg up when conducting most steps of your sales process.

For one, effective segmentation can be a major asset in prospecting. If your SDRs have a solid picture of the types of customers that show an interest in your offering, cold leads can become a little warmer — letting those reps make more thoughtfully guided use of your sales messaging when connecting with prospects.

Beyond that, segmentation can also help with lead qualification. Knowing whether a lead fits the bill of a class of high-converting customers gives reps a head start during that stage.

You need to have some kind of criteria that can immediately distinguish a prospect who needs your product or service from one that lacks the decision-making tendencies, location, or economic circumstances to actually get something out of it. Target market segmentation gets you there.

Finally, target markets provide sales teams with the necessary information to breach new markets and sell to them effectively. If you're not on top of any emerging markets that might need your product or service, you could hit a wall with your sales potential and lose out on incredibly lucrative business opportunities.

Ultimately, knowing your target markets inside and out is one of the most fundamental tenets of successful sales efforts. If you're not actively analyzing, pursuing, and refining your understanding of your target markets, you're losing out on sales and painting yourself into a corner with your business potential.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in July 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Target Market: Examples, What it is & How to Define it

What is a target market?

What is a target audience, why define your target market , how to define your target market: , target market examples, target marketing plan example, summary .

Every business that’s ever existed dreams of a huge customer base and constant sales with a bottom line that wows… But if you’re continuously falling short of your sales and growth targets, then it might be time to check if you’re selling and marketing your products or services to the right people. 

Rather than falling into the trap of thinking you can appeal to everyone all at once (spoiler alert: you can’t), having a narrow target market and audience ensures your products, services, and brand attract and maintain the customers who are going to be interested and (hopefully) make lots of purchases. 

In this article, we’re going to help you finally make those profits you’ve dreamed of by clarifying exactly what is meant by “target market” and “target audience.” With this information, you’ll be able to build the right buyer personas for your products and services, so you can build your small business into the empire you deserve. 

First things first, “target market” is a phrase you’ll hear almost daily in the business world. But what does it really mean? 

Well, your target market is the people who are going to be buying your products or services. By establishing your target market early on, you can tailor your products accordingly and ensure you’re only spending your precious advertising budget marketing to people who will actually benefit from what you’re selling. 

Target markets are usually defined by three aspects: 

• Demographics: Things like the age, gender, income, marital status, ethnicity, employment status, etc., of your buyers. 
• Geographics: Where your customers are located (this can be as wide as entire continents, or even just a single neighborhood or street). 
• Psychographics: What drives your customers? What are their likes and dislikes? What problems do they face in their lives? 

By figuring out who your customers are, you’ll be in a better place to market your products… And you could even use this information during upgrades to ensure you’re continuously providing a valuable benefit. 

Target markets and target audiences can frequently get confused and overlap, but they relate to different people, and it’s essential to have a clear distinction between the two. 

While your target market is the end consumer, your target audience is who your brand should be focusing on when advertising.

A good example of this would be for a child-aged target market. Let’s use McDonald’s Happy Meals as an example…

While the Happy Meals are clearly made for kids, the target audience for this product would be the adults responsible for the children. These adults are the ones who choose what the kids eat and will usually be the ones buying the Happy Meals. 

You can do it too.

Because McDonald’s has clearly identified their target market vs. target audience, you’ll notice adverts for Happy Meals tend to focus on aspects that the target market (kids) wouldn’t be that interested in… Like the nutrition value of the meals, for example. 

Another brilliant example of a target market vs. a target audience is the 2010 Old Spice advert, The man your man could smell like . When trying to appeal to a younger audience, Proctor & Gamble (the advertising team behind this campaign along with Nike’s Just Do It ) discovered around 60% of men’s body washes and deodorants were purchased by women. 

Taking advantage of this information, P&G decided to aim subsequent Old Spice marketing efforts at women with the famous ad featuring Isaiah Mustafa. Like McDonald’s, they successfully identified a difference between their target market (men aged 18 – 35) and their target audience (the wives and girlfriends of these men). 

In other words, your target market is whom you’re selling to. Your target audience is whom you’re advertising to.

So, now we know what the difference is between a target market and a target audience… But the question still remains, why bother? Surely, marketing to everyone is casting a wider net, and you’ve got more chances of gathering customers? 

Any angler will be able to tell you that a wide net isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when catching fish. Sure, you might get one or two valuable catches in a large net, but you’re more likely to end up with a barrel of fish nobody wants. 

To really catch fish, you need the right bait, the right equipment, and to be fishing in the right places. 

And suddenly, the metaphor of casting a large net continues to be 100% applicable to the world of marketing. 

In other words, if you aspire to make everyone a potential customer, you’re less likely to gain attention from people who will actually benefit from and buy your products and services. Instead, focus your marketing efforts on a clearly defined section of the market, and you’ll attract more valuable customers who will help your business grow. 

In addition to attracting the right people, defining your target market and audience early on will allow you to: 

• Develop the product line by solving specific needs
• Set the right prices
• Determine the perfect marketing channels
• Find the best features to highlight
• Determine the right keywords and SEO criteria
• And much more.

A narrow, specific target audience and market also ensures you’re not spending too much time/money casting a wide net… Enabling you to convert far greater numbers of potential customers with considerably lower overheads. 

