I didn't define the target markets, the target markets defined me.
When you ask most “marketing experts” to define the basics, you’re likely to get some variation of the following:
- Define the target markets.
- Know where they are online.
- Define your offer.
- Get them to know, trust, and like you.
- Measure results.
While this method has worked for years, it’s arrangement is pretty old school.
Defining target markets is a mindset that encourages you to look at a group of people, point, and say:
“You. You are my target market, and I’m going to market this product to you, and you’ll like it, because I defined you as my target market.”
Here’s just a sample of the conversations Marketers are having with their target markets every day-
With Married Women:
“Hey, you’re a married woman, with kids. That must mean you’re into cleaning supplies, right?”
Single Men:
“Your life sucks and is boring and lonely when you’ve got no one. Meet this totally hot girl out of your league. Don’t die alone, find singles in your area NOW!”
Men in relationships:
“Buy her a ring. Do it. Get engaged. Seriously. Do it already. Yeah you had a fight last night, but she’ll love diamonds and that’ll shut her up. Do it. Get married!”
People in online marketing: (this one is real)
“10,000 DoFollow URLs/mo! We give you up to 10K backlink prospects from true authority sites with solid PR – which means you can rank for practically anything!”
Do you see why this is impersonal?
Not to mention lazy.
By defining target markets, as a marketer you are not listening to the market’s needs and wants first.
How do you truly know if your offer will be useful? What else do you know about your target markets?
Most importantly, do you know how other industries are successfully appealing to them?
See people buy stuff basically for two reasons; They need it (or think they need it) to solve a problem, or they’re trying to enhance or add on to their lifestyle.
Take the time to learn in detail about specific groups within your target markets. Learn what other marketing messages stand out to them, and adopt elements of those campaigns so that you can also make as dramatic of an impact.
Reordering the Basics:
Let’s take the same basic principals from the beginning, but re-order (and re-word) them just ever so slightly. Assuming you’ve been listening to your target markets, Let’s see if some minor tweaks make a difference.
- Know your offer and what makes it attractive.
- Know where people are who can use it.
- Attract people who could benefit from your offer.
- Make offer.
- Measure results.
Do you see how this makes a difference?
All groups of people have similar needs, if you’re listening intently enough, those needs will reveal themselves.
If that group doesn’t need what you have to offer, find a new group.
If they do, when you make the offer, make it in a language that will strongly resonate with them. You’ll make a lasting and dramatic impact on their lives. Measure the results.
Keep building relationships, and you’ll find yourself in new groups filling the same need.
Don’t define your target markets and blast messaging at them, let them define to you what messaging will resonate and adapt accordingly.
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Way to turn this target market concept on it’s head Tommy! You made me think.
I think it’s really important to know where people are coming from.
I mean, with what you do, it’s good knowing that people are coming to you for photography lessons, but knowing where they are coming from and why I think is much more important.
Are they student photographers looking to make a career out of it? Or parents who always wanted to try it out and finally have the disposable income and free time to afford a good camera and time to edit images? Are they looking to be competitive? Or did they want to have a nice camera so they could take pictures of their new grandchild?
Thank you for responding
I’d love to be there for you as you continue your journey to digging deeper into your target markets mind 
Well Tommy I think my market is all of those people you mentioned. (You’re pretty good at seeing that!)
Because of this diversity, I’m actually finding it hard to write blog posts, so I try to write for the absolute beginner some days, and for the person who wants to go pro on other days, etc..
That same diversity really challenges me with planning and creating useful products. Still refining things in that area. Constantly on my mind actually!
There’s also a group of women with young families doing photography for other young families as a business, and many of these women are really kicking ass in that area. In the past they were in the other “groups,” but in some regards I feel they’ve already graduated from ImageMaven. I occasionally ask them for interviews and guest posts, as I think they have a lot of inspiration to offer my peeps, and you never know when a partnership opportunity might arise. They’ve kind of moved from customers to colleagues. They still need some guidance and maybe I can offer them personal coaching or mentoring, but it’s hard to put a price on that as they have become friends too.
Hrm… What I’ve found useful in scenarios like the one that you’re in is to create a simple survey, to determine the skill level and get a little background from the people who are really engaged with your stuff (got it the idea from problogger) and send it out as a part of your auto responder series.
This is the one I did for my list http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DX8BQZZ
This way you can get a clearer understanding of where people who are reading you are at.
As far as the young women who are making a business out of it, perhaps the guidance you could offer would not be directly from the photography side of things, but on running a photography blog to promote their work.
