Ok … What does that mean?

It means that as a business owner your first job is to determine who your people are … your ideal target markets.

Most marketing experts and consultants tell you to niche yourself down to a specific market … and it is important and very valuable information. But before you niche, you want to be aware of everyone you can sell to in your market.

This is called your Overall Target Market.

This is the market you’re referring to when you say “my (product/service) is for everyone.” 

And there may be some truth to that, but and it’s a big but … you can’t connect with everyone using a single message.

Before moving on, let’s look at everyone you’d like to sell to without qualification or limits. For instance our Overall Target Market at Viral Essence, is anyone in business or anyone that may go into business. 

OVERALL TARGET MARKET

Once you’ve identified your OTM, your Overall Target Market, then you can look to identify your Ideal Target Markets that have these four characteristics.

• They have a particular need, want or desire.
• They have the financial ability to purchase your solution to their need, want or desire.
• They have the power to decide to purchase your product or service.
• They have access to your business, through a physical location, internet or catalogue.

Now let’s look at the demographic and psychographic characteristics of the people that need, can afford, have access and decide to purchase your offering.

This is where you niche down and segment your market into groups of people with something in common … Things like age, gender, location, income or pain points are examples of Demographics. Psychographics are the quantitative characteristics of your target markets like personality, values, attitudes, interests and lifestyles. 

You’re getting close to your Ideal Target Markets, you ITMs.

But you’re not there yet … not if you want to find Your people

There’s one more group of characteristics that we must consider as we come to know our ideal target markets.

Valuegraphics!

Valuegraphics is a term coined by author and marketer David Allison. It describes what truly matters to people. They identify values that are shared across groups of people, showing us that we are a lot closer than we would expect.

Demographics and Psychographics describe who our audience is and their behaviour but they don’t always tell us what they care about or what motivates them.

People of the same age do not agree about much, ever. And yet we still keep using age to make decisions about how to spend our time and money.

• Baby Boomers only agree on anything 13% of the time
• Millennials agree on things 15% of the time 
• Generation X manages to agree only 11% of the time 

So that’s how you find the only people that matter, Your People … define your Overall Target Market, segment it into groups of Ideal Target Markets using demographic, psychographics, and valuegraphics.

Let us know your overall and ideal target markets and if you have any questions… let’s chat!

Simple but definitely not Easy!

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