When it’s time to define your target market, you might struggle to know where to start at first. But figuring out the right market segment to advertise to doesn’t need to be difficult if you break it down. 

Remember, by marketing to a specific group of people, you can focus on getting the language, tone of voice, and content just right. This enables your message to get across more clearly and will make your audience more likely to buy your product or service.  

In addition, having well-defined target customers enables you to start a more genuine and compelling conversation with that group of consumers. And once you’ve cultivated a genuine relationship, you’re more likely to benefit from loyal customers and word-of-mouth recommendations. 

To get started building a definition of your target customers, think about the following: 

1. Identify the key benefits of your business

Once you’ve established the critical benefits of your business, you’ll probably find your target market becomes clear fairly quickly. 

As marketer Philip Kotler said, “authentic marketing is not the art of selling what you make but knowing what to make. It is the art of identifying and understanding customer needs and creating solutions…” 

Theodore Levitt elaborates on this with… “people don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want to buy a quarter-inch hole.” 

As Kotler and Levitt identify, it’s not the features of your product or service that will sell… It’s the benefits these provide. For example, if you’re selling exercise equipment, the benefits might include improving customers’ self-image, physical health, mental wellbeing, confidence, and empowerment. These benefits will be more compelling to most target customers than a list of specs. 

To identify the key benefits of your product or service, ask yourself the following questions: 

• What problem(s) do you solve for people? 
• What need(s) do you meet? 
• What desire(s) are you fulfilling?

2. Identify who will benefit most from the above. 

Once you’ve identified the key benefits of your product or service, you can start thinking about who would benefit most from these features and who would be most likely to buy. This will help you narrow down the demographics for your target market. 

For example, if you’re selling at-home exercise equipment, the people who will benefit most from this could be middle-aged, overweight men who don’t have time to go to the gym or young women who don’t feel comfortable in a standard gym. 

Think about who your product or service helps the most, and start narrowing them down. 

Consider the age, location, gender, income, and any other critical demographics of the market segment you’ve identified and make a note of these. 

3. Refine your target market 

Once you’ve established the key demographics of the group of consumers who are most likely to benefit from your products or services, it’s time to define your target market even further by building user personas for your customers. 

These personas will include the demographics like age range, location, etc., that you defined in step 2 but adds in psychographics. 

Psychographics include more personal information about your market segment. These will include things like: 

• The customer’s likes and dislikes
• Hobbies and interests
• Daily routines
• Pain-points

You can collect this information through a variety of means. If you have established customers already, asking them to provide feedback can be invaluable to businesses. Otherwise, surveys, polls on social media, or any other market research will help you establish precisely who you’re selling to. 

4. Stay objective

It might surprise you to realize that this is probably the most challenging step in defining your target market and audience… But it’s also one of the most critical. 

When researching your potential customers, you must always stay objective and avoid assumptions, particularly when matching your product’s key benefits with a specific group of people. 

In fact, CBInsights discovered that approximately 35% of start-up businesses fail due to a lack of market need. 

Even if you think your product is fantastic, you’re likely to fail if you don’t accurately identify a need, want, or desire and address that. 

Segway is an excellent example of a business failing due to a poorly defined target market and a product that didn’t fulfill a need. 

5. Evaluate the segments 

It’s critical to remember that just because someone says they would buy your product or service doesn’t mean they actually will . 

You need to ensure the market segment you’ve identified is a viable customer group by asking the following questions: 

• Is this group large enough to sustain the business? 
• Does the market segment have sufficient income to afford the products and services being sold? 
• Will these people make multiple purchases, or will you constantly need to be attracting new customers? 
• Are other brands targeting the same market segment? Why/why not? 
• What separates your brand from similar companies, products, and services? 
• How accessible is the target market you’ve identified?

Following any research into this evaluation, it’s vital to create real-life tests to directly engage with your prospective market. 

6. Identify who influences the buying decision. 

Once you’ve defined your target market, it’s time to turn your attention to your target audience. Remember, your target market is the group of people who might want to buy your product. Your target audience relates to the people who will be making or influencing the purchase decision. 

The most obvious example of this is how products for children need to be marketed to parents or guardians, as kids don’t have any buying power themselves. But this can also take into account a far wider group of people as purchase decisions are rarely made in a vacuum. 

Consider the friends and family of your target customers. Would a good/bad word from a sibling change your potential customer’s mind about buying? If it’s a big-ticket item, would your customer want to check with their spouse or partner first? How can you convince these ‘influencers’ that your products and services are worth buying? 

If you’re providing products and services for B2B clients, this can be even more complicated as purchases may need to be approved by multiple people before they can go ahead. 

7. Check your competitors 

As part of your marketing strategy, you should have completed a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) of your business. Now, it’s time to ensure you’ve done the same for your competition, starting with the top stores on Shopify and working back to your closer competitors. 

Use social media, Google, and customer research to determine what target audiences your competitors are focusing on and whether those individuals align with your business. 

If you’re advertising to the same group of people, figure out what these people find great/bad about the competition and use this to guide your own marketing efforts. 

