Defining Your Target Market
Whether you open an excellent Sales book, a Marketing book, or a Copywriting book, they all talk about your target audience and Ideal Customer profile.
This is the ideal person or company you want to sell your product to.
There are broad metrics like Company size, Industry, and Type of customers they sell to – for example, B2B or B2C.
Once we have a broad picture like this, we zoom in further.
For example, what are this person’s problems if this is a small business? If this is a mid-size business, we would probably sell to Senior Managers. Identifying their problems could mean, for example, helping them identify how their team is performing. A Sales team could be measured on hitting their individual sales quotas. A Software team could be measured for delivering the product as per the planned schedule.
When you know what keeps them up at night, you know how to tailor your product to fit that need or whether you even solve this problem well in the first place.
Using the internet, your prospect can research many alternative products online. Your prospect will be searching online for solutions to his problems. He may have heard of the sales cycle. He may have heard of chatbots. She would be researching help desk software. When you create an article for these searches, you add value to the prospect. In their journey from prospect to customer, in those 20 touches to 50 touches, you will have content to share via organic search or as a value add in your cold email. If you don’t have a picture of your ideal customer, you won’t be able to put up the signboards that lead them to your showroom.
Hence, you should know at least the following about your target audience :
- What are their goals at work?
Understand their professional objectives and what they aim to achieve in their roles - How are they measured for their performance?
Identify the key performance metrics or KPIs that evaluate their success. - What could cause them nightmares at work?
Identify the challenges or issues that could create stress or difficulties in their job. - What does their day look like?
Get a glimpse of their daily routine and tasks. - What does their weekly summary look like?
Understand how they wrap up their workweek and any reporting or summaries they may need to provide. - What does their quarter end look like?
Learn about their responsibilities and activities as they approach the end of a business quarter. - What do they delegate to their team members?
Discover tasks or responsibilities they assign to their team members. - What do they review from their team members?
Find out what kind of work or reports they expect from their team. - How do they measure their team members?
Understand the criteria or standards they use to assess their team’s performance. - Can you visualize a conversation with their manager?
Imagine what discussions they might have with their superiors or managers. - Can you visualize a conversation with a top performer?
Picture a conversation with a high-achieving employee to understand their needs and perspectives. - Can you visualize a conversation with someone who needs to improve?
Envision a discussion with an employee who may require additional support or development. - Can you visualize a team meeting addressing this?
Imagine how they communicate and address their team during meetings.
When you build this picture of your target audience & ideal customer, positioning your product into their day will become easier, and you will get new ideas about improving the product.
