target customers in business plan example

Target Market Examples

Elon Glucklich

7 min. read

Updated March 20, 2024

Imagine your dream is to own a diner.

You have restaurant experience and a great location in mind – you just need the bank to approve your loan to get started.

But the bank has questions. A big one it wants answered is: who is your target market?

It might be tempting just to say, “hungry diners.” But you’ll need to dig deeper to truly define your target market . 

In this article, we’ll use this diner scenario to walk through the market research process and illustrate what the final result could look like.

Questions about your target market

Before you even set foot in the bank, you should already have asked – and taken steps to answer – several key questions about your target market.

Let’s call our example business the Bplans Diner. Where is that perfect location you’ve found for the diner? Is it in a densely populated urban area, suburban neighborhood, or rural?

What are your hours of operation? Some diners cater to a breakfast crowd, while others might offer 24-hour dining to be a favorite among night owls. When you expect your peak hours could help determine whether you should expect to sell more omelets or hamburgers.

What’s the area’s median income, and what types of businesses or institutions are nearby? This information will help you determine pricing and marketing strategies for your diner. For instance, if your diner is located in a business district, you may want to offer lunch specials. But if it’s near a college or university, you might want to offer student discounts.

This is what a thorough target market analysis looks like, providing key insights and data to pinpoint the specific groups of customers most likely to patronize your diner. Gathering all of this information may sound intimidating, but it’s really just a matter of doing research. If you need help and guidance, check out our complete guide to conducting market research for your business . 

Let’s look at an example of a target market analysis for this diner. Then, we’ll break it down and discuss each element in detail.

Example of a target market analysis

As you can see, the target market analysis follows the basic market segmentation process of splitting out potential customers into their demographic, geographic, psychographic and behavioral traits.

Next, let’s take a look at each in more detail. Afterward, we’ll look at how you can harness your target market analysis into actual business strategies.

• Demographic

You may have noticed that the demographic analysis in our example is very broad – 18 to 65 years old, including students, workers, and some seniors.

Finding your target market isn’t always about identifying a narrow demographic to cater to. In the case of a restaurant, it makes sense to focus on the geographic location and who currently frequents the area (more on that in the next section).

A different approach may be needed for a technology product that’s sold online. In that case, narrowing the demographic focus to specific age ranges or needs would be much more important than where the business is located.

In the case of the diner, we reached our decision by conducting a demographic analysis, examining the age ranges, occupations, and other concrete data points about potential customers near the proposed location (Reminder: we didn’t do this for the Bplans Diner, we’re just providing an example). 

There are several ways to go about collecting this information for your business. The most straightforward is to get out in the neighborhood, take a look around and talk to people. Are you mostly seeing students, or families? Are there a lot of office workers in the area? 

You can also look up data from the U.S. Census Bureau , which includes population, age, income and other useful information, often down to the neighborhood level.

After conducting this research, one valuable step is to create a detailed customer persona that represents the typical customer you expect for your business (we provide an example of a customer persona for the diner further down in this article).

While the demographic analysis considers the type of people who might frequent your business, the geographic analysis considers the characteristics of the neighborhood itself. 

Our target market analysis for Bplans Diner noted that we plan to operate in an urban area near a university with heavy foot traffic and expect a fair amount of late-night diners.

A key reason for examining the geographic makeup of your businesses is to size up your competition. If there’s already a popular diner in the area you plan to target, getting customers could be a major challenge. But if there’s a lack of dining options or no one is serving diner-style food, you’re more likely to be successful. Determining the size of your market will help you create reasonable revenue projections. 

We also mentioned the plan for Bplans Diner to cater to a late-night crowd. Examining the geographic makeup of the neighborhood will help you determine if there are the kinds of businesses – bars, music venues, or businesses such as hospitals where people are working all hours – to justify targeting this group.

• Psychographic

You know the demographics and geographic characteristics of your market. Now it’s time to consider the attitudes and values of your potential customers.

The psychographic analysis helps to understand the lifestyle of potential customers and how that might affect their preferences as consumers. If many of your potential customers are health-conscious, for instance, you’ll want to ensure your diner provides options like salads or gluten-free menu items. But if most customers are families looking for a place to bring their children, it may be important to keep classic items like hamburgers and french fries on the menu.

The best way to understand your potential customers’ attitudes is to get out and talk to them. Customer interviews are among the most powerful methods of validating a business idea , since you’ll get honest, real-time feedback from the kinds of people your business would depend on.

Finally, the behavioral analysis expands on customer psychographics by examining what customers do, given their values. This is another place where it’s worth considering the broad demographics of the diner’s target market – 18 to 65 years old, split among students, workers, and seniors.

They may all want the diner’s food, but their behaviors will vary widely. College students might be looking for a late-night study spot, or a place to meet up with friends for dinner before a concert or sporting event. But workers and seniors might be more interested in breakfast or lunch specials. 

Each of these behaviors gives a business owner valuable information to target individual segments of their target audience. For instance, you might want to play popular music in the evenings to get young diners ready for a night out on the town. But you’ll want a quieter ambiance at the time of day when seniors are most likely to come in. The environment can be adjusted based on when certain customers frequent the business.

Addressing behavioral aspects like buying motivations and concerns of your potential customers will also help you effectively market your diner. For example, you could create marketing campaigns based on student discounts, late-night specials, or a family-friendly atmosphere, depending on your customers’ behaviors.

Connecting a target market analysis to business strategy

So far, we’ve touched on each of the components of a target market analysis for a diner: customer demographics, geographics, psychographics, and behaviors. (It’s also important to conduct an industry analysis to understand competitive and macroeconomic forces affecting your planning.)

With the target market analysis complete, you’re better equipped to demonstrate a thorough understanding of your customers to a lender.

Here are a few insights a business owner could use for the Bplans Diner, developed through the above analysis.

• Bplans Diner Competitive Analysis

Market Trends: Growing demand for late-night food options, increasing preference for healthy dining options.

Competitor Strengths and Weaknesses:

Competitor A: Strong brand but limited menu options.

Competitor B: Wide variety of options but lacking in ambiance.

• Bplans Diner Marketing Strategy

Product Differentiation: Offering a diverse menu that caters to various preferences, including healthy options.

Positioning: Establishing Bplans Diner as a reliable, quality, 24-hour dining option in the region.

Promotion: Utilizing social media to announce special night-time deals and promotions.

Get started with your business plan template

A target market analysis is a key part of any business plan. But it’s just one piece. At Bplans, we take some of the pain out of business planning. We’ve developed a free business planning template to help reduce entrepreneurs’ time to create a full, lender-ready business plan. Bplans has also collected over 550 free sample business plans across numerous industries. Find a plan in your industry to get inspiration for your plan.

See why 1.2 million entrepreneurs have written their business plans with LivePlan

Elon is a marketing specialist at Palo Alto Software, working with consultants, accountants, business instructors and others who use LivePlan at scale. He has a bachelor's degree in journalism and an MBA from the University of Oregon.

Table of Contents

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How to Write a Business Plan: Target Market Analysis

The Business Plan and the Importance of Defining Your Target Market

Susan Ward wrote about small businesses for The Balance for 18 years. She has run an IT consulting firm and designed and presented courses on how to promote small businesses.

Conducting a Market Analysis

Polling your target market, writing the market analysis, online tools for market research, u.s. online market research sources, canadian online market research, local sources of market research, doing your own market research.

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The market analysis is basically the target market section of your business plan . It is a thorough examination of the ideal people to whom you intend to sell your products or services.  

Even if you intend on selling a product or service only in your community, you won't be selling that service to everyone who lives there. Knowing exactly what type(s) of people might be interested in buying your product or service and how many of them reside in your projected area or region is fundamental in creating your market analysis.

Once target market data has been established, you'll also work on sales projections within specific time frames, as well as how prospective sales might be affected by trends and policies.

Research is key and cornerstone of any solid  business plan .

Don't Skip This Step!

Don't skip market research; otherwise, you could end up starting a business that doesn't have a paying market.

Use these general terms as linchpins in research data for the market analysis section of your business plan, and to identify your target market:

But don't stop here. To succinctly define your target market, poll or survey members of your prospective clients or customers to ask specific questions directly related to your products or services. For instance, if you plan to sell computer-related services, ask questions relating to the number of computing devices your prospective customers own and how often they require servicing. If you plan on selling garden furniture and accessories, ask what kinds of garden furniture or accessories your potential customers have bought in the past, how often, and what they expect to buy within the next one, three, and five years.

Answers to these and other questions related to your market are to help you understand your market potential.

The goal of the information you collect is to help you project how much of your product or service you'll be able to sell. Review these important questions you need to try to answer using the data you collect:

• What proportion of your target market has used a product similar to yours before?
• How much of your product or service might your target market buy? (Estimate this in gross sales and/or in units of product/service sold.)
• What proportion of your target market might be repeat customers?
• How might your target market be affected by demographic shifts?
• How might your target market be affected by economic events (e.g. a local mill closing or a big-box retailer opening locally)?
• How might your target market be affected by larger socio-economic trends?
• How might your target market be affected by government policies (e.g. new bylaws or changes in taxes)?

One purpose of the market analysis is to ensure you have a viable business idea.

Find Your Buying Market

Use your market research to make sure people don't just like your business idea, but they're also willing to pay for it.

If you have information suggesting that you have a large enough market to sustain your business goals, write the market analysis in the form of several short paragraphs using appropriate headings for each. If you have several target markets, you may want to number each. 

Sections of your market analysis should include:

• Industry Description and Outlook
• Target Market
• Market Research Results
• Competitive Analysis

Remember to properly cite your sources of information within the body of your market analysis as you write it. You and other readers of your business plan, such as potential investors, will need to know the sources of the statistics or opinions that you've gathered.

There are several online resources to learn if your business idea is something worth pursing, including:

• Keyword searches can give you an overall sense of potential demand for your product or service based on the number of searches.
• Google Trends analysis can tell you how the number of searches has changed over time.
• Social media campaigns can give you an indication of the potential customer interest in your business idea.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has information on doing your market research and analysis , as well as a list of free small business data and trends resources you can use to conduct your research. Consider these sources for data collection:

• SBA  Business Data and Statistics  
• The U.S. Census Bureau maintains a huge database of demographic information that is searchable by state, county, city/town, or zip code using its census data tool . Community, housing, economic, and population surveys are also available.
• The U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has extensive statistics on the economy including consumer income/spending/consumption, business activity, GDP, and more, all of which are searchable by location.

The Government of Canada offers a guide on doing market research and tips for understanding the data you collect. Canadian data resources include:

• Statistics Canada  offers demographic and economic data.
• The  Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC)  offers market research and consulting with industry experts.
• The Canada Business Network provides business information to entrepreneurs by province/territory, including market research data.

There are also a great many local resources for building target market information to explore, including:

• Local library
• Local Chamber of Commerce
• Board of Trade
• Economic Development Centre
• Local government agent's office
• Provincial business ministry
• Local phone book

All of these will have information helpful in defining your target market and providing insights into trends.

The above resources are secondary sources of information, in which others have collected and compiled the data. To get specific information about your business, consider conducting your own market research . For instance, you might want to design a questionnaire and survey your target market to learn more about their habits and preferences relating to your product or service.

Market research is time-consuming but is an important step in affording your business plan validity. If you don't have the time or the research skills to thoroughly define your target market yourself, hiring a person or firm to do the research for you can be a wise investment.​

Small Business Administration. " Market Research and Competitive Analysis. " Accessed Jan. 13, 2020.

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6 Real-Life Target Audience Examples to Help You Define Your Own (B2B and B2C)

Target audience research allows you to better understand your potential customer(s) and their underlying pain points.

The more you drill down into your high-value audience groups through strategic market segmentation, the closer you are to your next sale.

Learn the ins and outs of target marketing with plenty of examples to inform your strategy.

What Is a Target Audience?

How a target audience differs from a buyer persona, how psychographic and demographic data informs marketing campaigns.

• How To Analyze and Define Your Target Audience

Do Target Audiences Vary by Channel?

3 b2b target audience examples.

• 3 B2C Target Audience Examples

A target audience is a group of consumers within a predefined target market that has been identified as the best recipients for a particular marketing message. And a target market broadly describes B2C or B2B consumers who care about your product or service and, under the right conditions, are most likely to spend money with your company.

An audience is a segment within that market.

For example, the target market for an online bookkeeping tool might include businesses with over $500K in annual revenue.

So a target audience profile for our bookkeeping program might be technology stakeholders with influence on decision-makers at companies that haven’t reviewed their accounting software needs in over two years. It’s much more specific than our target market, which is important because we can craft content marketing collateral that speaks directly to the challenges and needs of this influential group.

To create effective messaging within your marketing campaigns, you first need to define your target audience.

When marketers try to appeal to the broadest possible audience for their products and services, they often end up feeling exhausted without much to show for their efforts. Their messaging seems inauthentic and doesn’t really resonate with anyone in particular.

To create effective messaging within your marketing campaigns, you first need to define your target audience. Doing so will help you engage key decision-makers and eventually convert them into loyal customers.

At this point, you might be asking, “Isn’t that just a buyer persona?” And while the two concepts are similar, they are distinct enough to warrant further discussion.

A buyer persona is a fictional character who represents one of your ideal customers . They have names, occupations, likes and dislikes, as well as challenges and ambitions.

While target audiences are valuable tools for many types of content marketing campaigns, buyer personas tend to be more useful in a B2B context, because they focus on challenges and business information. For example, a B2C company that sells protein bars would not need to create multiple personas, because people from many backgrounds and with varying job titles might purchase their products.

In a B2B context, targeting personas can be extremely valuable, especially when employing content marketing strategies. A SaaS company might create personas for each stakeholder involved in the buying process, for instance. An HR persona might be interested in blog content that addresses common pain points, while a CFO persona would be more interested in white papers with lots of data.

Personas aren’t entirely without value to B2C marketers, however. They can serve as useful guides when crafting messages to engage and inform consumers.

A persona typically includes:

• Personal information: Name, age and geographic location.
• Content preferences: Favorite channels, content formats, tone and style.
• Business background information: Job title, level of influence in decision making processes.
• Objectives: Measurable goals related to the persona’s job.
• Challenges: Frustrations and pain points standing in the way of the persona’s goals.

Your target audiences should be informed by both demographic and psychographic information. The former category describes your intended audience on a superficial level, while the latter describes their motivations.

• Demographics may include cursory information such as gender, age, income and marital status.
• Psychographics include personal interests, attitudes, values, desires and specific behaviors.