Now you know how to define your specific target market, it can be helpful to see how other companies have used targeting research to build a detailed target audience profile. These well-known brands offer a fantastic target marketing plan example that you can use to bring these concepts to life and translate them into your own marketing strategy. 

Nike provides an excellent target market demographics example. Once, Nike marketed to professional athletes only but changed its business model to accommodate a broader, more approachable audience with the Just Do It campaign. 

As part of the rebranding, Nike considered the benefits of its sports apparel, shoes, accessories, and equipment and who these benefits would most appeal to. 

Their targeting includes a young age range, people interested in getting fitter, individuals with some disposable income to spend on high-quality products. 

To further narrow down the target market, Nike specifically focuses on aspiring athletes and runners in most advertising campaigns and utilizes an inspiring, motivational, inclusive tone of voice that appeals to a younger audience who are ready to push beyond their limitations. 

We know what you’re thinking… “but Netflix targets everyone?!” While this may be partially true, have you ever taken a look at someone else’s Netflix account and noticed how different it looks from your own? 

With detailed algorithms and substantial customer research, Netflix intelligently targets individual preferences in its marketing strategy, ensuring each person receives a well-defined and highly tailored experience. 

It’s also worth noting that Netflix started as a DVD delivery service, mailing DVDs to rent to its customers. As online streaming took over, Netflix analyzed its customers’ needs and made the switch to provide an online service. Now offering apps and even downloadable, offline shows and movies, still highly tailored to individual preferences. 

This cool and quirky footwear brand is another excellent example of target marketing at work. The brand appeals to “misfits and rebels,” with a daredevil outlook that may not attract every shoe-wearing citizen but is sufficiently focused so that rebels worldwide can’t get enough. 

Like Netflix, Vans allowed the customers to guide their business decision and utilized highly targeted market research to ensure every product matched their audiences’ desires perfectly. 

Before we leave you, we thought it might be helpful to include a detailed target marketing plan example. This fictitious target market for a software company will give you an idea of the demographics you should include when analyzing your customer base, so you can see precisely how to define your target market in a B2B scenario: 

Key Demographics: 

• Age range: 35-45 years old. 
• Gender: 65% male, 35% female
• Common job titles: Chief financial officer, head of digital, senior accountant

Key Psychographics: 

• Values: Job security, affordability, financial growth
• Likes to review all data and complete a full pros/cons analysis before making decisions
• Strives for an improvement to their work/life balance
• Skeptical of any brand that promises to solve all their problems or too-good-to-be-true offers. 

Challenges and pain points

• Concerned that their current software can’t keep up with increasing demands and improvements to modern technology. 
• Aware that a lack of third-party integration means internal processes cannot be performed efficiently. 
• Demands from bosses and/or shareholders create a stressful work environment with little work/life balance. 

Preferred communication channels

• Professional social media platforms such as LinkedIn
• Regularly browse the internet for the latest industry news 

Preferred content

• White papers with plenty of detail
• Case studies
• News articles

Now you know how to find your target markets, the difference between a target audience and a target market, and some real-life examples of how to write a target market strategy. You should be well on your way to attracting and maintaining a loyal, engaged customer base. 

But it’s important to remember that figuring out who your ideal customers are is only the first step. Once you’ve identified the age, location, gender, interests, pain points, and other aspects of your target market sample, it’s vital to focus on the communication channels markets can use to communicate with these segments. 

Google Analytics is one of the best tools for determining where your target market/audience hangs out online. Using this information, you can streamline your marketing efforts on relevant social media platforms, email campaigns, or even offline advertising. 

Be sure to focus on getting the tone of voice and language just right in any messaging, and have high-quality landing pages that reflect your audience’s interests to retain the best customers and keep them coming back for more. 

Once you’ve done this, you’re sure to experience market growth like never before.

How do you define a target market? 

A target market is a segment of people who are likely to benefit from the products or services your business is selling. You can narrow this group into as many smaller segments as you like to help your marketers find the perfect methods to get your messaging across.

Target markets are usually defined by key demographics, including age range, gender, income, geographic location, and more. They will be further narrowed down with psychographics, including likes and dislikes, key values, pain points, lifestyle, etc.

How do you define a target market vs. target audience? 

Target markets take into account the people you’re selling to at market. However, a target audience will be the person or people who make the purchase decision and are the ones you’re advertising to.

A good example of the difference between these two aspects is a product for children. While kids aged 3-4 might be the target market, the target audience would be the parents or guardians, as these are the ones who make the purchase decision.

Old Spice is another good target market vs. target audience profile example. Although the product is for men, the man your man could smell like campaign utilized messaging for the end-users’ wives, girlfriends, and partners. The market was men; the audience was the women buying the product on their behalf.

How do I identify my target market? 

Plenty of research is required to accurately identify the right target market for your products or services. Conversations with any customers you already have are invaluable. You can utilize things like social media polls, surveys, or even email research to help you determine your target market and existing customers.

Google Analytics is also an incredibly valuable tool when establishing your target market. This will help you see where your audience spends their time and what keywords they’re searching for that might be relevant to your messaging.

Suppose Facebook is an appropriate channel for your marketers to use. In that case, Facebook’s custom audience tools can also be handy for your market research and to aid you with narrowing down your market segments.

How do you write a target market statement?

