In your marketing efforts, you must remember your target. Your target is customers, your arrows are your products, and your marketing is the archer. If you lose focus on your target, you are wasting your marketing budget, and missing your mark. In hunting, there is an adage: Aim small, miss small.

The best way to aim small is to narrow your target. Your customers can be described by groups. By targeting specific groups, you can more effectively reach your customers.

Common Types of Market Segment Groups Include:

Demographic Segment
Demographics are measured by income, age, and occupation categories.

Psychographic Segment
Commonly referred to as "Lifestyle" categories, these categories include homeowners, apartment renters, Gen-Xers, etc.

Use-based Segment
Frequency based measurement like vacationing frequency, drinking frequency, minutes of cell phone usage, etc.

Benefit Segment
Appealing to a product benefits such as easily prepared food, thrifty fuel economy, status statements, etc.

Geographic Segment
Physical  location of target including home or business address.

If you have ever filled out a survey, you have participated in narrowing the target for a business. You can ask your self the same types of questions to improve the "aim" of your marketing.

Here Are Some Examples:

How old are my buyers? 16-20, 21-25, 26-30, 31-40, etc.

What lifestyle would most benefit from my product? Apartment Dwellers? Country Folk?

Realistically, how far will a customer travel to do business with me? How far away should my target be?


Focus Your Marketing Strategy On Your Target, Not Your Product

If your research, experience, and knowledge shows that you can sell a product to a specific target, it would be wasteful to spend your advertising budget to non-responsive targets. If you sell pre-faded hip-huggers, it would be unwise to run an ad in an AARP publication. However, it would probably be a great idea to support your local High School booster club, and get your ad on their event program.
You can also select more effective media to advertise with. If your target is 17 year old, athletic, sporty, then a sports bottle with your logo and phone number would be more effective reaching your market than a letter opener with your logo and phone number on it would.

Aim Small, Miss Small

By determining and defining your target, you can utilize your advertising budget to reach you target and increase your customer base.