When defining and targeting an audience, demographics will only get you so far. For example, if you’re promoting a B2B SaaS solution, your specific audience may be made up of men and women ages 35-49 who earn more than $100,000 annually. That’s all good information to have, but it applies to too broad of a cohort.

Psychographic data for this specific audience could include: worrying about lost resources throughout a supply chain, wanting to eliminate redundancies, or being skeptical of flashy new technology.

Combined, demographic and psychographic information can help you fine-tune your audience targeting goals.

Combined, demographic and psychographic information can help you fine-tune your audience targeting goals. The challenge is where to find this data. Psychographic research may include interviewing existing clients, conducting polls and analyzing your site traffic.

How to Analyze and Define Your Target Audience

Defining the target audience for a particular marketing campaign requires data. Unfortunately, there isn’t a crystal ball that can tell you how to adjust your messages to bring in the right audience. But that’s not to say you can’t trust your gut.

You know your business better than anyone, so combine that experience with hard data to generate a market segment and target audience that is characteristically human, and also strategically defined by scientifically gathered data.

A Three-Step Approach To Defining A Target Audience

1. Conduct target customer research

Your business plan, content marketing strategy, professional experience and prior knowledge of your target customers will lay the foundation for your research. Compile all of your existing intelligence on your target market, and look for opportunities to learn more about it. For example, you might know that most of your customers are senior-level business people, but you may not know if they all have the same job title, or if they all consume content through the same channels.

To uncover key audience insights, use Google Analytics to drill down into your site traffic and perform a deep audience analysis. Custom audience reports can show you demographic and psychographic data, geographic locations as well as the types of technology your site visitors use.

2. Analyze the market

Once you know a little more about your target customers and have compared that data with your business process or goals, it’s time to get some context. Not only are you attempting to place the right messages in front of the right people at the right time, but you’re also competing with potentially thousands of other messages.

Review your competitors’ marketing efforts and business plans to better understand what you’re up against. Likewise, you’ll want to be aware of any other campaigns your business is currently running, as you don’t want to cannibalize your share of audience attention.

3. Define the audience

With hard data in tow and a thorough understanding of your audience’s interests, challenges and needs, it’s time to create a concise target audience to which you can direct your content marketing efforts.

Ask yourself these questions as you work to define your target audience:

• What problems does your product or service solve?
• Which demographic characteristics influence the decision-making process?
• Which psychographic traits impact content consumption?
• How does your audience prefer to engage with brands similar to yours?
• Is your audience segment large enough?

That last question is particularly important, because it will prevent you from sinking resources into ultra-niche campaigns with low ROI. Niche marketing is certainly a useful tactic, but your target audiences should represent a group large enough to reach through social and organic channels.

Knowing your intended audience is only one half of the equation. The next step in the target audience analysis process is to determine where this group consumes content so you can develop an actionable marketing strategy.

Depending on the demographic and psychographic data you’ve collected, some channels will be more effective at engaging your intended audience than others. For instance, some decision-makers in a market segment may be more likely to open an email than to click on a social media ad.

Within channels, a specific audience may prefer unique platforms. B2B buyers are more inclined to seek out information on LinkedIn than Instagram, for example.

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(Keep in mind the following custom audiences are meant to inform specific campaign messages! These companies may have different audience segments for other targeting efforts. Each example is based on a real client I’ve worked with.)

1. Bookkeeping SaaS Solution

Key demographics

• Age range: 35-49.
• Gender: 65% male, 35% female.
• Common job titles: Head of Digital, Senior Accountant, Chief Financial Officer.

Key psychographics

• Values job security.
• Likes to review all the data before making a decision.
• Striving for a better work-life balance.
• Skeptical of solutions that promise to solve all their problems.
• Their current digital solution is showing its age.
• Current lack of third-party integration is slowing down internal processes.
• Boss/shareholder demands are making work stressful.

Preferred channels

• Email for first contact, then phone conversations.
• Browses social media platforms like LinkedIn , mostly looking for news.

Preferred content types

• Data-rich white papers.
• Case studies.

2. Business Travel Company

• Age range: 30-55.
• Gender: 70% female, 30% male.
• Common job titles: Procurement Officer, Travel Buyer, Supplier Relations Expert.
• Values relationships when working with suppliers.
• Dislikes working on repetitive, mundane tasks.
• Is wary of handing off responsibilities to a third party.
• Suppliers fail to deliver on promised rates.
• Doesn’t have enough data to make informed decisions.
• Not familiar with ground-level travel concerns.
• Looks for answers via organic search.
• Communicates with other procurement professionals on social media platforms.
• Easily digestible blog posts.

3. Facility Security Services

• Age range: 45-60.
• Gender: 80% male, 20% female.
• Common job titles: Facility Manager, Head of Security.
• Doesn’t like drawn-out negotiations.
• Likes to be prepared for everything; gets nervous when things are uncertain.
• Prefers to get pitches from two or three companies before making a decision.
• Needs to save costs, but isn’t willing to sacrifice quality of service.
• Needs a third-party supplier with technology integrations.
• Email for marketing materials.
• Blogs and news sites for industry trends.
• Data-rich infographics.
• Email newsletters.

B2C Target Audience Examples

4. athletic shoes.

• Age range: 18-29
• Gender: 60% male, 40% female
• Wants to look stylish, but doesn’t like to follow trends.
• Looks up to sports figures.
• Strongly values friendships and community.
• Loyal to one or two athletic brands.
• Finding athletic footwear that is both stylish and comfortable.
• Loves the look of designer sneakers, but can’t afford them.
• Follows athletes and influencers on social media.
• Watches sponsored events on YouTube.
• Looks for exercise tips on Google.
• Social media posts.
• Image-rich articles.

5. Organic Protein Bars

• Age range: 18-35.
• Gender: 50% female, 50% male.
• Strives to eat food that is nutritious and sustainable, but isn’t always successful.
• Loves to hang out with friends in nature.
• Feels loyalty toward brands with values similar to their own.
• Finds it difficult to eat healthy food when they’re busy.
• Has a limited food budget.
• Needs a protein source that is compact and easy to transport.
• Follows nature photography accounts on Instagram.
• Watches supplement reviews on YouTube.
• Follows health gurus on Twitter.
• Event marketing.

6. Credit Union Mortgage Products

• Age range: 25-39.
• Gender: 50% male, 50% female.
• Enjoys spending time with friends and family at home.
• Tries to spend their money wisely, but isn’t always sure how to do that.
• Craves stability, but fears another economic recession.
• Feels anxious every time they think about having a mortgage.
• Is thinking about mortgages for the first time ever.
• Unclear on the difference between a bank and a credit union.
• Reads online news sites.
• Downloads how-to guides online.
• Watches home-hunting videos on YouTube.

When you have well-defined, custom audiences informed by strong research, you can stop waiting for buyers to stumble upon your brand and start actively pursuing them with precise messaging.

Editor’s note: Updated November 2021.

By Michael O'Neill

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Target Market: Examples, What it is & How to Define it

What is a target market?

What is a target audience, why define your target market , how to define your target market: , target market examples, target marketing plan example, summary .

Every business that’s ever existed dreams of a huge customer base and constant sales with a bottom line that wows… But if you’re continuously falling short of your sales and growth targets, then it might be time to check if you’re selling and marketing your products or services to the right people. 

Rather than falling into the trap of thinking you can appeal to everyone all at once (spoiler alert: you can’t), having a narrow target market and audience ensures your products, services, and brand attract and maintain the customers who are going to be interested and (hopefully) make lots of purchases. 

In this article, we’re going to help you finally make those profits you’ve dreamed of by clarifying exactly what is meant by “target market” and “target audience.” With this information, you’ll be able to build the right buyer personas for your products and services, so you can build your small business into the empire you deserve. 

First things first, “target market” is a phrase you’ll hear almost daily in the business world. But what does it really mean? 

Well, your target market is the people who are going to be buying your products or services. By establishing your target market early on, you can tailor your products accordingly and ensure you’re only spending your precious advertising budget marketing to people who will actually benefit from what you’re selling. 

Target markets are usually defined by three aspects: 

• Demographics: Things like the age, gender, income, marital status, ethnicity, employment status, etc., of your buyers. 
• Geographics: Where your customers are located (this can be as wide as entire continents, or even just a single neighborhood or street). 
• Psychographics: What drives your customers? What are their likes and dislikes? What problems do they face in their lives? 

By figuring out who your customers are, you’ll be in a better place to market your products… And you could even use this information during upgrades to ensure you’re continuously providing a valuable benefit. 

Target markets and target audiences can frequently get confused and overlap, but they relate to different people, and it’s essential to have a clear distinction between the two. 

While your target market is the end consumer, your target audience is who your brand should be focusing on when advertising.

A good example of this would be for a child-aged target market. Let’s use McDonald’s Happy Meals as an example…

While the Happy Meals are clearly made for kids, the target audience for this product would be the adults responsible for the children. These adults are the ones who choose what the kids eat and will usually be the ones buying the Happy Meals. 

You can do it too.

Because McDonald’s has clearly identified their target market vs. target audience, you’ll notice adverts for Happy Meals tend to focus on aspects that the target market (kids) wouldn’t be that interested in… Like the nutrition value of the meals, for example. 

Another brilliant example of a target market vs. a target audience is the 2010 Old Spice advert, The man your man could smell like . When trying to appeal to a younger audience, Proctor & Gamble (the advertising team behind this campaign along with Nike’s Just Do It ) discovered around 60% of men’s body washes and deodorants were purchased by women. 

Taking advantage of this information, P&G decided to aim subsequent Old Spice marketing efforts at women with the famous ad featuring Isaiah Mustafa. Like McDonald’s, they successfully identified a difference between their target market (men aged 18 – 35) and their target audience (the wives and girlfriends of these men). 

In other words, your target market is whom you’re selling to. Your target audience is whom you’re advertising to.

So, now we know what the difference is between a target market and a target audience… But the question still remains, why bother? Surely, marketing to everyone is casting a wider net, and you’ve got more chances of gathering customers? 

Any angler will be able to tell you that a wide net isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when catching fish. Sure, you might get one or two valuable catches in a large net, but you’re more likely to end up with a barrel of fish nobody wants. 

To really catch fish, you need the right bait, the right equipment, and to be fishing in the right places. 

And suddenly, the metaphor of casting a large net continues to be 100% applicable to the world of marketing. 

In other words, if you aspire to make everyone a potential customer, you’re less likely to gain attention from people who will actually benefit from and buy your products and services. Instead, focus your marketing efforts on a clearly defined section of the market, and you’ll attract more valuable customers who will help your business grow. 

In addition to attracting the right people, defining your target market and audience early on will allow you to: 

• Develop the product line by solving specific needs
• Set the right prices
• Determine the perfect marketing channels
• Find the best features to highlight
• Determine the right keywords and SEO criteria
• And much more.

A narrow, specific target audience and market also ensures you’re not spending too much time/money casting a wide net… Enabling you to convert far greater numbers of potential customers with considerably lower overheads. 

When it’s time to define your target market, you might struggle to know where to start at first. But figuring out the right market segment to advertise to doesn’t need to be difficult if you break it down. 

Remember, by marketing to a specific group of people, you can focus on getting the language, tone of voice, and content just right. This enables your message to get across more clearly and will make your audience more likely to buy your product or service.  

In addition, having well-defined target customers enables you to start a more genuine and compelling conversation with that group of consumers. And once you’ve cultivated a genuine relationship, you’re more likely to benefit from loyal customers and word-of-mouth recommendations. 

To get started building a definition of your target customers, think about the following: 

1. Identify the key benefits of your business

Once you’ve established the critical benefits of your business, you’ll probably find your target market becomes clear fairly quickly. 

As marketer Philip Kotler said, “authentic marketing is not the art of selling what you make but knowing what to make. It is the art of identifying and understanding customer needs and creating solutions…” 

Theodore Levitt elaborates on this with… “people don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want to buy a quarter-inch hole.” 

As Kotler and Levitt identify, it’s not the features of your product or service that will sell… It’s the benefits these provide. For example, if you’re selling exercise equipment, the benefits might include improving customers’ self-image, physical health, mental wellbeing, confidence, and empowerment. These benefits will be more compelling to most target customers than a list of specs. 

To identify the key benefits of your product or service, ask yourself the following questions: 

• What problem(s) do you solve for people? 
• What need(s) do you meet? 
• What desire(s) are you fulfilling?

2. Identify who will benefit most from the above. 

Once you’ve identified the key benefits of your product or service, you can start thinking about who would benefit most from these features and who would be most likely to buy. This will help you narrow down the demographics for your target market. 

For example, if you’re selling at-home exercise equipment, the people who will benefit most from this could be middle-aged, overweight men who don’t have time to go to the gym or young women who don’t feel comfortable in a standard gym. 

Think about who your product or service helps the most, and start narrowing them down. 

Consider the age, location, gender, income, and any other critical demographics of the market segment you’ve identified and make a note of these. 

3. Refine your target market 

Once you’ve established the key demographics of the group of consumers who are most likely to benefit from your products or services, it’s time to define your target market even further by building user personas for your customers. 

These personas will include the demographics like age range, location, etc., that you defined in step 2 but adds in psychographics. 

Psychographics include more personal information about your market segment. These will include things like: 

• The customer’s likes and dislikes
• Hobbies and interests
• Daily routines
• Pain-points

You can collect this information through a variety of means. If you have established customers already, asking them to provide feedback can be invaluable to businesses. Otherwise, surveys, polls on social media, or any other market research will help you establish precisely who you’re selling to. 

4. Stay objective

It might surprise you to realize that this is probably the most challenging step in defining your target market and audience… But it’s also one of the most critical. 

When researching your potential customers, you must always stay objective and avoid assumptions, particularly when matching your product’s key benefits with a specific group of people. 

In fact, CBInsights discovered that approximately 35% of start-up businesses fail due to a lack of market need. 

Even if you think your product is fantastic, you’re likely to fail if you don’t accurately identify a need, want, or desire and address that. 

Segway is an excellent example of a business failing due to a poorly defined target market and a product that didn’t fulfill a need. 

5. Evaluate the segments 

It’s critical to remember that just because someone says they would buy your product or service doesn’t mean they actually will . 

You need to ensure the market segment you’ve identified is a viable customer group by asking the following questions: 

• Is this group large enough to sustain the business? 
• Does the market segment have sufficient income to afford the products and services being sold? 
• Will these people make multiple purchases, or will you constantly need to be attracting new customers? 
• Are other brands targeting the same market segment? Why/why not? 
• What separates your brand from similar companies, products, and services? 
• How accessible is the target market you’ve identified?