Take a look at our target market statement examples above for an overview of the things you should include in a target marketing strategy. As a summary, you should be looking to include aspects such as:

• Geographical location
• Aspirations
• Current challenges
• Hobbies/interests

12 Marketing Strategy Examples, How to Create One + Tips

• What is a Marketing Plan, How to Write One & 5 Great Examples
• 30 Small Business Marketing Ideas You Need to Know & Use

I'm a content manager at sixads. I'm fiery about marketing, writing and traveling, so you can often find me scribbling away in some unknown corner of the world. If you want to know more ways to increase traffic and attract buyers to your online store get in touch with sixads on one of the channels bellow.

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Write a Target Market Description for Your Business Plan

1. define your target market, 2. research your target market, 3. understand your target market's needs, 4. develop a marketing strategy to reach your target market, 5. know your competition, 6. plan your budget, 7. measure your success, 8. adjust your plan as needed, 9. keep up with trends.

In order to create a successful business, you need to identify and understand your target market . This process begins with defining your target market . Who are the individuals or businesses that will be most interested in your product or service ?

Once you have a good understanding of who your target market is, you can begin to create a profile of your ideal customer. This process will help you better understand your target market and what they are looking for in a product or service .

When defining your target market, there are a few key questions you will want to answer:

Who is your target market?

What are their needs and wants?

What are their demographics? (Age, gender, income, location, etc.)

What is their buying behavior? (Are they impulse buyers or do they research before making a purchase?)

Once you have answered these questions, you can begin to create a more detailed profile of your ideal customer. This process will help you better understand your target market and what they are looking for in a product or service.

When creating a profile of your ideal customer, there are a few key questions you will want to answer:

What motivates them? (What drives their decision making ?)

By answering these questions, you will be able to create a more complete picture of your ideal customer . This information will be invaluable as you begin to market your product or service.

A target market is a group of people that a company wants to sell its products and services to. This can be done by researching the demographics, psychographics, and behaviors of potential customers.

Demographics are the statistical characteristics of a population. This includes factors such as age, gender, income, education, and occupation.

Psychographics are the psychological characteristics of a population. This includes factors such as lifestyle, personality, and values.

Behaviors are the actions that people take. This includes factors such as buying patterns, media consumption, and leisure activities.

When researching your target market, it is important to use secondary sources of information such as Census data and marketing research reports. You can also use primary sources of information such as surveys and interviews.

Once you have gathered all of this information, you can start to segment your target market. Segmentation is the process of dividing a market into smaller groups based on shared characteristics.

For example, you could segment your target market by age, income, or gender. Once you have segmented your target market, you can start to develop marketing strategies that are tailored to each group.

If you are not sure how to segment your target market, you can always consult with a marketing research firm. They will be able to help you segment your target market and develop marketing strategies that are right for your business .

In order to create a target market description, you first need to understand the needs of your target market. This can be done through market research, which can be conducted through surveys, interviews, focus groups, and secondary research. Once you have a good understanding of your target market's needs, you can then create a description that includes information on who your target market is, what their needs are, and how your business can meet those needs.

When creating a target market description, it is important to be as specific as possible. This means including detailed information on who your target market is, what their needs are, and how your business can meet those needs. The more specific you are, the easier it will be for potential customers to understand what your business does and how it can help them.

In general, a target market description should be around 450 words long. However, the exact length will depend on the amount of information you need to include. The most important thing is to make sure that all of the information included is relevant and necessary.

If you're not sure where to start, there are a few resources that can help you. The small Business administration has a helpful guide on how to write a business plan , which includes a section on target market s. Additionally, there are many templates and examples available online that can give you an idea of what to include in your own target market description.

As the world of marketing changes, so too should your marketing strategy . No matter what business you're in, you need to have a plan for reaching your target market and driving conversions. Here are a few tips on how to develop a marketing strategy to reach your target market :

1. Start with market research .

Before you do anything else, you need to understand your target market. Who are they? What do they want? What do they need? What motivates them? The better you understand your target market, the easier it will be to develop a marketing strategy that resonates with them.

2. Define your goals and objectives.

What do you want to achieve with your marketing strategy? Do you want to increase brand awareness ? drive more traffic to your website ? Generate more leads? Convert more customers? Be specific with your goals so you can measure your success.

3. Choose the right marketing channels.

There are a multitude of marketing channels available, so it's important to choose the ones that will work best for your business and your target market . Some popular channels include SEO, content marketing, social media, email marketing, and paid advertising.

4. Create compelling content.

Once you've selected your channels, it's time to start creating content. Your content should be compelling and relevant to your target market. It should also be optimized for the channel you're using (e.g., SEO keywords for a blog post or social media image sizes for Facebook).

5. Promote your content.

Don't forget to promote your content! If no one sees it, it won't do you any good. Use a mix of paid and organic methods to get your content in front of as many people as possible.

6. Analyze and optimize.

Last but not least, don't forget to analyze your results and optimize accordingly. Which content pieces performed well? Which channels drove the most traffic or conversions? Use this data to inform your future marketing decisions.

developing a marketing strategy may seem like a daunting task, but it doesn't have to be. By following these tips, you can develop a plan that will help you reach your target market and achieve your business goals .