That way you have something to offer that is an extension of what you do, but isn’t exactly photography related (because once people feel like they have a good foundation, they feel like they know enough to survive.)
Idk what do you think about that?
I’ve done three surveys of my peeps in the past year, one just recently in fact, and I’m getting less and less response with each survey even though my list is much larger. I have some inklings of what I need to do, but not a whole lot of numbers to back it up. Sometimes in conversations with people I get a more of sense of what they need. I’m listening more. I teach in the classroom too, and I get clues from there.
That’s why I’m most interested in trying out your “reverse engineering” of the target market in your post. If there is enough people who need similar things then it may become something I can offer.
Like I said, thanks for making me think!!
Interesting direction to work the offer. I am going to have to think about this a bit more as you have really turned things upside down. I can see your point though.
I guess some of this would depend upon whether or not you are developing a new product/service or if you have an existing business. If I were developing a new product, I think I might go in an entirely different direction:
1. Select target market
2. Understand target market’s needs and wants
3. Develop products based on needs and wants
4. Craft marketing message
5. Make test offer, tweek/revise, make official offer
6. Continue to refine
In the case of an existing business, things get tougher because the business is up and running, products are on the self, services are what they are. However, I don’t think the process should be that different. You should still be locked in a constant innovation cycle. Regardless, I’d say you should always be starting with the the target and focusing on her needs and wants.
Great post!
@jwsokol
Thanks for the thoughts. I’m not so sure this really depends on whether you have a defined product or not though.
The point is that by really knowing what value you bring to the table, you can walk into a group and very quickly determine if your target market is in there based on the little signals they’re giving.
If I were to walk into a plumbers meeting, and they were talking about needing to get more people in the door, I know I can help because I’m a marketer. Same goes if a lawyer wanted to get more clients, or a toy manufacturer wanted to sell more toys.
Both approaches work alright, but I’m not convinced the traditional way is narrowing in on those with buying intent, but instead says “well there’s bound to be some buyers in there”, whereas what I’m proposing is focusing on those saying “I need help” or “I want a change”
Great points. As marketer myself, I don’t think we are far off from one another. I guess what it comes down to for me is meeting the client’s needs. The direction you choose to go at it from is really a matter of choice if at the end of the day you create value.
@jwsokol
Amen! Good to have you around
Sent from my iPad
Its always good to see a different view, tommy! btw, am friend india and running a shop. I have an experience to share and question to be answered.
Experience:
Well some 30 years back, my dad has started a retail store in developing sub-urban where none of the items were accessible. Starting from thread, he had stored up all the items that customer enquires. He promises and gets them somehow searching all the wholesale markets. And in few years(yes, it took years!) his shop has been labelled as ‘you can get anything here’. So customers were started coming from all the sides and business grew like anything. thats an close experience and an important lesson from my dad. But i dont think i deserve that experience. See my question below!
Question:
I dont like to work as hard as my dad(frankly i hate working), am willing to enjoy my life. And whats being obstacle for this is Money, Time, Location dependency… I know there are very few business which allows you to work at your own time, be location independent(tomorrow suddenly i may move to 3000km different place and there also i should get a customer immediately), and BIG MONEY. Odd combinations, mebbe? but still i believe there are some business which gives you all these pleasure. hey, one more thing, startup cost for this dream business should be lowest investment or no-investment… help, tommy?
Sounds like your dad had a great business idea, and from the sounds of it, there was a great amount of thought and love for his customers, what a great model!
Now I would love to be able to tell you that you’re not going to have to work hard. But no matter what, there’s no avoiding having to have some level of hustle in order to get the word out about these products.
With that being said, websites like Ebay allow you to sell stuff independent of a location, and that may be a good starting point.
But you still have to manage shipping, competitive pricing, copywriting for item descriptions and making sure you have your catalog of stuff in organized before you start. In that regard, you are free of location dependency, and to a certain extent the money aspect, but you will make up for it with the time it takes to get yourself organized to start processing orders. Fortunately Time has a much lower overhead.
If you wanted to enhance the likely hood of selling stuff to the right people, you can always take out some Facebook ads and Google ads. These only have to be as expensive as you let them be, so overall you’re in control of everything you spend.
But yeah, I’d be lying if I said this still wouldn’t take a bit of work. But if you enjoy writing creatively, than at least it will be something you enjoy.
Keep me posted
I’d love to know how it turns out!
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