Following any research into this evaluation, it’s vital to create real-life tests to directly engage with your prospective market. 

6. Identify who influences the buying decision. 

Once you’ve defined your target market, it’s time to turn your attention to your target audience. Remember, your target market is the group of people who might want to buy your product. Your target audience relates to the people who will be making or influencing the purchase decision. 

The most obvious example of this is how products for children need to be marketed to parents or guardians, as kids don’t have any buying power themselves. But this can also take into account a far wider group of people as purchase decisions are rarely made in a vacuum. 

Consider the friends and family of your target customers. Would a good/bad word from a sibling change your potential customer’s mind about buying? If it’s a big-ticket item, would your customer want to check with their spouse or partner first? How can you convince these ‘influencers’ that your products and services are worth buying? 

If you’re providing products and services for B2B clients, this can be even more complicated as purchases may need to be approved by multiple people before they can go ahead. 

7. Check your competitors 

As part of your marketing strategy, you should have completed a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) of your business. Now, it’s time to ensure you’ve done the same for your competition, starting with the top stores on Shopify and working back to your closer competitors. 

Use social media, Google, and customer research to determine what target audiences your competitors are focusing on and whether those individuals align with your business. 

If you’re advertising to the same group of people, figure out what these people find great/bad about the competition and use this to guide your own marketing efforts. 

Now you know how to define your specific target market, it can be helpful to see how other companies have used targeting research to build a detailed target audience profile. These well-known brands offer a fantastic target marketing plan example that you can use to bring these concepts to life and translate them into your own marketing strategy. 

Nike provides an excellent target market demographics example. Once, Nike marketed to professional athletes only but changed its business model to accommodate a broader, more approachable audience with the Just Do It campaign. 

As part of the rebranding, Nike considered the benefits of its sports apparel, shoes, accessories, and equipment and who these benefits would most appeal to. 

Their targeting includes a young age range, people interested in getting fitter, individuals with some disposable income to spend on high-quality products. 

To further narrow down the target market, Nike specifically focuses on aspiring athletes and runners in most advertising campaigns and utilizes an inspiring, motivational, inclusive tone of voice that appeals to a younger audience who are ready to push beyond their limitations. 

We know what you’re thinking… “but Netflix targets everyone?!” While this may be partially true, have you ever taken a look at someone else’s Netflix account and noticed how different it looks from your own? 

With detailed algorithms and substantial customer research, Netflix intelligently targets individual preferences in its marketing strategy, ensuring each person receives a well-defined and highly tailored experience. 

It’s also worth noting that Netflix started as a DVD delivery service, mailing DVDs to rent to its customers. As online streaming took over, Netflix analyzed its customers’ needs and made the switch to provide an online service. Now offering apps and even downloadable, offline shows and movies, still highly tailored to individual preferences. 

This cool and quirky footwear brand is another excellent example of target marketing at work. The brand appeals to “misfits and rebels,” with a daredevil outlook that may not attract every shoe-wearing citizen but is sufficiently focused so that rebels worldwide can’t get enough. 

Like Netflix, Vans allowed the customers to guide their business decision and utilized highly targeted market research to ensure every product matched their audiences’ desires perfectly. 

Before we leave you, we thought it might be helpful to include a detailed target marketing plan example. This fictitious target market for a software company will give you an idea of the demographics you should include when analyzing your customer base, so you can see precisely how to define your target market in a B2B scenario: 

Key Demographics: 

• Age range: 35-45 years old. 
• Gender: 65% male, 35% female
• Common job titles: Chief financial officer, head of digital, senior accountant

Key Psychographics: 

• Values: Job security, affordability, financial growth
• Likes to review all data and complete a full pros/cons analysis before making decisions
• Strives for an improvement to their work/life balance
• Skeptical of any brand that promises to solve all their problems or too-good-to-be-true offers. 

Challenges and pain points

• Concerned that their current software can’t keep up with increasing demands and improvements to modern technology. 
• Aware that a lack of third-party integration means internal processes cannot be performed efficiently. 
• Demands from bosses and/or shareholders create a stressful work environment with little work/life balance. 

Preferred communication channels

• Professional social media platforms such as LinkedIn
• Regularly browse the internet for the latest industry news 

Preferred content

• White papers with plenty of detail
• Case studies
• News articles

Now you know how to find your target markets, the difference between a target audience and a target market, and some real-life examples of how to write a target market strategy. You should be well on your way to attracting and maintaining a loyal, engaged customer base. 

But it’s important to remember that figuring out who your ideal customers are is only the first step. Once you’ve identified the age, location, gender, interests, pain points, and other aspects of your target market sample, it’s vital to focus on the communication channels markets can use to communicate with these segments. 

Google Analytics is one of the best tools for determining where your target market/audience hangs out online. Using this information, you can streamline your marketing efforts on relevant social media platforms, email campaigns, or even offline advertising. 

Be sure to focus on getting the tone of voice and language just right in any messaging, and have high-quality landing pages that reflect your audience’s interests to retain the best customers and keep them coming back for more. 

Once you’ve done this, you’re sure to experience market growth like never before.

How do you define a target market? 

A target market is a segment of people who are likely to benefit from the products or services your business is selling. You can narrow this group into as many smaller segments as you like to help your marketers find the perfect methods to get your messaging across.

Target markets are usually defined by key demographics, including age range, gender, income, geographic location, and more. They will be further narrowed down with psychographics, including likes and dislikes, key values, pain points, lifestyle, etc.

How do you define a target market vs. target audience? 

Target markets take into account the people you’re selling to at market. However, a target audience will be the person or people who make the purchase decision and are the ones you’re advertising to.

A good example of the difference between these two aspects is a product for children. While kids aged 3-4 might be the target market, the target audience would be the parents or guardians, as these are the ones who make the purchase decision.

Old Spice is another good target market vs. target audience profile example. Although the product is for men, the man your man could smell like campaign utilized messaging for the end-users’ wives, girlfriends, and partners. The market was men; the audience was the women buying the product on their behalf.

How do I identify my target market? 

Plenty of research is required to accurately identify the right target market for your products or services. Conversations with any customers you already have are invaluable. You can utilize things like social media polls, surveys, or even email research to help you determine your target market and existing customers.

Google Analytics is also an incredibly valuable tool when establishing your target market. This will help you see where your audience spends their time and what keywords they’re searching for that might be relevant to your messaging.

Suppose Facebook is an appropriate channel for your marketers to use. In that case, Facebook’s custom audience tools can also be handy for your market research and to aid you with narrowing down your market segments.

How do you write a target market statement?

Take a look at our target market statement examples above for an overview of the things you should include in a target marketing strategy. As a summary, you should be looking to include aspects such as:

• Geographical location
• Aspirations
• Current challenges
• Hobbies/interests

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I'm a content manager at sixads. I'm fiery about marketing, writing and traveling, so you can often find me scribbling away in some unknown corner of the world. If you want to know more ways to increase traffic and attract buyers to your online store get in touch with sixads on one of the channels bellow.

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What Is a Target Market (And How to Find Yours)

The better you understand your target market, the more you’ll be able to focus your ads and reach the audience most likely to convert into customers.

Table of Contents

Your target market sets the tone for your entire marketing strategy — from how you develop and name your products or services right through to the marketing channels you use to promote them.

Here’s a hint before we dig in: Your target market is not “everyone” ( unless you’re Google ). Your task in defining your target market is to identify and understand a smaller, relevant niche so you can dominate it. It’s all about narrowing your focus while expanding your reach.

In this guide, we’ll help you learn who’s already interacting with your business and your competitors, then use that information to develop a clear target market as you build your brand .

Bonus: Get the free template to easily craft a detailed profile of your ideal customer and/or target audience.

What is a target market?

A target market is the specific group of people you want to reach with your marketing message . They are the people who are most likely to buy your products or services, and they are united by some common characteristics, like demographics and behaviors.

The more clearly you define your target market, the better you can understand how and where to reach your ideal potential customers. You can start with broad categories like millennials or single dads, but you need to get much more detailed than that to achieve the best possible conversion rates.

Don’t be afraid to get highly specific. This is all about targeting your marketing efforts effectively, not stopping people from buying your product.

People who are not included in your targeted marketing can still buy from you—they’re just not your top focus when crafting your marketing strategy. You can’t target everyone, but you can sell to everyone.

Your target market should be based on research, not a gut feeling . You need to go after the people who really want to buy from you, even if they’re not the customers you originally set out to reach.

What is target market segmentation?

Target market segmentation is the process of dividing your target market into smaller, more specific groups. It allows you to create a more relevant marketing message for each group.

Remember — you can’t be all things to all people. But you can be different things to different groups of people.

For example, as a vegetarian, I’ve eaten plenty of Impossible Burgers. I’m definitely a target customer. But vegetarians are a surprisingly small target market segment for Impossible Foods: only 10% of their customer base.

That’s why Impossible Foods’ first national advertising campaign was definitely not targeted at me:

https://www.facebook.com/ImpossibleFoods/videos/158779836141556

The target market segment for this ad campaign was “meat eaters who haven’t yet tried Impossible products.”

Vegetarians and meat eaters have different reasons for eating plant-based burgers and want different things from the experience. Target market segmentation ensures the company reaches the right audience with the right message.

How to define your target market

Step 1. compile data on your current customers.

A great first step in figuring out who most wants to buy from you is to identify who is already using your products or services. Once you understand the defining characteristics of your existing customer base, you can go after more people like that.

Depending on how someone connects with your business, you might have only a little information about them, or a lot.

This doesn’t mean you should add a lot of questions to your order or opt-in process just for audience research purposes — this can annoy customers and result in abandoned shopping carts.

But do be sure to use the information you naturally acquire to understand trends and averages .

Your CRM is a goldmine here. UTM parameters combined with Google Analytics can also provide useful information about your customers.

Some data points you might want to consider are:

• Age: You don’t need to get too specific here. It won’t likely make a difference whether your average customer is 24 or 27. But knowing which decade of life your customers are in can be very useful.
• Location (and time zone): Where in the world do your existing customers live? In addition to understanding which geographic areas to target, this helps you figure out what hours are most important for your customer service and sales reps to be online, and what time you should schedule your social ads and posts to ensure best visibility.
• Language: Don’t assume your customers speak the same language you do. And don’t assume they speak the dominant language of their (or your) current physical location.
• Spending power and patterns: How much money do your current customers have to spend? How do they approach purchases in your price category?
• Interests: What do your customers like to do, besides using your products or services? What TV shows do they watch? What other businesses do they interact with?
• Challenges: What pain points are your customers facing? Do you understand how your product or service helps them address those challenges?
• Stage of life: Are your customers likely to be college students? New parents? Parents of teens? Retirees?

If you’re selling B2B products, your categories will look a little different. You might want to collect information about the size of businesses that buy from you, and information about the titles of the people who tend to make the buying decisions. Are you marketing to the CEO? The CTO? The social marketing manager?

Step 2. Incorporate social data

Social media analytics can be a great way of filling out the picture of your target market. They help you understand who’s interacting with your social accounts, even if those people are not yet customers.

These people are interested in your brand. Social analytics can provide a lot of information that might help you understand why. You’ll also learn about potential market segments you may not have thought to target before.

You can also use social listening to help identify the people who are talking about you and your product on social media, even if they don’t follow you.

If you want to reach your target market with social ads, lookalike audiences are an easy way to reach more people who share characteristics with your best customers.

Step 3. Check out the competition

Now that you know who’s already interacting with your business and buying your products or services, it’s time to see who’s engaging with the competition.

Knowing what your competitors are up to can help you answer some key questions:

• Are your competitors going after the same target market segments as you are?
• Are they reaching segments you hadn’t thought to consider?
• How are they positioning themselves?

Our guide on how to do competitor research on social media walks you through the best ways to use social tools to gather competitor insights.

You won’t be able to get detailed audience information about the people interacting with your competitors, but you’ll be able to get a general sense of the approach they’re taking and whether it’s allowing them to create engagement online.

This analysis will help you understand which markets competitors are targeting and whether their efforts appear to be effective for those segments.

Step 4. Clarify the value of your product or service

This comes down to the key distinction all marketers must understand between features and benefits. You can list the features of your product all day long, but no one will be convinced to buy from you unless you can explain the benefits .

Features are what your product is or does. The benefits are the results. How does your product make someone’s life easier, or better, or just more interesting?

If you don’t already have a clear list of the benefits of your product, it’s time to start brainstorming now. As you create your benefit statements, you’ll also by default be stating some basic information about your target audience.

For example, if your service helps people find someone to look after their pets while they’re away, you can be pretty confident that your market will have two main segments: (1) pet owners and (2) existing or potential pet-sitters.

If you’re not sure exactly how customers benefit from using your products, why not ask them in a survey, or even a social media poll ?

You might find that people use your products or services for purposes you haven’t even thought of. That might, in turn, change how you perceive your target market for future sales.

Step 5. Create a target market statement

Now it’s time to boil everything you’ve discovered so far into one simple statement that defines your target market. This is actually the first step in creating a brand positioning statement , but that’s a project for another day. For now, let’s stick to creating a statement that clearly defines your target market.

For example, here’s Zipcar’s brand positioning statement, as cited in the classic marketing text Kellogg on Marketing . We’re interested in the first part of the statement, which defines the target market:

“To urban-dwelling, educated, techno-savvy consumers who worry about the environment that future generations will inherit, Zipcar is the car-sharing service that lets you save money and reduce your carbon footprint, making you feel you’ve made a smart, responsible choice that demonstrates your commitment to protecting the environment.”

Zipcar is not targeting all residents of a particular city. They’re not even targeting all the people in a given city who don’t own a car. They’re specifically targeting people who:

• live in an urban area
• have a certain degree of education
• are comfortable with technology
• are concerned about the environment

These are all interests and behaviors that Zipcar can specifically target using social content and social ads .

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Zipcar (@zipcar)

They also help to guide the company’s overall approach to its service, as evidenced by the rest of the positioning statement.

When crafting your target market statement, try to incorporate the most important demographic and behavior characteristics you’ve identified. For example:

Our target market is [gender(s)] aged [age range], who live in [place or type of place], and like to [activity].

Don’t feel like you need to stick to these particular identifiers. Maybe gender is irrelevant for your market, but you have three or four key behaviors to incorporate in your statement.

If you offer multiple products or services, you might need to create a target market statement for each market segment. In this case, it’s useful to define buyer personas .