Develop a marketing strategy to reach your target market - Write a Target Market Description for Your Business Plan

In order to create a target market description for your business plan, you must first understand your competition. Knowing who your competition is, what they offer, and how they reach their target market will give you a better understanding of how to position your own business.

There are a few different ways to research your competition. The first is to simply Google them. This will give you a good overview of their website, their product offerings, and their general marketing approach. The second way to research your competition is to talk to your customers. Ask them why they chose your business over others, and what they think of the competition. This will give you valuable insights into what your customers are looking for, and how you can improve your own offerings.

Once you have a good understanding of your competition, you can start to craft a target market description for your business plan. Start by identifying your unique selling points - what makes your business different from others in your industry? Then, determine who your target market is. Who are the people most likely to use your product or service? What needs do they have that your business can address?

Once you have a clear understanding of your target market and your competition, you can start to craft a marketing strategy that will reach them. Consider what channels your competitors are using to reach their target market, and how you can use those same channels to reach yours. Also consider what messages will resonate with your target market , and what call to action will encourage them to use your product or service.

By taking the time to understand your competition and your target market, you can create a targeted marketing strategy that will help you reach your business goals .

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When creating a budget for your business , there are a few key things to keep in mind . First, you need to make sure that your revenue projections are realistic. There is no use in creating a budget that you cannot possibly stick to because your revenue projections were too optimistic. Second, you need to make sure that your expenses are well- thought-out and reasonable. There is no use in creating a budget that is so tight that you cannot actually operate your business or that leaves you with no room for unexpected expenses. Finally, you need to make sure that you have a plan for how you will use your budget. Your budget should be a tool that you use to help you reach your business goals.

Once you have considered these things, you can start to put together your budget. Begin by creating a list of all of your income sources and all of your expenses. Make sure to include both fixed and variable expenses. Fixed expenses are those that stay the same every month, such as rent or loan payments. Variable expenses are those that can fluctuate, such as utilities or inventory costs. Once you have all of your income and expenses tallied, you can start to see where your money is going and where you may need to make adjustments.

Once you have a good understanding of your income and expenses, you can start to allocate your funds. Begin by allocating funds for your fixed expenses. These should be paid first and foremost because they are necessary to keep your business running. Next, allocate funds for your variable expenses. These can be paid as they come due or can be set aside into a reserve fund in case of unexpected expenses. Finally, allocate funds for your goals. This is the money that you will use to reach your targets, such as expanding your business or increasing your marketing efforts.

Once you have allocated funds for all of the different areas of your business, you need to create a plan for how you will actually use those funds. This is where your budget becomes a tool for reaching your goals. Begin by creating a timeline for each goal. Then, determine how much money you will need to reach each goal and when you will need it. Finally, create a plan for how you will generate the revenue to reach those goals. This may include things like increasing prices or finding new customers.

By creating a budget and using it as a tool to reach your goals, you can ensure that your business is on track for success. A budget gives you a roadmap to follow and helps to keep you accountable for reaching your targets.

I got really excited about the idea of data-driven startup just as I was starting Kaggle. Anthony Goldbloom

As you develop your business plan , it's important to take some time to measure your success along the way. This will help you track your progress and make necessary adjustments to ensure you're on track to meet your goals.

There are a few key metrics you should focus on when measuring your business' success:

This is perhaps the most obvious metric to track, but it's important nonetheless. Make sure you're keeping tabs on your company's revenue so you can see how it's growing (or shrinking) over time.

2. Expenses

In addition to monitoring your revenue, you should also keep an eye on your expenses. This will help you control your costs and ensure that your business is profitable.

3. Customer satisfaction

Another important metric to track is customer satisfaction. This will give you insights into how your customers feel about your products or services. If you see a decline in customer satisfaction, it may be indicative of a bigger problem that needs to be addressed.

4. Employee satisfaction

Just as you should track customer satisfaction, you should also keep tabs on employee satisfaction. This metric will give you insights into how your team is feeling about their work and whether or not they're happy with their current roles.

5. Web traffic

If you have a website for your business, it's important to track the amount of traffic it's getting. This metric will give you an idea of how many people are interested in what you have to offer and whether or not they're actually taking the time to visit your site.

There are a number of other metrics you could track as well, but these are five of the most important ones to focus on. By tracking these metrics, you'll be able to get a better understanding of how your business is performing and make necessary adjustments along the way.

Measure your success - Write a Target Market Description for Your Business Plan

As you conduct market research and refine your understanding of your target market, you may need to adjust your business plan . For example, you may need to change your marketing mix or target a different segment of the market.

When adjusting your plan, it is important to consider the following:

1. The size of the market: Is the market growing, shrinking, or staying the same?

2. The demographics of the market: What is the age, gender, income, education, etc. Of your target market?

3. The psychographics of the market: What are the lifestyle, values, and attitudes of your target market?

4. The buying habits of the market: When, where, and how do they purchase products/services similar to yours?

5. The competitive landscape: Who are your competitors and what are their strengths and weaknesses?

6. Your own strengths and weaknesses: What are your unique selling points and how can you best compete in the market?

By understanding these factors, you can make the necessary adjustments to your business plan to ensure that it is aligned with your target market.

