How to Narrow Down Your Ideal Target Market - and the Dangers of Not Knowing Who They Are

As experienced list brokers working in the direct marketing industry, we work together with our clients to find the best marketing list for them, whether they are looking to reach their customers through direct mail, telemarketing, opt-in email or sms/text campaigns. This article is written to help you understand not only the importance of narrowing your marketing efforts down so that you are marketing directly to your ideal target market but also exactly how to go about doing that.

To help our customers with this, we need to ask them a lot of questions. Typically, the first question we ask our new clients is: "Who is your Target market?" and sometimes they enthusiastically reply, "Everyone!"

However, the general public is NOT your target market. It is essential that we narrow down your target market to the group of people most likely to buy your product or service because even though it's possible that a random person might come along and buy your product, when you are spending money on a direct marketing list you must narrow it precisely to your target market. This way you will see the BEST results!

The following plan will help you think about your target market, or at least provide food for thought for you to discuss with your list broker. There are so many selects (this is what the list criteria are called) that you can choose from; make sure you're selecting as many as possible to really narrow your target market. The selects below are only a portion of what's available on most direct marketing lists, just to give you an idea.

My ideal customer is:

* A Consumer at their home address
* Male
* Female
* Income is ___________
* Occupation is ____________
* Age is _________
* Homeowner or renter?
* Type of car
* Presence of children? Number of children?
* A Business Owner
* Retail Store?
* Restaurant?
* Service such as lawyer, plumber, contractor
* Work at Home?
* Other: _______________
* An employee at a certain type of Business
* Ideal Title of the person is __________
* A non profit Group
* Type?
* An Association
* Professional or volunteer?
* A Professional
* Accountant
* CPA
* Dentist
* Financial Advisor
* Fitness Trainer
* Hairdresser
* Lawyer
* Marriage Counsellor
* Nurse
* Occupational Therapist
* Physical Therapist
* Other: _________________

Now come the extras. Thinking again about whom exactly your ideal customer would be, are there things that they MUST do or be in order to be included in your target market?

* Must work as a ___________________
* Must be _________________ (married, divorced, single, widowed)
* Must have donated to _____________ (cause) within the past ________ (timeframe)
* Must have this specific interest: __________________
* Must have experience with: ____________ (swimming pools, certain software, horses, etc)
* Must have an interest in _____________
* Must have this specific ailment: _______________
* Must be retired

My ideal customer also:

* Must read these magazines/newspapers: _______________________________
* Lives in ___________ (zip code, city, county, radius around a zip code, country, etc)

The above exercise was designed to get your creative juices flowing and start thinking about how you can narrow down your target market. It's by no means exhaustive. You'll save money on your marketing if you are only marketing to whom you've narrowed down as your ideal customers. Your mailing list might cost a little bit more with the extra costs for the added selects, but seeing as how the list is the cheapest part of your whole campaign, I would hope that you'd understand that it's well worth it. We've seen clients spend thousands of dollars on copywriting, printing and postage, only to discover they were wrong about who they guessed their target market was. Be smart, do your homework and above all, test before you roll out to bigger campaigns.

Wishing you all the best with your marketing!