Target market examples

Nike target market.

Despite its current market domination, Nike actually provides a great example of what can go wrong when you try to target too general of an audience.

Nike started out as a running shoe company. In the 1980s, they tried to expand their target market beyond runners to include anyone who wanted comfortable shoes. They launched a line of casual shoes, and it flopped.

Here’s the thing: Non-runners were already buying Nike shoes to walk to work, or for other casual purposes. Nike spotted this as an opportunity to expand. Instead, they diluted their brand promise, and the company actually started losing money.

The lesson, according to company founder Phil Knight?

“Ultimately, we determined that we wanted Nike to be the world’s best sports and fitness company and the Nike brand to represent sports and fitness activities. Once you say that, you have focus.”

While Nike would certainly not stop casual users from buying its shoes, the company refocused everything from product development to marketing on its target market: athletes of all levels, from pro to beer league.

In fact, understanding the importance of focus led Nike into a highly effective strategy of target market segmentation. The brand has multiple target markets for its various product lines.

On social, that means they use multiple accounts to reach their different target market groups. No one account tries to be all things to all customers.

The post below from Nike’s general Instagram account targets the segment of their audience interested in fashion and lifestyle products.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Nike Basketball (@nikebasketball)

But the company also has channels dedicated to specific sports. Here’s an example of the content they create for runners:

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Nike Running (@nikerunning)

And that means … the brand has been able to return to marketing its products specifically for casual wear. It just reaches the casual target market through different channels than it uses for its athletic markets. It’s a different target market segment, and a different marketing message

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Nike Sportswear (@nikesportswear)

Like Nike, you might have one target market, or many, depending on the size of your brand. Remember that you can only speak effectively to one target market segment at a time.

Takasa target market

Takasa is a Canadian retail homewares company that specializes in organic, fair trade bedding and bath linens.

Here’s their target market as defined by founders Ruby and Kuljit Rakhra:

“ Our target market is the LOHAS segment, which means Family Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability. This group of people is already living, or striving to live, a green lifestyle … We know our target demo is very conscious about what their families consume, as well as the impact this consumption has on the environment.”

In their social content, they clearly identify the product features most important to their target market: organic materials and fair labor practices.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Organic + Fairtrade Home Goods (@takasa.co)

The City of Port Alberni’s target market

Why does a city need a target market? In Port Alberni’s case, the city is working to “attract investment, business opportunities and new residents.” To that end, they launched a rebranding and marketing campaign.

And a marketing campaign, of course, needs a target market. Here’s how the city defined it:

“ Our target market is young people and young families 25 to 45 years of age who are entrepreneurial-minded, family oriented, adventurous, enjoy an active lifestyle, desire an opportunity to contribute to growth, well-educated and skilled professionals or tradespeople.”

In their social content, they highlight recreational opportunities aimed at those active and adventurous young families, even using the handle @PlayinPA.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by City of Port Alberni (@playinpa)

White House Black Market target market

White House Black Market is a women’s fashion brand. Here’s how they describe their target customer on their website :

“Our customer … is strong yet subtle, modern yet timeless, hard-working yet easy-going.”

That’s a fine description when talking directly to customers. But the marketing department needs a target market definition with a few more specifics. Here’s the detailed target market as described by the company’s former president:

“ Our target market is women [with a] median age of about 45 … at a stage in her life where she’s very busy, primarily a working woman. She’s probably got one or two kids left at home [or] … her children may be out of the house and on their way to college.”

With their hashtag #WHBMPowerhouse, they focus on this key demographic of women in their 40s with busy home lives and careers.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by White House Black Market (@whbm)

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What Is a Target Market?

• Defining a Product's Target Market
• 4 Target Markets

Why Are Target Markets Important?

What are market segments, target market and product sales.

• Target Market FAQs

The Bottom Line

• Marketing Essentials

Target Market: Definition, Purpose, Examples, Market Segments

Investopedia / Mira Norian

A target market is a group of people that have been identified as the most likely potential customers for a product because of their shared characteristics, such as age, income, and lifestyle.

Identifying the target market is a key part of the decision-making process when a company designs, packages, and advertises its product.

Key Takeaways

• A target market is a group of customers with shared demographics who have been identified as the most likely buyers of a company's product or service.
• Identifying the target market is important in the development and implementation of a successful marketing plan for any new product.
• The target market also can inform a product's specifications, packaging, and distribution.

How Do I Define My Product's Target Market?

Part of creating a new product is envisioning the consumers who will want it.

A new product must satisfy a need or solve a problem, or both. That need or problem is probably not universal unless it reaches the level of indoor plumbing. More likely, it is needed by a subset of consumers, such as environmentally-conscious vegetarians, or science nerds, or outdoor enthusiasts. It may appeal to a teenager or a middle-aged professional, a bargain-hunter or a snob.

Envisioning your likely target market is part of the process of creating and refining a product, and informs decisions about its packaging, marketing, and placement.

What Are the 4 Target Markets?

Market researchers use activity, interest, and opinion (AIO) surveys to construct psychographic profiles of their target customers. Marketing professionals divide consumers into four major segments:

Demographic: These are the main characteristics that define your target market. Everyone can be identified as belonging to a specific age group, income level, gender, occupation, and education level.

Geographic: This segment is increasingly relevant in the era of globalization. Regional preferences need to be taken into account.

Psychographic: This segment goes beyond the basics of demographics to consider lifestyle, attitudes, interests, and values.

Behavioral: This is the one segment that relies on research into the decisions of a company's current customers. New products may be introduced based on research into the proven appeal of past products.

What Is an Example of a Target Market?

Each of the four target markets can be used to consider who the customer for a new product is.

For example, there are an estimated 100,000 Italian restaurants in the U.S. Clearly, they have enormous appeal.

But a corner pizza joint might appeal mostly, although by no means entirely, to a younger and more budget-conscious consumer, while an old-fashioned white tablecloth place might be dominated by older folks and families who live in the neighborhood. Meanwhile, a newer place down the street might cater to an upscale and trend-conscious crowd who will travel a good distance for the restaurant's innovative menu and fancy wine list.

In each successful case, a savvy business person has consciously considered the ideal target market for the restaurant and has tweaked the menu, decor, and advertising strategy to appeal to that market.

Few products today are designed to appeal to absolutely everyone. The Aveda Rosemary Mint Bath Bar, available for $26 a bar at Aveda beauty stores, is marketed to the upscale and eco-conscious woman who will pay extra for quality. Cle de Peau Beaute Synactif Soap retails for $110 a bar and is marketed to wealthy, fashion-conscious women who are willing to pay a premium for a luxury product. An eight-pack of Dial soap costs $12 at CVS, and it is known to get the job done.

Part of the success of selling a good or service is knowing to whom it will appeal and who will ultimately buy it. Its user base can grow over time through additional marketing, advertising, and word of mouth.

That's why businesses spend a lot of time and money in defining their initial target markets, and why they follow through with special offers, social media campaigns , and specialized advertising.

Dividing a target market into segments means grouping the population according to the key characteristics that drive their spending decisions. Some of these are gender, age, income level, race, education level, religion, marital status, and geographic location.

Consumers with the same demographics tend to value the same products and services, which is why narrowing down the segments is one of the most important factors in determining target markets.

For example, people who fall into a higher income bracket may be more likely to buy specialty coffee from Starbucks instead of Dunkin' Donuts. The parent companies of both of these brands need to know that in order to decide where to locate their stores, where to stock their products, and where to advertise their brand.

A business may have more than one target market—a primary target market, which is the main focus, and a secondary target market, which is smaller but has growth potential. Toy commercials are targeted directly to children. Their parents are the secondary market.

Identifying the target market is an essential part of a product development plan, along with manufacturing, distribution, price, and promotion planning. The target market determines significant factors about the product itself. A company may tweak certain aspects of a product, such as the amount of sugar in a soft drink or the style of the packaging, so that it appeals more to consumers in its target group.

As a company’s product sales grow, it may expand its target market internationally. International expansion allows a company to reach a broader subset of its target market in other regions of the world.

In addition to international expansion, a company may find its domestic target market expands as its products gain more traction in the marketplace. Expanding a product's target market is a revenue opportunity worth pursuing.

How Detailed Should a Target Market Be?

It depends. Broadly speaking, a product may be designed for a mass market or a niche market, and a niche market can be a very small group indeed, especially in a product's early introductory phase.

Some carbonated beverages aim for a practically universal market. Coca-Cola had to branch out to 200 markets abroad to continue growing its customer base. Gatorade is owned by Pepsi Cola, but the brand is positioned as a drink for athletes. The soda brand Poppi, which is branded as a "Healthy, Sparkling, Prebiotic Soda with Real Fruit Juice, Gut Health, and Immunity Benefits," is clearly aimed at a younger, healthier, and more trend-conscious target market.

Consider a casual apparel company that is working to build its distribution channels abroad. In order to determine where its apparel will be most successful, it conducts some research to identify its primary target market. It discovers that the people most likely to buy their products are middle-class women between the ages of 35 and 55 who live in cold climates.

It's reasonable for the company to focus its advertising efforts on northern European websites that have a strong female audience.

But first, the company may consider how its apparel can be most attractive to that target market. It may revise its styles and colors and tweak its advertising strategy to optimize its appeal to this new prospective market.

What Is the Purpose of a Target Market?

A target market defines a product as well as vice versa.

Once a target market is identified, it can influence a product's design, packaging, price, promotion, and distribution.

A product aimed at men won't be packaged in pink plastic. A luxury cosmetic won't be sold in a pharmacy. An expensive pair of shoes comes with a branded cloth drawstring bag as well as a shoebox. All of those factors are signals to the target audience that they have found the right product.

Identifying the target market is part of the process of creating and refining a new product.

A target market can be translated into a profile of the consumer to whom a product is most likely to appeal. The profile considers four main characteristics of that person: demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral.

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Target market: definition, purpose, examples, & best practices.

11 min read Aiming for your target market with a highly focused marketing strategy is now easier than ever with the support of insights from data and machine learning. Read our in-depth guide to learn how to successfully reach your target market.

What is a target market?

A target market is a subset of the audience you’re aiming to reach (your market). It is made up of a group of customers that have one or more commonalities between them and are most likely to be interested in your products.

These commonalities might be:

• Demographic targeting : They all have common features, such as age, income level, family status, level of disposable income, and marital status
• Psychographic segmentation : They all hold common interests, values, wants, goals, political leanings or lifestyle choices
• Behavioral patterns: They all have common behaviors, such as when they purchase a product or how often they buy
• Geographic segmentation : They are all located in the same region or local area

There are other factors that might group your target market’s members together, and, more often than not, there might be a blend of multiple factors. Keep in mind that there’s also a slight variation if you are looking for B2B customers, as this might include:

• Firmographics: The details about the businesses you’re targeting, such as industry, company size, global or regional spread
• Buying style: The businesses’ buying policies, budgets or stakeholder involvement
• Company behavior: How much they purchase and when, their appetite for risk

Free eBook: 2024 global market research trends report

What is target marketing?

Target marketing is the process of reaching out to particular market segments of your potential customers or your existing audience. This target market is defined by their commonality as mentioned above, usually within a range, such as consumers aged 25-45 or those working in the hospitality industry.

Your marketing strategy will be tailored to that particular niche market, and will encompass all the channels that the target audience might use. Your marketing should be based on market research and take into account the needs and wants of that specific group. Ideally, this means that you have data-led insights about your target market to allow you to create digital marketing or offline marketing strategies that work effectively.

What is consumer targeting?

Where your target market is the broader group of individuals that have a feature in common, your target consumers are the individuals you believe are most likely to purchase your product or service. Your marketing efforts for consumer targeting will be aimed at a more specific audience, such as 35-year-olds or hotel managers.

Consumer targeting vs market segmentation

Consumer targeting is the process of marketing to the specific audience you think will potentially buy your products, based on data-led insights on prior sales data and more.

Market segmentation is a broader process, being the general division of your entire potential audience into target markets, based on the features they share or the products and services they’d be interested in.

Both are necessary processes to narrow down the focus of your marketing efforts for the best results.

Why should you create a target marketing strategy?

Creating a marketing strategy for a specific target market has several advantages over a more general approach.

• You’re more likely to reach an audience interested in your products or services. Having a clear idea of who would be most interested in your offering means you don’t waste time marketing to those who are less likely to buy.
• You can create a more appealing and effective marketing strategy. Knowing your target audiences’ distinct features means you can create a marketing approach that will be more appealing to them.
• You’ll stand out from the competition. By honing in on your target customers and adapting your strategy accordingly, you’ll be ahead of the 76% of marketing executives that don’t use behavioral data to target their marketing efforts .
• You’re able to target and retarget your audience for better outcomes. Comscore found that retargeting customers led to a 1046% uplift in searches for the advertised brand.
• You can discover which customers are more likely to pay a premium for your product. Increase profitability and revenue by targeting the target audience with the highest ROI.

How to target market segments

Step 1: finding your target markets.

Whether you’re planning on exploring target markets for a new or an established business, market research will be vital to discover the most fertile areas for growth. Here are a few ideas on how to define your target market:

Study your current customers

Your current customers have a wealth of information that can help you create a marketing plan for your ideal target market. By gathering data, either through customer feedback channels such as surveys or focus groups, or by examining operations data such as customer purchase patterns, you can develop a persona that describes your ideal customer. What common characteristics do your biggest spenders have? Start by sending a survey with open-ended questions to a small representative sample of customers, perhaps 300 or more, to understand their values in their own words.

Examine the competition

Your competitors are likely targeting the same audiences as you. Analyze how they promote their product or service, and see how their ideal customer responds. What are they providing that you don’t, and what can you give customers that isn’t currently on the market?

Understand the motivations for purchase

Your customers are often telling you in their own words how they feel about your offering and why they have chosen your brand—you just need to listen. Use sophisticated listening tools, such as conversation analytics, to understand things such as customer intent, emotion, effort, and motivation. This will help you build a more solid picture of what your ideal target market looks like, and what challenges your offering solves for them.

Identify groups of customers

Your target markets will be made up of groups of ideal customers. What key characteristics link them together? Build a list of target markets, all defined by distinct features that you can target with your marketing efforts.

Create personas

Developing a persona, or a fictional character that embodies the type of customer you’d like to pinpoint, means you can better reach your target audience. Identify their roles, goals, and pain points and understand how they like to communicate. By helping them reach goals, fulfill role requirements and solving their pain points, you can better hone your marketing efforts.

