‘Everyone’ Is Not A Demographic: A Guide To Target Markets For Small Businesses
What Is A Target Market?
Simply put, a target market is a specific group of people you have decided to target with your products or services. It could be a large market or a niche market.
Sounds simple enough, right? Well, the concept of target markets can become much more complicated if you offer a product or service with wide appeal, or you have a diverse customer base. If you sell to “everybody,” then how are you supposed to define your target market?
The Difference Between A Target Market And A Demographic
Although target market and demographic are closely related terms, they are not interchangeable.
Compared to demographics, target markets tend to be much broader. This is because, for many businesses, their products or services appeal to a wide range of individuals. Target markets can also be affected by considerations such as buying cycles, product shelf life and other elements that may not be driven by people who might be interested in buying what you’re selling. In addition, marketers often take the long-term profit potential of a target market into consideration when developing their models and marketing strategies, meaning that they have to focus on the bigger picture.
Demographics, on the other hand, are subsets of a target market that share particular attributes. For example, many television advertisers purposefully target the coveted (and notoriously fickle) 18-35 age demographic. That does not necessarily mean that people who are older than 35 fall outside of the advertiser’s target market – it just means they are part of a different demographic.
In other words, you can think of target markets as a collection of demographics that may be interested in your product or service.
How To Identify A Target Market
So, now we know a little