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1. Determining Your Target Market

2. When you want to market your products or services, the
first thing you need to do is to determine your target
market. Once target market is determined, you can then
use the four P in marketing to decide how to approach
your target market. The Four P referred here is
product, price, place (distribution) and promotion.

3. So, why is target market important? The main reason is
that company exists for a reason. It needs to differentiate
itself from competition in order to survive. For example if
you have decided to sell bottled water to the general mass
in the urban area, then good luck with that. In the
US, Pepsi and Coke has widespread distribution of bottled
water consumption through its Aquafina and Dasani
brand. If you still insists on selling bottled water, then you
need to narrow your target market.

4. For example, instead of selling to the general mass, your
target market for the bottled water can be physically
active individuals who avoids thirst quenchers such as
Gatorade when they exercise. Once you identify this target
market, you would then use the four P to differentiate
yourself from regular bottled water. For example, in terms
of place (distribution), you can avoid places such as fast
food restaurants or lounges. Statistically, people who are
exercising, seldom visit these places. You would then
concentrate your distribution on places such as the
school's sporting facility.

5. While choosing your target market seems trivial, it will
cost you a lot of marketing dollars if done incorrectly. Let's
assume that you do not decide what your target market is
and you are now using the four P in marketing to market
your product. You would then distribute your bottled
water to places such as convenience stores, gas stations
and the shopping mall. Will you capture audiences who
are physically more active than the population? Yes, you
will. But, the percentage of that audience is small
compared to if you focus your distribution on that target
market. As a result, you spend large amount of money to
capture a small portion of the audience. Worse still, big
companies such as Pepsi and Coke are now aware that you
are invading their turf. The next thing they'll do is to
bombard the mass media with advertisement and price

6. In the online world, you need to choose your target
market too. Once you choose your target market, the four
P should reflect this decision. For example, if your target
market is individuals who are looking for ways to invest
their money, you should not advertise in general audience
such as CNN. Your marketing budget will be more effective
if you spend your money in financial website such as
Yahoo! Finance or The Motley Fool.

7. Same thing with your distribution channel. If you
distribute your content to the general article directory, you
will get loads of visitors who may not be interested in your
products or services. Furthermore, as discussed earlier, it
might attract your bigger competitors thinking that you
are trying to take away their lunch. If your bigger
competitors are not inept, they will then react accordingly
and launch offensive campaigns that will render your
marketing campaign useless.

8. Fortunately, nowadays, there are plenty of niche article
directories allowing marketers to publish articles of
certain field. Thus, smaller publishers can gain more
visibility as niche directories generally have less people
submitting their contents. Furthermore, larger
competitors are reluctant to publish their contents there.
The reason is that they have a larger cost overhead.
Focusing on small target market will not do them any
good. It is their loss. But you, my friend, should not miss
this opportunity. It is one of the most efficient way of
using your marketing dollars.

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