Judge near-term vs longer-term opportunities

Not all your target markets will be worth targeting in the near term, perhaps because of the time of year, their growth projections and other factors. It’s a good idea to consider which target market is right for immediate targeting, and which segments are better kept for the longer term.

Evaluate product-market fit and positioning

Where will your value proposition have the most impact? Your product market fit will not be the same for every target market you identify, and sometimes you can position your product more effectively for one market than another. Evaluate which target markets will provide the greatest ROI and focus efforts there first.

Understand how to reach your target audience

Your target market will have preferences for how they want to engage with your brand. Learning how they interact with you by examining internal data and analyzing customer behavior will help you to speak to your target market on the platforms they prefer.

Step 2: Create an effective targeting strategy

There is the option of engaging in mass marketing, creating marketing campaigns designed to reach as many people as possible. However, for an effective strategy, you should forgo the entire market and target only the markets and customers you believe will be responsive.

Consider which marketing strategy will be most effective

Mass marketing is a one-size-fits-all approach that won’t have the same impact as targeting a specific audience. Here are some alternatives:

Differentiated marketing: This marketing strategy develops different marketing campaigns for each target market’s preferences. This helps to demonstrate your value proposition for each target audience, rather than marketing generally about your products and services. This may require more initial budget, as various marketing campaigns will be needed, but is more likely to have a greater impact on each individual target market.

Niche marketing: Through your market research, you may have identified a particular market where a small target audience has needs that are not being met by the offerings of your competitors. Creating a highly targeted marketing campaign for this specific audience can be lucrative if the gap in the market is not being served and if the potential purchases by this audience will be high in value.

Micromarketing: Even more targeted than niche marketing is micro marketing. Taking a small segment of your already-small niche market, you divide the audience into further characteristics that unite them, such as geographic location. Again, focusing on this hyper-specific target market can pay dividends if their potential spend outweighs the cost of serving them such a specific marketing campaign.

Create an omnichannel strategy with customer preferences in mind

Your market research should have uncovered how your target audience prefers to communicate. Frequently, the purpose of the engagement—to buy a product, resolve a query, find an answer—dictates how customers want to be reached. As a result, it’s best to create an omnichannel marketing strategy that can guide audiences on a personalized customer journey.

Step 4. Implement and learn

Once you’ve established your target market and understand how to reach them, it’s time to test your marketing campaigns and targeted advertising, and then learn from the response. Evaluations to consider include:

• What drives customers to purchase, and what has less of an effect on buying behaviors?
• Which target markets are the most lucrative, and why?
• What new market segments could be targeted with similar strategies?
• How measurable are the results of your strategies?
• How accessible are your strategies to all of your target customers?

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How to Write a Market Analysis for a Business Plan

Many or all of the products featured here are from our partners who compensate us. This influences which products we write about and where and how the product appears on a page. However, this does not influence our evaluations. Our opinions are our own. Here is a list of our partners and here's how we make money .

A lot of preparation goes into starting a business before you can open your doors to the public or launch your online store. One of your first steps should be to write a business plan . A business plan will serve as your roadmap when building your business.

Within your business plan, there’s an important section you should pay careful attention to: your market analysis. Your market analysis helps you understand your target market and how you can thrive within it.

Simply put, your market analysis shows that you’ve done your research. It also contributes to your marketing strategy by defining your target customer and researching their buying habits. Overall, a market analysis will yield invaluable data if you have limited knowledge about your market, the market has fierce competition, and if you require a business loan. In this guide, we'll explore how to conduct your own market analysis.

How to conduct a market analysis: A step-by-step guide

In your market analysis, you can expect to cover the following:

Industry outlook

Target market

Market value

Competition

Barriers to entry

Let’s dive into an in-depth look into each section:

Step 1: Define your objective

Before you begin your market analysis, it’s important to define your objective for writing a market analysis. Are you writing it for internal purposes or for external purposes?

If you were doing a market analysis for internal purposes, you might be brainstorming new products to launch or adjusting your marketing tactics. An example of an external purpose might be that you need a market analysis to get approved for a business loan .

The comprehensiveness of your market analysis will depend on your objective. If you’re preparing for a new product launch, you might focus more heavily on researching the competition. A market analysis for a loan approval would require heavy data and research into market size and growth, share potential, and pricing.

Step 2: Provide an industry outlook

An industry outlook is a general direction of where your industry is heading. Lenders want to know whether you’re targeting a growing industry or declining industry. For example, if you’re looking to sell VCRs in 2020, it’s unlikely that your business will succeed.

Starting your market analysis with an industry outlook offers a preliminary view of the market and what to expect in your market analysis. When writing this section, you'll want to include:

Market size

Are you chasing big markets or are you targeting very niche markets? If you’re targeting a niche market, are there enough customers to support your business and buy your product?

Product life cycle

If you develop a product, what will its life cycle look like? Lenders want an overview of how your product will come into fruition after it’s developed and launched. In this section, you can discuss your product’s:

Research and development

Projected growth

How do you see your company performing over time? Calculating your year-over-year growth will help you and lenders see how your business has grown thus far. Calculating your projected growth shows how your business will fare in future projected market conditions.

Step 3: Determine your target market

This section of your market analysis is dedicated to your potential customer. Who is your ideal target customer? How can you cater your product to serve them specifically?

Don’t make the mistake of wanting to sell your product to everybody. Your target customer should be specific. For example, if you’re selling mittens, you wouldn’t want to market to warmer climates like Hawaii. You should target customers who live in colder regions. The more nuanced your target market is, the more information you’ll have to inform your business and marketing strategy.

With that in mind, your target market section should include the following points:

Demographics

This is where you leave nothing to mystery about your ideal customer. You want to know every aspect of your customer so you can best serve them. Dedicate time to researching the following demographics:

Income level

Create a customer persona

Creating a customer persona can help you better understand your customer. It can be easier to market to a person than data on paper. You can give this persona a name, background, and job. Mold this persona into your target customer.

What are your customer’s pain points? How do these pain points influence how they buy products? What matters most to them? Why do they choose one brand over another?

Research and supporting material

Information without data are just claims. To add credibility to your market analysis, you need to include data. Some methods for collecting data include:

Target group surveys

Focus groups

Reading reviews

Feedback surveys

You can also consult resources online. For example, the U.S. Census Bureau can help you find demographics in calculating your market share. The U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Small Business Administration also offer general data that can help you research your target industry.

Step 4: Calculate market value

You can use either top-down analysis or bottom-up analysis to calculate an estimate of your market value.

A top-down analysis tends to be the easier option of the two. It requires for you to calculate the entire market and then estimate how much of a share you expect your business to get. For example, let’s assume your target market consists of 100,000 people. If you’re optimistic and manage to get 1% of that market, you can expect to make 1,000 sales.

A bottom-up analysis is more data-driven and requires more research. You calculate the individual factors of your business and then estimate how high you can scale them to arrive at a projected market share. Some factors to consider when doing a bottom-up analysis include:

Where products are sold

Who your competition is

The price per unit

How many consumers you expect to reach

The average amount a customer would buy over time

While a bottom-up analysis requires more data than a top-down analysis, you can usually arrive at a more accurate calculation.

Step 5: Get to know your competition

Before you start a business, you need to research the level of competition within your market. Are there certain companies getting the lion’s share of the market? How can you position yourself to stand out from the competition?

There are two types of competitors that you should be aware of: direct competitors and indirect competitors.

Direct competitors are other businesses who sell the same product as you. If you and the company across town both sell apples, you are direct competitors.

An indirect competitor sells a different but similar product to yours. If that company across town sells oranges instead, they are an indirect competitor. Apples and oranges are different but they still target a similar market: people who eat fruits.

Also, here are some questions you want to answer when writing this section of your market analysis:

What are your competitor’s strengths?

What are your competitor’s weaknesses?

How can you cover your competitor’s weaknesses in your own business?

How can you solve the same problems better or differently than your competitors?

How can you leverage technology to better serve your customers?

How big of a threat are your competitors if you open your business?

Step 6: Identify your barriers

Writing a market analysis can help you identify some glaring barriers to starting your business. Researching these barriers will help you avoid any costly legal or business mistakes down the line. Some entry barriers to address in your marketing analysis include:

Technology: How rapid is technology advancing and can it render your product obsolete within the next five years?

Branding: You need to establish your brand identity to stand out in a saturated market.

Cost of entry: Startup costs, like renting a space and hiring employees, are expensive. Also, specialty equipment often comes with hefty price tags. (Consider researching equipment financing to help finance these purchases.)

Location: You need to secure a prime location if you’re opening a physical store.

Competition: A market with fierce competition can be a steep uphill battle (like attempting to go toe-to-toe with Apple or Amazon).

Step 7: Know the regulations

When starting a business, it’s your responsibility to research governmental and state business regulations within your market. Some regulations to keep in mind include (but aren’t limited to):

Employment and labor laws

Advertising

Environmental regulations

If you’re a newer entrepreneur and this is your first business, this part can be daunting so you might want to consult with a business attorney. A legal professional will help you identify the legal requirements specific to your business. You can also check online legal help sites like LegalZoom or Rocket Lawyer.

Tips when writing your market analysis

We wouldn’t be surprised if you feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information needed in a market analysis. Keep in mind, though, this research is key to launching a successful business. You don’t want to cut corners, but here are a few tips to help you out when writing your market analysis:

Use visual aids

Nobody likes 30 pages of nothing but text. Using visual aids can break up those text blocks, making your market analysis more visually appealing. When discussing statistics and metrics, charts and graphs will help you better communicate your data.

Include a summary

If you’ve ever read an article from an academic journal, you’ll notice that writers include an abstract that offers the reader a preview.

Use this same tactic when writing your market analysis. It will prime the reader of your market highlights before they dive into the hard data.

Get to the point

It’s better to keep your market analysis concise than to stuff it with fluff and repetition. You’ll want to present your data, analyze it, and then tie it back into how your business can thrive within your target market.

Revisit your market analysis regularly

Markets are always changing and it's important that your business changes with your target market. Revisiting your market analysis ensures that your business operations align with changing market conditions. The best businesses are the ones that can adapt.

Why should you write a market analysis?

Your market analysis helps you look at factors within your market to determine if it’s a good fit for your business model. A market analysis will help you:

1. Learn how to analyze the market need

Markets are always shifting and it’s a good idea to identify current and projected market conditions. These trends will help you understand the size of your market and whether there are paying customers waiting for you. Doing a market analysis helps you confirm that your target market is a lucrative market.

2. Learn about your customers

The best way to serve your customer is to understand them. A market analysis will examine your customer’s buying habits, pain points, and desires. This information will aid you in developing a business that addresses those points.

3. Get approved for a business loan

Starting a business, especially if it’s your first one, requires startup funding. A good first step is to apply for a business loan with your bank or other financial institution.

A thorough market analysis shows that you’re professional, prepared, and worth the investment from lenders. This preparation inspires confidence within the lender that you can build a business and repay the loan.

4. Beat the competition

Your research will offer valuable insight and certain advantages that the competition might not have. For example, thoroughly understanding your customer’s pain points and desires will help you develop a superior product or service than your competitors. If your business is already up and running, an updated market analysis can upgrade your marketing strategy or help you launch a new product.

Final thoughts

There is a saying that the first step to cutting down a tree is to sharpen an axe. In other words, preparation is the key to success. In business, preparation increases the chances that your business will succeed, even in a competitive market.

The market analysis section of your business plan separates the entrepreneurs who have done their homework from those who haven’t. Now that you’ve learned how to write a market analysis, it’s time for you to sharpen your axe and grow a successful business. And keep in mind, if you need help crafting your business plan, you can always turn to business plan software or a free template to help you stay organized.

This article originally appeared on JustBusiness, a subsidiary of NerdWallet.

On a similar note...

How to Write the Customer Analysis Section of Your Business Plan

Written by Dave Lavinsky

What is a Customer Analysis?

The customer analysis section which incorporates the essential steps of writing a business plan step-by-step is a key component of your business plan and assesses the customer segments your company serves. The objective of the customer analysis is to justify your market choice, identify differentiators, and prioritize the segments you are targeting.

Components of a Customer Analysis

A complete customer analysis contains 3 primary sections:

• Identify your target customers
• Convey the needs of these customers
• Show how your products and/or services satisfy these needs

Download our Ultimate Business Plan Template here

Why Conduct a Customer Analysis?

A thorough customer analysis provides the following benefits:

• Supports your market choice and helps you avoid entering too broad a market
• Helps you focus on serving current customers rather than trying to find new ones
• Enables you to determine which segments to prioritize and how much effort to put into each one
• Helps you craft a strategic marketing plan and platform to reach these customer segments

How to Write Your Customer Analysis

The first step of the customer analysis is to define exactly which customers the company is serving. This requires specificity. It is not adequate to say the company is targeting small businesses, for example, because there are several million of these types of customers. Rather, an expert business plan writer must identify precisely the customers it is serving, such as small businesses with 10 to 50 employees based in large metropolitan cities on the West Coast.

When defining your target market, be sure to identify the following:

• The market segment you are choosing to serve (i.e., age range, annual income, etc.)
• The geographic location of these customers (i.e., city, region, state)
• What is the average revenues/income of these customers?

Once the plan has clearly identified and defined the company’s target customers and the customer demographics, it is necessary to determine the size of your target market: How many potential customers fit the given definition and is this customer base growing or decreasing?

Next, the business plan must detail these customers’ needs. Conveying customer needs could take the form of past actions (X% have purchased a similar product in the past), future projections (when interviewed, X% said that they would purchase product/service Y), and/or implications (because X% use a product/service which our product/service enhances/replaces, then X% need our product/service).

Prioritize the needs of your target customer according to how critical they are, and include a description of each in your customer analysis. Be sure to answer questions such as: 

• What pain points do these customers have? How is their current situation lacking? 
• What will your product/service do to help solve these problems?

The business plan customer analysis must also detail the drivers of customer decision-making. Sample questions to answer include:

• Do the customers find price to be more important than the quality of the product or service?
• Are customers looking for the highest level of reliability, or will they have their own support and just seek a basic level of service?
• Why will customers purchase your product and/or service rather than look for cheaper alternatives?

Prioritize the benefits of your products and services according to how much difference they make for customers and include a description of each in your customer analysis. Be sure to answer questions such as:

• What does your product do? How is it unique or better than other similar products?
• What type of customer could benefit the most from this feature/benefit and why?

