Every person has their own set of demands, necessities, and desires in different stages of their life.
A brand of the pen a boy or girl uses in a college might differ from the brand of the pen they would use when they have a job or own a business.
Brands and businesses these days know who their target market is and they create their marketing strategies after segmenting their customers on the basis of demographics, geographics, psychographics, and behavioral data to create a profitable scenario.
What is a Target Market?
Target market can be defined as smaller and well-defined customer groups which are within the company’s serviceable market and to whom the company wishes to offer its goods and services and align their marketing strategies accordingly to have a profitable situation.
Having a well-defined target market makes marketing decision processes much easier as the company’s marketing team knows in advance about the most profitable group of consumers and can make the best use of efforts and resources to satisfy them.
One of the best target market examples is the technology company Apple Inc. The company targets those people who want to experience luxury and desire to use the best product in the market.
Their tagline ‘Think Different’ says it all. Apple doesn’t have the largest market share in the world but a large revenue share in the Technology industry due to its luxurious products.
Before we understand Target Marketing in brief, let us first know what Market Segmentation is.
Market Segmentation
The concept of Market Segmentation is an important aspect of Marketing Strategy.
It’s a tool that segments a large population of prospective customers into smaller and more defined segments in order to align the marketing efforts in a more efficient manner.
Market segmentation makes these groups on the basis of customers’ needs, values, priorities, income and lifestyle, and desires. This practice of segmenting the market further helps brands and businesses to create a target market.
Let’s understand the concept of Market Segmentation further with an example of the target market.
A person earning USD 1,000 in a month will not be able to spend much on luxuries. But when her salary goes up to USD 10,000, she is now able to spend on luxurious goods and services.
A brand that sells luxurious cars will segment prospective customers on the basis of their income and lifestyle. Their target market would never be the person earning USD 1,000 or company executives.
His target segment would be the company’s managers and positions above that. The brand’s target market will also include business owners making a good profit since they want to show their luxurious lifestyle to others.
Every brand you know falls into a particular type of Industry and has a different target market.
How to Define Your Target Market?
The shotgun approach of marketing normally doesn’t work for a business while defining your prospective customers. It is not a good approach to target every person and wait for them to buy your service or product with so much competition and limited resources in the market.
Target marketing is a better approach for smaller or new brands to compete with large reputed brands. They can even do A/B testing on a different set of groups and choose the most profitable segment and target marketing efforts for them.
You can Follow These Steps to Define a Target Market for Your Brand.
➢ Target Segmentation
You can do segmenting of your brand’s larger part of the market according to your customers’ demographical, geographical, psychographics and behavior patterns.
➢ Identifying your USP
Having a unique selling proposition is what makes your brand different from your competitors. Because of the USP, people will purchase your products or services over other brands in the market.
➢ Analyzing the Customer Base
If you are there in the market for quite some time now, the best approach in defining your target market is by collecting your larger part of customer data and analyze it.
➢ Analyzing the Customer Base of your competitors
It is good to know to whom your competitors are targeting. Knowing your competitor’s customer base will help you to make your own target market as you will know which customer segments will generate you revenue and which won’t.
Target Market Examples
Now we know what is a target market and why is important for a business to have a target market. Let’s now look at some of the Target Marketing examples of some reputed companies who are doing very well in the market.
Here are 3 examples of the target market
1. Target Market of Facebook
Facebook is the topmost social media network in the world. When Mark Zuckerberg started the company, their target market was just high school and university students in the United States of America.
But the network soon got very vast. The company started targeting middle-aged working groups, married people.
Now Facebook’s target market is people in the age group 16-55 years old in 157 countries. This is a great target marketing example.
2. Target Market of Mercedes Benz
We all know Mercedes Benz as a producer of high-class car models. The company sets a great target marketing example as it only produces car models for the rich above 25 years to 55 years old having a luxurious lifestyle.
Mercedes doesn’t target the younger audience as their cars are quite expensive.
Also, the company targets both men and women as their cars are designed to fit both men and women. This one is one of the best examples when it comes to target market examples.
3. Target Market of Netflix
Netflix is the largest distributor of movies and TV shows online. Their target market is the group of people who enjoy watching movies and shows at their homes.
Netflix has been very strategic in terms of targeting as they know that not everyone who likes watching movies or shows will buy their service. Usually, people in the age group of 21-46 years would like to buy their service.
Since the service they offer satisfies our lifestyle needs, many people prefer doing other things than watching the content online.
Netflix aligns its marketing efforts keeping in mind its target market. Overall a great target marketing example.
Target Market Analysis
Target market analysis starts with knowing your prospective customers completely. The 5 W’s approach is the best way to decide the most relevant and profitable target market for your brand.
Who?
Who is going to buy your brand’s product or service? Are they men or women, young, adults or the old?
What?
What type of products or services do they generally buy and are they satisfied using them?
When?
When are your potential customers most likely to buy a product? Do they buy it daily, from time to time, or just one time?
Where?
Where are your customers living? Are they living in a city or a village?
Why?
Why will your product or service help them? Is it a need or a luxury?
Having answers to these questions will help you to create Buyers’ Persona of your target market.
After target market analysis, brands usually define their target audience. The target audience is narrower than the target market as this audience will see the advertisements of the brand.
All in All
This was the complete article on the target market in which we explained what target marketing is with target market examples and did target market analysis as well.
I hope this article was helpful to you and if you have any suggestions then you can mention them in the comments down below.