Adjust your plan as needed - Write a Target Market Description for Your Business Plan

As a business owner, it's important to keep up with the latest trends in your industry. This can help you better understand your customers' needs and how to reach them. It can also give you a competitive edge.

To stay up-to-date on trends, read industry publications, attend trade shows and conferences , and talk to other businesses in your field. You can also follow influencers and thought leaders on social media.

When you're writing your business plan , be sure to include a section on your target market. This should include information on the latest trends in your industry. This will show potential investors that you're keeping up with the times and that you understand your market.

Your marketing strategy should get you customers!

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Define your target market in 6 simple steps (with examples).

In this article

Growing your business from scratch means that you've learned when to cut costs and when to push forward. You've learned when something is a waste of money and when something can make you lots of money.

And creating a solid marketing strategy helps you do exactly that.

Before you start placing ads and offering discounts, though, it's important to define your target market.

Hint: Your target market is not "everyone". In fact, it's probably not even most people.

Instead, your target market is a specific group of people most likely to buy your product or service.

So, who are those people?

Don't worry, that's what I'm going to break down for you in this article. You will first learn how to identify your targeted market segment by conducting audience research. Then I'll give you a list of target market examples from brands that have made millions by understanding their core customer persona .

I'll share with you the steps and tools that you need to get to know your ideal customer so that you can create a marketing campaign that is effective and profitable.

First, let's begin by getting clear about what target markets are.

Target market definition

A target market is a specific group of people that you want to reach through your marketing campaign. These people are more likely to visit your online shop and make a purchase that any other random group of people. They have certain characteristics in common, such as their demographics or psychological and behavioral patterns.

When you zoom in on this market segment at the individual level, you have your ideal customer. The type of customer that you don't have to convince to buy your products or services because he or she will naturally be interested in them. All you have to do is get your brand name and online store in front of their eyes.

So, in effect, your target market is really your target audience.

And that's where your target market analysis will begin, with your ideal customer , so don't be afraid to be super specific when identifying your target customer.

That's not to say that other individual consumers outside of this group won't buy your products. They can.

But identifying your target audience is all about creating an effective marketing strategy so that your marketing dollars have the biggest bang for their buck. And that happens when your marketing campaign reaches the people who are MOST likely to make a purchase.

How to conduct audience research

In order to clearly understand your target audience, you need to first do a little bit of investigation. By understanding who your products and services are for, and how to find them, you'll be able to create a marketing strategy that actually makes you money.

1. First, understand your niche market

Whatever it is that you're selling, it's most valuable to a very specific set of people. This is a niche market .

To understand your niche, take a look at what you're selling and why you're selling it. This will help you understand not only what you have to offer but also why your potential customer will want to buy it.

Ask yourself:

• What need does your product or service satisfy?
• Does your product or service solve any pain points or problems in your target customer's life?
• What are the benefits of purchasing your product or service? How does it improve your potential customer's life?

Whenever you get bogged down in the details of your target market analysis, come back to the answers to these questions. Let them be your guiding light through your research. You can use online tools such as Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, or other market research tools to gather information about your audience. You can also conduct surveys or focus groups to gain a deeper understanding of your target market's needs and preferences.

Some apps like CustomWritings can provide a variety of custom writing services to help identify and target specific markets for optimal success. Article writing services can help businesses effectively communicate their message to their target market.

2. Look at your existing customers

If you're already turning a profit in your business, then that means that you already have direct access to your target audience. After all, your current customers have already made a purchase with you, so you know for a fact that they convert.

Once you understand your existing customer base, you can target more people like them with your marketing plan .

Take a closer look at your customer base and see if you can identify any patterns in their characteristics, such as demographic or psychographic characteristics like

• Age - What is the general age range of your current customers? Knowing this data will help you when choosing your target segment in social media ads.
• Gender - Are your current customers mostly male or female? This will help you better understand their specific needs and wants that are perhaps unique to their gender.
• Income - How much money do your customers have to spend on your products or services? Are they able to make repeat purchases or do they need to save up for your product? Are there any financial barriers that you need to address?
• Location - Where do your customers live and what time zone are they in? What are some cultural issues that are unique to their location (ie products targeting American football versus real football
• Behavior - How do your customers hang out online? Which pages or brands do they follow and what is their preferred social media platform? What kinds of content do they consume and can you incorporate that into your content marketing strategy?
• Lifestyle - How do your customers spend their free time? What kinds of products or services do they need to support those hobbies?
• Values - What are their general beliefs and values? Does this influence their brand loyalty, where they purchase products, or what kinds of products they purchase?

You can learn a lot of this information by studying your Google Analytics or social media analytics , which I’ll cover in a second.

In B2B (though definitely in B2C as well), you should be building and enriching your customer data , for example by scanning business cards into whatever CRM you’re using. To do that you can use dedicated software, such as ScanToSalesforce , ScanBizCards , or Eight .

For any data points that aren't included in these reports, feel free to create a free (and very brief) survey that you can send to customers post-purchase. Pair the survey with a discount code so that your customers are motivated to complete the survey and possibly return to your store for more shopping.

3. Look at your analytics

When you place ads or create a digital marketing strategy , it's important to know precisely what kind of content to share and where to share it. You can easily know this by looking at what kind of content currently brings customers to your online shop and which content converts to a sale.