Be sure to also show an understanding of the actual decision-making process. Examples of questions to be answered here include:

• Will the customer consult others in their organization/family before making a decision?
• Will the customer seek multiple bids?
• Will the product/service require significant operational changes (e.g., will the customer have to invest time to learn new technologies, and will the product/service cause other members within the organization to lose their jobs? etc.)

Finally, identify each segment you are targeting and how much effort you will put into reaching them. Be sure to answer questions such as:

• How many customers are in each segment and how much revenue will they generate?
• What percentage of total industry sales does this represent?
• What market potential did we estimate for each segment and how does that compare with actual sales? Include the number of leads converted and average deal size.

Example Customer Analysis Template for a Candle Making Company

The needs of this customer segment are that they are looking for high-quality candles that are made with all-natural ingredients. The benefits of their product that are most important to them are that the candles are vegan, eco-friendly, and made with essential oils. Drivers of customer purchase decisions include quality, price, and unique offerings. The company’s target market size is 750,000 people which represent a significant portion of the candle industry. They will put effort into reaching these customers through online advertising, social media posts, and word-of-mouth.

It is essential to truly understand customers to develop a successful business and marketing plan. That’s why including a customer analysis in your business plan is so crucial. Likewise, sophisticated investors require comprehensive profiles of a company’s target customers. By spending the time researching and analyzing customers in your target market, you will develop both enhance your business strategy and funding success.

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Other Resources for Writing Your Business Plan

How to Write a Great Business Plan Executive Summary How to Expertly Write the Company Description in Your Business Plan How to Write the Market Analysis Section of a Business Plan Completing the Competitive Analysis Section of Your Business Plan The Management Team Section of Your Business Plan Financial Assumptions and Your Business Plan How to Create Financial Projections for Your Business Plan Best Business Plan Software Everything You Need to Know about the Business Plan Appendix Business Plan Conclusion: Summary & Recap

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Home > Business Plan > Target Market in a Business Plan

Target Market in a Business Plan

… we are targeting this part of the market …

What is the Target Market?

Target Market Segments

Your product will not be of equal interest to all potential customers, as they do not all have the same needs and characteristics. This section of the business plan deals with the analysis of the target market into different groups of customers (customer or target market segments) each having distinct characteristics and needs from the product.

The target market segmentation strategy depends on the business and the product, but generally segmentation falls into the following customer characteristics groups.

Psychographic segmentation

Psychographic segmentation splits up a sales market of a business based on such things as the social class, lifestyle choices, personality traits, tastes, attitudes, and the opinions of its customers.

Psychographic market segmentation examples include the promotion of products such as cars as these often reflect a customers lifestyle, and leisure activities. For example, a car business might identify customers who are interested in keeping the environment green and promote hybrid cars to them, or a business involved in activity holidays will seek to market to customers who show a preference for an active lifestyle.

Demographic segmentation

• Social class
• Size of family
• Nationality

Geographic Segmentation

Geographic segmentation is the process of splitting up a sales market of a business based on the geographical location of the customers. It is a particularly important marketing tool when the business is a multinational, worldwide business, but is also used by businesses to split their markets into region, county, state, city, neighborhood, or postal code.

A geographic segmentation example would be seasonal clothing items such as coats and swimwear. In contrast, in a colder climate coats would be marketed and sold all year round whereas swimwear would be highly seasonal during the holiday period. In a hot climate swimwear would be the all year round product and winter coats might not be sold at all.

Behavioral segmentation

Behavioral segmentation is the process of splitting up the sales market based on brand loyalty, usage, benefits required.

Target Market Presentation in the Business Plan

The business plan target market section can be presented in a number of formats, but a listing of the major customer segments together with a pie chart will show the investor where the main potential for the product lies. In the example below, the market is split into four main segments both in terms of number of customers and percentage of the total target market.

The average customer spend is also included, to reconcile the total target market back to the served available market (SAM) in monetary terms. Finally, a brief statement about the growth prospects for the market is included to show the investor the potential for growth in your chosen customer segments.

When identifying the target-market segments, it is important to be as specific as possible about the customer characteristics which make up each segment. In choosing which segments to concentrate on, take into account the size and potential for growth of each segment, and identify clearly what benefits, both emotional and financial, the product provides for the customer.

This is part of the financial projections and Contents of a Business Plan Guide , a series of posts on what each section of a simple business plan should include. The next post in this series is about the analysis of the competition for the target-market.

About the Author

Chartered accountant Michael Brown is the founder and CEO of Plan Projections. He has worked as an accountant and consultant for more than 25 years and has built financial models for all types of industries. He has been the CFO or controller of both small and medium sized companies and has run small businesses of his own. He has been a manager and an auditor with Deloitte, a big 4 accountancy firm, and holds a degree from Loughborough University.

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A step-by-step guide to creating your target customer profile

Director of Product Marketing at 7shifts

Table of Contents

At some point, you’ll likely struggle with not understanding who your core target customer(s) are.

One powerful strategy that’ll help you on this journey is actually something you might be doing already: customer segmentation. This process involves dividing your customer base into distinct groups based on specific criteria, thus facilitating a clearer definition of your target customer profile.

However, creating target segments requires a thoughtful and systematic approach. 

In the comprehensive guide, I’ll take you through a step-by-step process to create effective target customer segments for your business. From gathering data and defining segments to leveraging insights, you’ll walk away with the knowledge and tools necessary to establish a deeper connection with your target customer profiles, ultimately driving meaningful results.

It's crucial to note that the successful implementation of this strategy hinges on having a product-market fit backed by sufficient data. 

Now, having covered the essential practice of customer segmentation for a comprehensive audience understanding, let's begin by exploring the key differences between a target consumer profile, an ideal customer profile, and a buyer persona. Understanding the nuances between these terms is vital for crafting effective go-to-market (GTM) strategies that cater to specific customer needs and preferences.

Target Customer Profile vs. Ideal Customer Profile vs. Buyer Persona

Target and ideal customer profiles are often used interchangeably but have distinct meanings. While a target consumer profile focuses on identifying several potential customers, an ideal customer profile represents one you're targeting. 

Buyer persona complements both types of customer profiles.  

Having clarified these terms, let's explore how each contributes to a robust GTM strategy.

Target Consumer Profile

Target customer profiling provides a foundational understanding of the audience your SaaS business aims to reach.

It's a broad classification that outlines various segments within the overall market. This profile focuses on identifying different types of potential customers based on demographics, geographic location, industry, company size, and other general factors. 

Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

In contrast, an ideal customer profile represents a more refined and specific subset within the target consumer profile. It goes beyond basic demographics to include criteria that make a customer an ideal fit for a company's offerings.

When developing an ICP, businesses use insights from their target consumer profile to identify a customer's most valuable and desirable characteristics. This helps concentrate efforts on customers who are not only part of the broader target but are also the most likely to derive significant value from the products or services.

Buyer Persona

A buyer persona complements both the target and ideal customer profiles. It is a detailed and semi-fictional representation of an individual within the broader audience.

This specific contact is the focus when prospecting, and the buyer persona helps understand customers better.

SaaS businesses can tailor their content, messaging, and product development to meet specific needs and interests by delving into the persona's demographics, behaviors, and concerns.

Buyer personas contribute depth and specificity to the target consumer profile, aiding in the creation of an ideal customer profile by identifying the attributes that make a customer an ideal fit.

The impact of defining your target customer

Defining a target customer provides a crystal-clear understanding of who your SaaS product is trying to serve. This, in turn, empowers your company to strategically tailor your marketing, product development, and customer service efforts. Doing so, ultimately, leads to stronger acquisition, retention, and monetization .

The impact of defining your target customer profile manifests in several key benefits, including: 

Improved marketing messaging

Craft a compelling value proposition that resonates with your core target customer. By understanding their needs and preferences, you can tailor your marketing messages to directly address their customer pain points, fostering a stronger connection and engagement.

A more focused product roadmap

Utilize target customer profiles to inform and prioritize your product development roadmap . By honing in on your core customer's specific pain points and requirements, you can ensure that your product enhancements are aligned with their expectations, resulting in a more focused and impactful customer experience.

Pricing undefined packaging

Develop a well-defined pricing strategy by building product tiers that bundle the most relevant features for your target customer. This approach ensures that your pricing and packaging align with the perceived value of your core audience, maximizing monetization opportunities while providing tailored solutions.

Understanding the impact of defining your target customer, let's now explore the practical methods to achieve this through customer segmentation and buyer personas.

Two methods that help define your target customer

The two methods that help define your target customers are:

• Customer segmentation
• Buyer personas

Let’s dive deeper into these concepts and how to choose when to use them.

1. Customer segmentation 

Through quantitative data analysis, customer segmentation divides the company's customer base into distinct groups or segments based on shared characteristics such as demographics, behavior, or purchasing habits.

The segmentation is like dividing your party guests into general categories, such as children, teenagers, adults, and seniors. Doing so helps you understand each group's different needs and preferences, allowing you to plan activities, select music, and arrange the party layout accordingly.

2. Buyer personas

Buyer personas are fictional, generalized representations of the company's ideal customer. 

They are based on qualitative insights from market/ customer research and are used to create a detailed profile of your target customer.

A buyer persona represents a fictional yet highly detailed profile.

Example of buyer personas

For instance, within the adult segment, you might have the following:

• A buyer persona named "Adventurous Annie" loves outdoor activities, values sustainability, and enjoys trying new foods. 
• Another persona, "Busy Bob," might be a professional seeking convenience and time-saving solutions.

The 5-step framework to create target customer segments

Let's break down this 5-step framework that will guide you from defining segmentation criteria to sharing impactful target customer profiles across your SaaS organization.

Step 1: Define segmentation criteria

Choosing the right profiling segmentation criteria is a bit of art and science based on the stage of your business. The goal should be finding a way to segment the base that creates differentiation between each customer profile.

The first step is to determine the criteria to segment your customers. It could include demographics, psychographic traits, or behavioral characteristics.

The goal is to define a set of criteria to segment your user base.

Depending on the size of the company, there are two methods you can use:

• First Principles: Use a set of criteria to segment your base (e.g., business industry, annual revenue, # of employees).
• Correlation analysis : see what characteristics have a strong connection.

SaaS example

Say you’re a B2B SaaS company that targets SMBs. Based on past analysis and customer research, you have decided the best way to segment your customer base is by the business industry.

So, you define grouping customer segments by the following:

• Field service businesses (e.g., landscaping, trades, etc.)
• Knowledge-based businesses (e.g., consultants, marketing agencies)
• Retail service businesses (e.g., hair undefined nail salons)
• E-commerce businesses (e.g., Shopify store)
• Retail product businesses (e.g. bakeries, restaurants)

This will then inform your data analysis by grouping your customers into these five categories.

With the criteria established, let's move on to the next step — conducting a segmentation analysis to derive meaningful insights from your customer base.

Step 2: Conduct segmentation analysis

This next step is conducting your analysis by segmenting your customer base into distinct groups based on how you defined your segmentation criteria (see step #1).

Doing so ensures you get the data you need by each segment and analyze for clear themes.

Data spreadsheet organization

To get started, you want to dump data into spreadsheets, each tab being a specific customer profile. Each tab should list specific behavioral data points and define how large the customer segment is within your user base.

The spreadsheet should include the following:

• Clearly defined customer segments
• The size of each segment within your customer base
• Specific behavior data points for each customer segment

Let’s continue with our example.

SaaS example 

Picture you are a B2B invoicing SaaS company. Your customer profiles are based on business industries, and now you want to overlay your in-product data for each segment.

This would include data points such as:

• Number of invoices sent
• Number of customers they have
• The size of the invoice amount
• Number of methods they get paid by
• Monthly revenue from invoices

Step 3: Overlay demographic data across customer segments

The next step in this segmentation process is to overlay the demographic data you collect on each user. 

Adding in demographic data makes these customer profiles more actionable for employees in the company to use because you can start to put a face to a name.

Collecting data in SaaS onboarding 

Much of the data collected by SaaS companies at onboarding is demographic-related and starts to put a face to your customer segments. This data might include their industry, annual revenue, number of employees, how many years they have been in business, etc.

To illustrate, consider Shopify’s use of a multi-step signup process. 

On the initial page, users are prompted to provide three essential pieces of information about their e-commerce business.

Upon completion of these initial fields, the next page appears with ten additional questions related to the business - that offer great customer profile data.

The strategic aim is to integrate this collected data into each previously defined customer segment. By doing so, each segment's impact is heightened by including behavioral and demographic insights.

The subsequent step involved adding demographic data (e.g., annual revenue, number of employees, business age, etc.) into the five customer segments we created.

Step 4: Build your target customer profiles

Now that you have finished your data exercise, the next step is to build out these customer profiles into an artifact.

The goal is to build an artifact so that anyone at your company can easily understand who your customer segments are.

Create a PDF or slide deck

The best way to do this is to create a PDF or slide deck that showcases each customer segment.

These customer segments should include the following:

• Name of each customer segment
• Photo of them
• Description of who they are
• Key demographic data points
• Key behavior data points

Make your artifact 

Our next step is to create our five customer segments with a designer's help to create a visually appealing artifact that people can easily understand.

I have included a template you can use here .

Step 5: Share your target customer profiles

Our final step is to share the artifact across the company to get people to understand how to use it.

Getting teams to understand how to use this artifact is critical to driving internal adoption. The best way to do this is the following:

• Present these customer segments at an all hands.
• Include this artifact as part of new hiring/onboarding training.

Getting all teams to understand how to apply the insights from the customer segmentation artifact is essential.

The two ways to apply the customer segmentation artifact include: 

• Marketing teams can use this to help target better, brainstorm new channels to acquire, and improve their positioning/messaging on their website.
• Product teams can use this to help prioritize the most critical product features for each of their segments.

Regularly revisit and refine your target customer profiles

Your customer segments are constantly changing as the SaaS company scales, but completing this initiative will help the entire org make better decisions to drive more revenue for any PLG company. 

You should be revisiting your customer segments every six to 12 months.

Creating target customer segments is a strategic process that can significantly enhance your marketing efforts and customer engagement.

With a well-defined and data-driven approach to customer segmentation, you'll be better equipped to deliver personalized experiences, drive customer loyalty, and ultimately achieve your business goals. 

Start implementing my five-step framework today, and unlock the power of target customer profiles to elevate your business strategy. Then, continue on your journey of building your product-led business, be sure to check out the ProductLed GTM System™️ . This free framework shows you step-by-step how to drive predictable, profitable growth for 7-figure product-led businesses – without the chaos and overwhelm that most founders deal with.

Learn the nine components of the ProductLed System now!  

