How to Target Market And Meet Customers' Needs

To learn about the people you are trying to do business with, consider using a combination of both primary and secondary market research. This will give you a clear understanding of who they are and what they want. The more you know about your target market, the better you’ll be able to target your information, style, newsletter plan and marketing messages.

Primary Market Research

Primary research involves collecting original data about the members of your target market. In other words it is data you collect directly from them. You may have done this already when choosing your topic. But if not, I strongly urge you to do it now. In the end you’ll be rewarded for your time.

Ways to collect primary market research data:

1. Ask Family and Friends – A great place to start is getting feedback from your friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, ect... and use their suggestions to make initial improvements and adjustments.

2. Use The Forums – Post messages to forums frequented by your targeted market. Explain what your reason for asking the questions is and encourage honest feedback. If you have too many questions to ask, post a message inviting members to complete a short survey in exchange for a quality gift such as a free ebook, a software, a report, etc... .

3. Conduct a Survey – Get to Know your targeted market. For example: Is your targeted market children, men, senior people, or women? Are they casual style, office style, sports style, etc...? What your targeted market is looking for? How muche is willing to pay, ect...? Learning about your targeted audience is the key factor to success in any type of business.

A good way to find people who are willing to complete your survey is to purchase newsletter advertising. To improve your response rate, offer something for their time; it could be a free report, an eBook, a chance to win a contest or any other thing.

If you have an email list, you can use your own email system or any other method to ask people to complete your survey. Also you can use online survey tools to make it available on a web page or through email. Here's a service you can use to conduct your survey for free visit http://www.tigersurvey.com/ or you can do a search in google or in any other search engine you want.

4. Run a Focus Group – Get a small group of people together, either online or offline who are representative of your target market. Spend some time talking to them and learning their views and opinions on the topic.

Secondary Market Research

Secondary research is existing information that is gathered from sources such as books, magazines, newspapers, industry publications and of course a variety of online sources. This is usually information about the industry itself including the size, trends, growth rate, and so on.

Ways to collect secondary market research database:

1. Find Industry Specific Resources - Start by finding out if there are industry specific publications related to your topic. Subscribing to these can be a good way to learn about an industry and keep on top of changes, new processes, competitors, and much more. It can also be a source of content for your publication.

2. Interview Your Competitors Or Experts in Your Field – Email makes this extremely easy. Start with an introductory email that explains your objectives and asks if they would be willing to answer a few questions on their industry. If they agree, email them a list of questions (not too long - 10 questions max) and have them answer right in your email and send it back to you. It's that simple! Be sure to follow up with a thank you email expressing your appreciation for them taking the time to help.

3. Act Like Your Customer – Use relevant terms to your product or service to search the web. Visit the first 10 sites returned by the search and use the products they’re offring. This will give you an opportunity to learn what your targted market already know and more.

4. Read Other People’s Newsletters and Blogs – By learning what information your potential readers already have access to you can better differentiate your newsletter. Look for topics that could be covered more thoroughly or from a different angle.

From your researches you should be able to answer the following questions:

• What is the size of my target market?

• What makes people in my target market want to buy?

• What are the characteristics of a typical customer? (e.g.: age, gender, income, etc)

• What features or special services do people in my target market want?

• How often will people in my target market buy and how much is there average purchase?

• How do they feel about what my competitors are offering?

• How comfortable are they with technology? What technology do they use? What is there Internet connection speed, monitor size, browser version? Etc...
  

The more you know about your targeted market, the more successful you will be in engaging them, the more likely you will design a Web site they respond to, the faster you acquire new customers, the easier it will be for you to write sales letters, articles that are focused to their needs and the more you will make money.

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