A lot of the information you want to know is readily available in the analytics dashboard of your website or social media pages.

• Google Analytics guide
• Facebook analytics guide
• Twitter analytics guide
• Pinterest analytics guide
• Instagram analytics guide
• YouTube analytics guide

When you dig into the data, you'll be able to understand your audience based on four segmentation types:

• Demographic Segmentation - This market segment includes attributes like age, gender, ethnicity, religion, location, income, education, etc. It may seem like super dry information (it is) but it will help you tremendously when you are creating your ads.
• Geographic Segmentation - This data refers to where your target audience lives and informs you when choosing your posting schedule on social media, sending email marketing campaigns, or talking about regionally specific topics. It also helps you understand where to place your ads and when.
• Behavioral Segmentation - Behavioral segmentation looks at purchasing behavior, occasion-based behavior, the usage rate of your products, purchase reasoning, customer loyalty, and how they interact with your brand. Understanding these data points will help you understand what exactly motivates people to purchase your products.
• Psychographic Segmentation - Psychographic data reveals what beliefs, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyle factors may influence a person's shopping behavior.

Market segmentation sounds like a lot of technical details, but really it's just a way to place super efficient ads. This way, your marketing effort isn't wasted on anybody who is not likely to purchase your products.

4. Look at your competition

If you don't already have an existing customer base (or even if you do), then checking out what your competitors are doing will help you understand your own customer profile.

Snoop around their website, blog, social media pages, and ads to see if you can understand their target market strategy. As you investigate, ask yourself these questions

• Can you identify their segmentation tactics?
• Who is their ideal customer?
• Do they have a specific target market or multiple target markets? What is it/are they and why?
• How do they promote their products? What kind of language do they use? What product features do they highlight?
• What is their posting schedule? How often do they post or send emails?

Get to know your competitors as if you're their customer base. Sign up for their newsletters and follow their social media pages so that you can see, first-hand, what it's like to be their customer. Then take notes.

5. Understand your product features and benefits

When you're doing your target audience analysis, you really want to take the time to understand exactly what motivates potential customers to purchase your products.

This comes after you've figured out who your target audience is and before you start making efforts to reach your target audience. The idea is to catch them in the decision-making process when they're still trying to decide whether or not they want to make a purchase.

The way to do that is to show them how your products or service can directly benefit them and improve their daily lives.

Many marketers talk about this in terms of product features versus product benefits. The product feature is what the product is or does. The benefit is the end result and how it affects your potential customers.

In fact, this is a super important step in writing product descriptions that convert well .

Like this Swag food storage bag , for example. The features are clearly listed and include details like what kind of fabric it's made of, whether or not you can wash it, and the fact that it is 100% compostable.

Cool, but how does that benefit the target customer?

This product helps you store your fruits and veggies while also keeping them fresher for longer, saving you both money and time.

By showing potential customers how they will benefit from your product, they are more likely to make a purchase...

...making your marketing efforts worthwhile.

If you aren't already clear about what your product benefits are, then it's time to make a list. Go through the top products that you intend to share through ads on Facebook and Instagram and write out exactly how each product will benefit those who buy it.

Not only will this process help you with selling your products, but it will also help you with identifying your target audience.

As in the case with The Swag, the product helps keep fruits and veggies fresh for longer. Their target audience likely eats fruits and veggies in their home-cooked meals, meaning that they are likely generally healthy and concerned with food waste.

By understanding how your products improve the lives of your customers, you are better understanding your target customer.

6. Test paid ads on your target market

Now that you've completed your audience analysis and have a good idea of who your ideal customer is, it's time to start running ads.

Though search engine optimization is by far the best marketing strategy with the highest ROI , running ads gives you quick gains and lots of data to work with.

Facebooks Ads Manager allows you to easily run ads on both Facebook and Instagram. And if you don't know where to begin with placing ads, you can first check out Audience Insights to compare your audience analysis to real-life Facebook users.

To get started, create a custom audience according to your analysis, then create different versions of ads for the same product.

Alternatively, you can use the same ad on different audiences that you create through the custom audience feature.

Spend just about $5 per ad set just to see how users respond, whether they click your ads or even purchase your products.

The idea is to test out your ads and audiences until you find exactly the right combination that brings you the most conversion (sales).

Use this testing process regularly and with each new product that you intend to place ads for. And, when necessary, do another audience analysis to ensure that you are reaching the right people in your marketing efforts.

Target market examples

Let’s take a look at some major brands that have killed it in their target market analysis. They have found their ideal customers far and wide by being super specific and targeted.

1. Nike Target Market

Nike sells apparel, equipment, shoes, and accessories to athletes and people who play sports. Their products are good quality and last for a long time, driving the price range up enough so that only people with disposable income can afford to purchase their products.

But that’s not the only detail about their target audience.

They specifically target young aspiring athletes and runners, two groups of people who rely on motivation to continue pushing themselves beyond their normal limitations.

And we can see this play out in most of Nike’s marketing campaigns, where they create motivational ads that can move viewers to tears.