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Crafting the Customer Analysis in Business Plan: A Comprehensive Guide

In today’s competitive business environment, understanding your customers is the key to success. Customer analysis in business plans plays a crucial role in driving business growth and providing a competitive edge.

Imagine unlocking the hidden potential within your customer base, tailoring marketing strategies, and developing products that resonate with their needs and preferences. This comprehensive guide will explore the ins and outs of customer analysis in a business plan and how to leverage it for maximum impact on your business.

Short Summary

• Customer analysis is an essential part of any business plan, allowing businesses to understand their target customers and create tailored products/services.
• It involves identifying a market, assessing demographics & analyzing customer behavior in order to inform marketing strategies.
• Utilizing insights from customer analysis can help optimize marketing campaigns & product offerings for maximum return on investment.

The Essence of Customer Analysis

Customer analysis is an essential element of any business plan, emphasizing the comprehension of target customers, their requirements, and how your product or service fulfills those requirements. By performing customer analysis, businesses can better tailor their products and services to their target audience , ultimately leading to increased sales and a thriving business.

Understanding the needs of your target customers is key to success. Knowing who your customers are

Purpose of Customer Analysis

The primary objective of customer analysis is to recognize potential customers, prioritize customer segments, and provide guidance for marketing and product development strategies. Understanding your customers’ wants, needs, pain points, and objectives is crucial to creating targeted marketing campaigns and product offerings that resonate with them.

By closely monitoring customer feedback and support requests (Voice of Customer analysis), businesses can gain insight into customer pain points and preferences and even discover unexpected uses for their products.

Key Components of Customer Analysis

The essential elements of customer analysis encompass target market identification, demographic analysis, and behavioral analysis. Demographic analysis provides insights into factors such as age, income, and location, which can be used to create targeted marketing strategies.

Behavioral analysis, on the other hand, entails comprehending the customer’s decision-making process for the purchase, including the steps taken, information sources consulted, and who has the authority to make the final decision. By understanding these components, businesses can better cater to their customer’s needs and preferences, ultimately leading to success.

Conducting an Effective Customer Analysis

An effective customer analysis involves a thorough research process that focuses on customer pain points, goals, and insights on what influences their buying decisions. This process begins with identifying your target market, which is crucial in ensuring a successful business.

By analyzing customer demographics and examining customer behavior and purchasing patterns, businesses can tailor their marketing strategies and product offerings to address the specific needs and preferences of their target customers.

Identifying Your Target Market

Identifying your target market is the first step in conducting a comprehensive customer analysis. By precisely defining the target customer your company is serving, you can focus your marketing efforts and resources on the most profitable customer segments.

Small businesses with 10 to 50 employees located in large metropolitan cities on the West Coast can benefit from having a business plan. This plan should provide clear guidance and instructions for the successful execution of tasks, including target market analysis.

With a clear understanding of your target market, you’ll be better equipped to develop a targeted marketing strategy that resonates with your audience and drives sales.

Analyzing Customer Demographics

Analyzing customer demographics is crucial for tailoring marketing strategies to specific customer groups. By examining your current customer base, you can determine which demographics to focus on for future marketing efforts. Demographic information, such as:

• education levels

A comprehensive view of the messaging that is most likely to appeal to customers and the marketing channels that are most effective in reaching them can be achieved when customers seek multiple bids, as it provides valuable insights into their preferences and decision-making process.

By constructing a marketing strategy around the types of people who have already made a purchase, you can maximize the return on investment of your marketing budget.

Examining Customer Behavior and Purchasing Patterns

Analyzing customer behavior and purchasing patterns can yield valuable insights through customer behavior analysis. By monitoring customer interactions with your products and services, such as website visits, purchases, and customer reviews, you can identify customer needs and preferences and devise strategies to enhance customer retention and loyalty.

Additionally, understanding the drivers of customer decision-making is crucial for creating targeted marketing campaigns and product offerings that resonate with your target audience.

Utilizing Customer Analysis Results

Customer analysis results can be leveraged to enhance marketing strategies, drive product development and innovation, and strengthen customer retention and loyalty. By recognizing customer feedback and customer support requests, businesses can acquire advantageous insights into customer behavior and preferences, which can be utilized to provide direction to marketing and product development strategies.

In this section, we will explore how customer analysis results can be utilized to improve various aspects of your business.

Enhancing Marketing Strategies

Customer analysis results, including customer segmentation analysis, can inform targeted marketing strategies that lead to increased sales and revenue. By leveraging insights from customer demographics and behavior, businesses can create personalized marketing campaigns that resonate with their target audience. For example, a company catering to young professionals may focus its marketing efforts on social media platforms, while a company targeting older adults may prioritize direct mail or email campaigns.

By tailoring marketing strategies based on customer analysis, businesses can optimize their marketing efforts and achieve greater success.

Driving Product Development and Innovation

Insights from customer analysis can guide product development and innovation, ensuring that products and services meet customer needs and preferences. By understanding customer pain points and objectives, businesses can create new products and services that address these needs, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Additionally, existing customer feedback can be utilized to refine existing products and services, making them more appealing to the target audience and driving business growth .

Strengthening Customer Retention and Loyalty

Understanding customer needs and preferences through customer analysis can help businesses improve customer retention and loyalty. By tailoring products and services to the specific needs and preferences of your target audience, you can enhance customer satisfaction and encourage repeat business.

Furthermore, by identifying gaps in the customer experience and optimizing touchpoints, businesses can improve the overall customer journey and nurture long-lasting relationships with their customers.

Tools and Techniques for Customer Analysis

To effectively conduct customer analysis, businesses can employ various tools and techniques, including data collection and analysis, creating buyer personas, and customer journey mapping. These methods enable businesses to gain a deeper understanding of their customers and make informed decisions regarding their products, services, and promotional activities.

In this section, we will explore the different tools and techniques that can be used in customer analysis.

Data Collection and Analysis

Data collection and analysis play a critical role in customer analysis, as they involve gathering information on customer interactions, demographics, and purchasing patterns. Businesses can utilize various methods for data collection, such as surveys, focus groups, and interviews, as well as analytics tools to track customer behavior online.

By analyzing this data through market research, businesses can identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement, ultimately informing their marketing strategies and product development efforts.

Creating Buyer Personas

Creating buyer personas is an essential technique in customer analysis, as it helps businesses visualize their ideal customers and tailor marketing and product development strategies accordingly.

Buyer personas are fictional representations of major customer segments, taking into account factors such as:

• demographics
• professional status
• purchasing habits

By developing accurate and detailed buyer personas, businesses can ensure that their marketing campaigns and product offerings resonate with their target audience, leading to increased sales and customer loyalty.

Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping is an invaluable tool in customer analysis, as it enables businesses to identify gaps in the customer experience and optimize touchpoints to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. A customer journey map is a visual representation of the stages a customer goes through when interacting with a business, from initial awareness to loyalty.

By understanding the customer journey and identifying areas for improvement, businesses can enhance the overall customer experience and nurture long-lasting relationships with their customers.

Case Study: Successful Customer Analysis in Action

A prime example of successful customer analysis in action is the Buxton case study. Buxton, a leading provider of customer analytics and consulting services, utilized customer analysis techniques to help businesses expand, grow, and market themselves more efficiently. Through a combination of data collection, buyer persona creation, and customer journey mapping, Buxton was able to gain a deep understanding of their client’s customers and develop targeted marketing campaigns that resonated with their audience.

As a result, their current customers experienced increased sales, customer loyalty, and overall business growth and success.

In conclusion, customer analysis is a powerful tool that can drive business growth and success by helping companies understand their target customers, tailor their marketing strategies, and develop products and services that meet customer needs and preferences.

By utilizing tools and techniques such as data collection and analysis, buyer persona creation, and customer journey mapping, businesses can gain valuable insights into their customers and make informed decisions that lead to increased sales, customer loyalty, and overall business success. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to unlock your business’s full potential – start conducting customer analysis today and reap the rewards.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a customer analysis in a business plan.

A customer analysis is an essential part of a business plan, which identifies target customers and outlines how a product or service meets their needs.

It helps businesses understand their customers better, so they can create marketing strategies that are tailored to their target audience. It also helps them identify potential opportunities and threats in the market.

By understanding their customers, businesses can better serve their customers.

What is an example of customer analysis?

Customer analysis involves understanding consumers’ behaviors through observation and measurement of analytics, analyzing brand recognition and awareness, understanding how customers feel about the competition, and testing different customer acquisition approaches.

This process helps businesses better understand their target audience and develop strategies to reach them. It also helps to identify potential opportunities for growth and improvement. By understanding customer behavior, businesses can create more effective marketing campaigns and better serve their customers.

What should be included in a customer analysis?

A customer analysis should include details on the customer’s demographics, professional status, purchasing habits, values and goals, influences, and challenges. It should also assess their buying patterns, product usage history, spending habits, loyalty metrics, and more to gain an understanding of their wants, needs, pain points, and objectives.

What is the primary objective of customer analysis?

The primary objective of customer analysis is to recognize potential customers, prioritize customer segments, and inform marketing and product development strategies.

By understanding customer needs and preferences, businesses can create targeted marketing campaigns and product offerings that are tailored to the needs of their target audience. This helps to ensure that the company is reaching the right people.

How can customer analysis help improve marketing strategies?

Customer analysis provides valuable insights into customer’s needs and preferences, enabling businesses to create tailored marketing strategies that drive sales. It is an essential tool for effective marketing.

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How to Write a Customer Analysis Section for Your Business Plan

Free Customer Analysis Template

Ayush Jalan

• February 12, 2024

A successful business idea equips customers with the tools necessary to help them reach their goals and fulfill their needs—professional or personal. To create such products and services that meet (and exceed) your customers’ expectations, you need to study their personas via customer analysis.

Customer analysis is a vital part of your business plan that helps you identify, define, and understand your customer base. Analyzing your customers is also crucial for creating a successful marketing plan, as it helps you communicate better with your customers.

In this article, you will learn how to conduct a customer analysis section for your business plan paired with a customer analysis example to help you create customer personas to study their personality traits, goals, challenges they face, and more.

What Is Customer Analysis?

Customer analysis is a comprehensive understanding of your customer base. It helps identify and describe your ideal customer. Through this in-depth analysis, you determine their needs, challenges, goals, and other important considerations. Given this info, it then helps you understand how effectively your products cater to them.

It further helps you optimize your strategic marketing process to create targeted advertisements, customize and prioritize specific features during product development, and make adjustments in your current business plan to align with your customer’s ever-changing demands.

How to Write a Customer Analysis Section

Writing a customer analysis includes extensive research and collecting data from various sources. This data consists of qualitative and quantitative aspects which help you write an accurate customer analysis for your business plan.

Writing a customer analysis has four main steps:

Step 1: Identify your customers

The primary step is to identify your potential customers and define their specific characteristics about them. The attained factual information is segmented into the following categories:

• Demographic: Age, gender, income
• Geographic: Location, type of area (Rural, suburban, urban)
• Psychographic: Values, interests, beliefs, personality, lifestyle, social class
• Technographic: Type of technology the buyer is using; tech-savviness
• Behavioral: Habits, frequent actions, buying patterns
• Industry (For B2B): Based on the industry a company belongs to.
• Business size (For B2B): Size of the company

To obtain the above data, a great place to start for established businesses is your customer database. If you aim to expand this information, you can use your existing communication channels to gather further details through surveys.

If you are a startup, conducting an audience analysis  might seem impossible as you don’t have an existing customer base. Fortunately, there are numerous ways through which you can study your potential customers. A few of them are:

• Identifying who would benefit from your product/service
• Analyzing your competitors to understand their target customers
• Using social media to prompt potential buyers to answer questionnaires

Want to create a Customer Persona in Easy Steps?

Generate valuable customer insights in minutes with Free Customer Persona Generator .

Step 2: Define the needs of your Customers

Now that you have identified your customers, the next step is to understand and specify their needs and challenges. This is the step where you need to go hands-on with your research. Getting to know your customers’ needs helps you determine whether or not your product or service hits the mark.

To understand the needs of your customers, you can adopt the following approaches:

1. Engage directly with potential Customers

A very reliable way to get to know your customers is to simply ask them, either in person or on a call. You can reach out to your customers, conduct one-on-one interviews, create focus groups, and invite buyers to test your new products. You can collect an ample amount of data through these techniques.

However, we recommend prioritizing accuracy over the quantity of data.

A technique that can help you get a deeper insight into your customer’s needs and opinions is the five whys technique . While practicing so, be mindful of the way you conduct the interview. It is essential to keep the customers in a comfortable and conversational environment to attain accurate answers.

2. Collect data from your Customer support

Customer support is the place where you can find feedback and criticism given by your customers. Analyzing this data helps you understand the pain points of your customers. You can further elaborate on this data by interacting with the customers who had issues with your products.

3. Run surveys and mention statistics

Talking to your customers helps you get qualitative information that you can use to alter your product or services according to your customers. The next part is to attain quantitative information, in other words, presenting numbers to support the previous data.

Conducting surveys is one of the commonly used methods for quantifying information. You can conduct in-app surveys, post-purchase surveys, or link surveys in email and apps, etc.

The second method is by collecting statistical data to support your conclusions from the interviews. These include stating studies related to customer choices, results from popular surveys, etc.

Step 3: Create a Customer Persona

Now, it’s time you present the information using a customer persona. A customer persona is a representation of a segment of customers with similar traits. Creating customer personas helps you process the data more efficiently.

You can use customer persona templates that are available online. To help get you started, we have created a customer persona example.

Customer Persona Example

Customer profile example of an internet service provider:

• About: A lot of customers remain at home and have a minimal and easy-going lifestyle. They need high-speed, interruption-free internet access.
• Demographics: Age is between 30 and 40, has a laid-back lifestyle, lives in suburban areas, and the income range is between $10,000 to $40,000.
• Professional role: Shop owners, employees, freelancers, etc.
• Identifiers/Personality traits: Introverts, like routines, makes schedules prefer online shopping, and stick with the companies they trust.
• Goals: Wants easily available service, and 24×7 customer support, prefers self-service technologies and chatbots over interacting with representatives.
• Challenges: Fluctuating internet connection while working or consuming media. Not enough signal coverage.

Step 4: Explain the product alignment to the Customer’s Needs

You’ve gathered info and created customer personas. The final step is to explain how your product or service caters to the needs of your customers. Here, you specify the solution you offer to your customers to tackle the challenges they face.

Mention the USPs of your product and its features, and they benefit the customer. Here, you also mention how your offerings make your customers’ lives better.