Read more: Nike’s Brilliant Marketing Strategy – Why You Should Be (Just) Doing it Too

2. Netflix Target Market

A lesson to be learned from Netflix has less to do with its actual target market, which is constantly evolving, and more to do with their approach to reaching their target market.

They continuously conduct research on their audience and meticulously provide them with what they want. From mail-in DVD rentals to a behemoth online streaming service, Netflix has notoriously leaned into its audience and pivoted when needed.

And in doing so, they let word-of-mouth marketing fuel their sales.

Read more: How Netflix Achieved 137 Million Subscribers – Through Word-of-Mouth

3. Lego Target Market

Lego is a household brand across the entire world and for good reason: though children are the users of their products, parents are the ones buying them.

So Lego built its entire marketing strategy around appeasing the parents. Not only that but Lego also partnered with brands, movies, and video games with cult-like followings further secure its place in the fantasy world that many children escape to.

By understanding their target audience and potential barriers to purchase, Lego turned itself into a multi-billion dollar business.

Read more: How Lego Keeps Winning Fans Wherever It Goes

4. Vans Target Market

Vans has made its empire by appealing to misfits and rebels. Like Netflix, the company learned to lean into what worked and who wanted their products rather than trying to strictly stick to their original vision. By allowing the target market to guide them, they found extreme success with their loyal customers.

Read more: 5 Ways Vans Found Their Target Market of Rebels & Misfits

5. Dior Target Market

Dior is an exclusive brand that sets itself apart with its high price tag and innovative design. By setting itself apart with such a niche brand, they very easily found their very niche audience.

But it wasn’t their unique value proposition that made them super successful. It was the way they marketed themselves as exclusive that did the trick.

By understanding what kinds of people would appreciate their products, they made their marketing campaigns to match.

Read more: How Dior Dominated And Achieved a Valuation of $42.7 Billion

6. Coachella Target Market

Coachella is a music festival that hosts artists of all genres, proving to be the festival where everyone is welcome.

And the hipsters, who pride themselves in being a unique carbon copy of everything that is cool, ate that offering right up. As the primary market for the Coachella festival, hipsters paved the way for the Coachella marketing campaign.

The brand started pairing up with other brands that hipsters regularly interact with, such as H&M and YouTube, to further solidify their place in the hearts of hipster millennials, eventually making themselves a multi-million dollar annual festival.

Read more: How Coachella’s Marketing Built A $82.4m Hipster Pilgrimage

7. Glossier

Glossier is a beauty brand that has gained a cult following thanks to their minimalistic branding and focus on natural beauty. Glossier's target market is millennials who are looking for a natural, effortless beauty routine. Their products are designed to be easy to use and enhance natural beauty rather than conceal it.

8. Dollar Shave Club

Dollar Shave Club is a subscription service that delivers high-quality razors and grooming products to your doorstep. Their target market is men who are looking for a convenient and affordable solution for their grooming needs. They use humor in their marketing campaigns to appeal to their target market and have gained a loyal following as a result.

9. Fabletics

Fabletics is a subscription-based athletic wear brand that was co-founded by actress Kate Hudson. Their target market is women who are looking for stylish and functional athletic wear that doesn't break the bank. They use social media influencers to reach their target market and have built a strong community around their brand.

10. Warby Parker

Warby Parker is an eyewear brand that offers stylish, affordable glasses and sunglasses. Their target market is millennials who are looking for fashionable eyewear at a reasonable price. They use social media and word-of-mouth marketing to reach their target market and have built a strong brand identity as a result.

Chewy is an eCommerce brand that offers pet food, toys, and accessories. Their target market is pet owners who are looking for convenience and a wide selection of products. They offer free 1-2 day shipping on orders over $49 and have a customer service team that is available 24/7 to help pet owners with any questions or concerns.

Casper is a mattress-in-a-box company that disrupted the traditional mattress industry. Their target market is people who are looking for a convenient and affordable way to buy a mattress. They offer a 100-night trial period and free shipping and returns, which has helped them gain a loyal following and a strong brand identity.

REI is an outdoor gear and apparel retailer that encourages people to get outside and explore. Their target market is outdoor enthusiasts who are looking for high-quality gear and apparel. They have a co-op membership program that offers exclusive discounts and access to events and have built a strong brand identity around their mission to inspire people to get outside.

It's time to get started if you haven't

As an ecommerce founder, identifying your target audience will give you a clearer direction on how to position yourself. Things like your brand voice , and your brand story come in handy because you already know who you're reaching out to. The same goes for any other marketing channel that you're hoping to work with— referral marketing , you need to properly segment your customers. For influencer marketing , there's no point in reaching out to new moms when you're looking to sell pet food (right?)

The six steps outlined in this article provide a simple and effective framework for defining your target market. By using tools such as customer personas, market research, and customer feedback, you can gain a deeper understanding of your target audience and create more personalized experiences that resonate with them.

As you work through these steps, keep in mind that your target market may evolve over time. As your business grows and you gain more data about your customers, be open to revising and refining your target market definition.

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Marquis Matson is an SEO analyst, content marketer, and writer. She specializes in search engine optimization for ecommerce sites in the yoga and wellness niche. She lives as a digital nomad, spending time in Ecuador, California, Thailand, India, Australia, and more. You can find her on LinkedIn , Twitter , or at marquismatson.com .

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