Create Better Solutions with Customer Analysis

Understanding your customers inside out helps you assist them better in solving their problems while also achieving success. Analyze your customers as often as required to stay updated about their ever-changing needs.

This helps you create better offerings to consistently fulfill their expectations. As a result, this builds up loyalty over time with each success.

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About the Author

Ayush is a writer with an academic background in business and marketing. Being a tech-enthusiast, he likes to keep a sharp eye on the latest tech gadgets and innovations. When he's not working, you can find him writing poetry, gaming, playing the ukulele, catching up with friends, and indulging in creative philosophies.

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Antonio Del Cueto, CPA

April 5, 2024

Did you know that 42% of small businesses fail within the first four years ? The dream of starting your own venture can quickly turn sour without a roadmap for success. That's where a business plan comes in. This article introduces a comprehensive business plan template designed to dramatically increase your odds of becoming a thriving statistic .

Studies show that businesses with a well-defined plan are twice as likely to survive beyond the five-year mark . This template will guide you through crafting a document that outlines your goals, target market, financial projections, and competitive edge. By dedicating time to planning, you'll gain a clearer understanding of your business concept, identify potential roadblocks , and attract investors who believe in your vision. So, ditch the guesswork and unlock the power of planning.

Are you in the process of starting your own business? Download FREE our business plan template here.

What is a Basic Business Plan Template and Why Do You Need One?

A business plan template is a step-by-step guide that helps you create a plan for your business. It's like a map for your 2024 startup journey. This template shows you what to do first, next, and last. You need one because it helps you think about all the important parts of your business upfront.

Importance of Having a Business Plan Template

A business plan template is crucial. It helps you outline your value proposition, which is what makes your business special. It also makes sure you think about your potential investors. They want to see a clear plan before they give you money. Plus, a template helps you organize your thoughts and ideas in one place.

Key Sections of a Simple Business Plan Template

In a basic template , there are some key elements you can't skip. These include a company description that tells people what you do. You also need a marketing strategy to explain how you'll find customers. Don't forget about competitive analysis, which shows how you stack up against others. Finally, financial forecasts predict your money flow, and supporting documents back up everything you say.

How to Tailor a Business Plan Template for Your 2024 Startup

To customize a business plan for your startup, start with the high-level stuff. Add your unique company description and value proposition. Show how you're different to get a competitive advantage. Update the marketing strategy to fit today's world. Make sure your financial forecasts are fresh and include all costs and expected income. Add any new documents that support your plan.

Remember, a good business plan template guides you but doesn't limit you. Always include what makes your business shine and use the template to help you organize your great ideas.

Essential Components of a Startup Business Plan

Starting a new business? You’ll need a plan that shows what your business is about and how you plan to make it successful. Let's look at what makes up a good business plan.

Writing an Effective Executive Summary

The executive summary is like a quick snapshot of your business plan. It shows the big ideas of your plan in a short way. Even though it's the first thing in your plan, you might write it last. It should say what your business does, what you want to achieve, and why it's going to work. This part is super important because it’s what people read first to get an idea about your business.

Developing a Comprehensive Marketing Plan

Your marketing plan is all about how you’re going to tell people about your business and what you sell. It should talk about who might want to buy your stuff and how you plan to reach them. This part includes your plan of action for getting customers to notice you, like using social media or putting ads online. Knowing your customers and how to reach them helps your business grow.

Creating a Financial Projection for Your Small Business

This section is about the money. It guesses how much money you’ll make and spend. Financial projections help you see if your business can earn more money than it spends. It includes how much money you need upfront to start and keep running your business. This helps you and business partners see how your business might do in the future.

For anyone thinking about starting a business, these parts of a business plan are key. They help you write a business plan quickly and efficiently. With a good plan, you can support your business, get help from others, and have a clear roadmap to run your business.

Further Reading: What You Should Know About Small Business Accounting, Tax, And Bookkeeping Services

Tips for crafting a one-page business plan.

Creating a one-page business plan is like drawing a map that shows the way to success for your specific business. This short plan helps you focus on what's really important. It saves time and lets you get moving faster.

Benefits of Using a Lean Business Model

A lean business model is all about making things simple and focusing on what works. It helps you use resources wisely. Free templates for lean business plans help you organize your ideas without wasting time. It’s essential to be clear and straight to the point, so you don’t get lost in details.

Identifying Your Target Market in a One-Page Business Plan

Knowing who you’re selling to is key. Your one-page plan should clearly say who your customers are. You’ll need to research and use that info to make your marketing and sales work better. This part of your plan makes sure your business talks to the right people.

Streamlining Revenue Streams in a Lean Business Plan

A lean plan means having a clear idea of how you’ll make money. This part of the plan looks at different ways to bring in cash, from selling products to offering services. It’s about picking the best ways that fit your business and focusing on them for the next three to five years. Using a standard template, like one from Microsoft Word or free templates available online, can help you get this part right.

Utilizing Free Business Plan Templates: Pros and Cons

Using a free business plan template is like finding a treasure map that guides you to your business goals. Let’s see how these templates can be both helpful and challenging.

How a Free Business Plan Template Can Help Small Business Owners

A free simple business plan or a one-page business plan template can be a huge help. It gives you a clear outline of what to include, like your business needs, marketing and sales strategies, and financial data. Templates from sources like the Small Business Administration (SBA) or Shopify come with sections already set up for you. This makes it easier to organize your ideas and present them clearly. It’s essential for owners of specific businesses to have a roadmap. This way, you can build your business plan quickly and efficiently, focusing on elements of your plan that support your financial success. Free templates help you get started with little effort and no cost.

Exploring Sample Business Plans to Guide Your Business Planning Efforts

Looking at sample business plans can provide valuable insights. These examples show you different ways to format and write your plan. They cover various industries, giving you a peek at successful strategies and outcomes. By exploring these samples, you can learn tips for creating important sections like income statements , cash on hand, and even plans for intellectual property like patent filings. Whether you use a standard template from Microsoft Word or detailed guides for specific types of businesses, such as a limited liability company, these samples can inspire and guide you. They offer a comprehensive view of what a successful plan includes, from the table of contents to the final financial statements, helping you envision the path for your own business over three to five years.

Further Reading: Effective Balance Sheet Creation for Small Businesses: Simplified Templates and Guidelines

Key takeaways:.

• Summary : A quick explanation of your business idea, like telling a friend about a game plan.
• Market Analysis : Understanding who wants to buy what you're selling, similar to figuring out who loves chocolate ice cream.
• Product/Service : What you're selling or offering, like selling cool stickers or helping with homework.
• Marketing Plan : How you'll tell people about your business, like making posters for your lemonade stand.
• Financial Plan : Planning your money, figuring out how much you need to start, and how you'll earn more, like saving up for a new bike.

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The Ultimate Guide to Product Marketing in 2023

Learn about the power of product marketing, how it can help your bottom line, and impact the success of your products.

THE ULTIMATE PRODUCT MARKETING GO-TO-MARKET KIT

Ensure that your whole team is aligned with four planning and internal enablement templates for your next product launch.

Updated: 02/02/23

Published: 02/02/23

Product marketing is essential, even if you only sell one or two products at your organization.

But what is product marketing ? How do you market a product, and how does that differ from conventional marketing strategies? Let’s find out.

What Is Product Marketing?

Why Is Product Marketing Important?

Product Marketing Duties

Product Marketing Strategy

Product marketing examples, what is product marketing.

Product marketing is the process of bringing a product to market, promoting it, and selling it to a customer. Product marketing involves understanding the product’s target audience and using strategic positioning and messaging to boost revenue and demand for the product.

What makes product marketing unique? How is it different from conventional marketing? Let's unpack the differences.

Product Marketing vs. Conventional Marketing

Product marketing is strategic whereas conventional marketing is all-encompassing.

Product marketing is considered a component of conventional marketing. In fact, if you look at the seven Ps of marketing , you’ll see product marketing is one of the most important aspects of a business’s marketing efforts.

Free Product Go-to-Market Kit

Free templates to ensure that your whole team is aligned for your next product launch.

• Product Launch Template
• Product Roadmap Template
• Sales Plan Template

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Product Marketing Go-to-Market Kit

Fill out this form to access your free kit..

Product marketing is about understanding a specific product’s audience deeply and developing that product’s positioning and messaging to appeal to that audience. It covers the launch and execution side of a product in addition to the marketing strategy for the product — which is why the work of a product marketer lies at the center of a business’s marketing, sales, and product teams.

Conventional marketing is focused on broader topics under the umbrella of marketing, such as lead generation, SEO, and anything related to acquiring and converting new leads and customers . It’s about promoting the company and brand as a whole, including the products sold. These marketers make sure there’s a consistent, on-brand message behind all of the company’s content.

To understand it better, let’s look at product marketing goals.

Product Marketing Goals

Product marketing is focused on driving demand for and adoption of a product among existing customers. It’s focused on the steps people take to purchase your product so product marketers can build campaigns to support this work.

Usually, product marketing is executed with several goals in mind:

1. Understand your customers better.

When you implement a product marketing strategy, your target audience can see the value of having that specific product in their lives. Understanding how many customers gravitate to your product lets you conduct customer research.

2. Target your buyer personas effectively.

Alongside understanding your customers, you can figure out the type of buyer persona to target in the future. Knowing the exact needs of your target can help you when innovating your product to better suit their needs. Creating a value proposition can help with this. 

3. Learn about your competitors (products and marketing tactics).

When you market your product, you can compare your strategy and results to your competitors. What features and benefits of their products make a statement within the market? What ideas haven’t they explored? What does their product offer that yours doesn’t? You can use this research to your advantage when crafting your product marketing strategy.

4. Ensure the marketing, product, and sales teams are all on the same page.

Making your product offering abundantly clear for buyers and employees is mutually beneficial. Every team working together in your business can better understand the product's purpose and better communicate that in their operations.

5. Position the product appropriately in the market.

In product marketing, you want your product, brand image, and tone consistent and evoke the right feelings intended for your audience. When you brainstorm your brand positioning , some questions to consider are:

Is this product suitable for today’s market?

How is this product different from our competitors'?

Can we further differentiate this product from our competitors' offerings?

Are there any products we’ve sold in the past that we wouldn’t market or sell again? If so, why not?

6. Boost revenue and improve sales.

There are also questions you, as a product marketer, will have to ask yourself and reflect on regarding your product. Asking yourself these questions will help you ensure your product is successful among customers.

Is this product appropriate for our customers today?

How is this product unique from similar products of our competitors?

Is there a way to further differentiate this product from our competitors? 

Are there any products we’ve sold in the past that we wouldn’t market or sell ever again now that we look back? If so, why not?

As you can see, product marketing requires you to look at your products strategically to ensure they’re successful among customers in your current market.

Why is product marketing essential?

Product marketing is a critical part of any business’s marketing strategy. Without it, your product won’t achieve its maximum potential among your target audience.

To illustrate its importance, let’s look at an example of successful product marketing. During the 1950s, Volkswagen sold a bus. Although now considered a classic vehicle, the bus remains an icon for the car company decades later.

The cool part? Volkswagen announced their new VW Bus — it’s electric and features sleek, modern styling. Volkswagen’s marketing for the vehicle is eye-catching, unique, and fun, and it complements the original “hippie” vibe the company was once known for.

Image Source

Volkswagen also released a TV commercial for the bus that’s clever, minimalist, and on-brand. It introduces the new vehicle with the song The Sound of Silence playing in the background (hint: electric cars are silent) and ends with a short message on the screen for viewers to read: “Introducing a new era of electric driving.”

This sentiment touches on the fact Volkswagen is contributing to society’s interest in electric, eco-friendly vehicles. It also relates to this being a new era for the bus.

This is why product marketing is important: Because it highlights not the company but the product itself, ensuring longevity in the market.

But who works on this type of marketing? Who helps create content that excites consumers about new and updated products, like the Volkswagen bus? Who encourages consumers to buy? Product marketers.

Now, let’s take a look at the specific responsibilities that product marketers (or product marketing managers) face in their typical day.

Product Marketing Responsibilities

• Identify the buyer personas and target audience for your product.
• Successfully create and carry out your product marketing strategy.
• Work with and enable sales to attract the right customers for your new product.
• Determine your product’s positioning in the market.
• Ensure the product meets the needs of your target audience.
• Keep your product relevant over time.

Your responsibilities as a product marketer may vary slightly based on industry, company, products, and company size and resources. If you’re working for a startup, you may be a product marketer who also helps create the content the broader marketing team produces due to limited resources and budget. As the business grows, you may move onto a team whose sole job is product marketing.

Let’s take a look at six common product marketing responsibilities.

1. Identify the buyer personas and target audience for your product.

You must identify the buyer personas and audience for your product so you can target customers in a convincing way that makes them want to purchase. This will allow you to tailor your product and its features to solve your audience's challenges.

Pro tip: Use templates to create buyer personas for your business. A tangible outline of whom you’re catering to can help align different teams in your business and better position your product in the marketplace.

2. Successfully create, manage and carry out your product marketing strategy.

A product marketing strategy (which we’ll review shortly) allows you to create, build, and execute content and campaigns — this supports the steps that will lead your buyer personas and customers to make a purchase.

3. Work with and enable sales to attract customers for your new product.

As a product marketer, you have to mamusta direct relationship with sales. You’ll work with sales to identify and attract the right customers for the product at hand and provide sales enablement materials to reps to ensure they understand the product inside and out, along with its features.

This way, you and your teams are on the same page in termregarding being shared with customers, allowing you to provide a consistent, on-brand experience for anyone who comes in contact with the product.

4. Determine your product’s positioning in the market.

One of the most important parts of your job is determining the product’s positioning in the market. Think about this process in terms of storytelling — your positioning requires you to create and tell the story of your product.

As a product marketer, you’ll work with the broader marketing team and the product team to tell this story by answering critical questions like:

Why was this product made?

Whom is this product made for?

What challenges does this product resolve?

What makes this product unique?

5. Ensure your product meets the needs of your target audience.

You must also make sure your product meets the needs of your customers and target audience. Through the research to determine your buyer persona and target audience, you should have uncovered the pain points and challenges you’re working to solve with your product.

If your product doesn’t meet your customers' needs, they’ll have no reason to make the purchase or choose your product over your competitor’s.

6. Keep your product relevant over time.

Your product needs to stay relevant over time. As needs, expectations, and challenges change and evolve, it’s your job to ensure your product marketing strategy and the products themselves remain relevant among customers.

This means you may have to manage slight changes in your product marketing strategy (which we’ll discuss next) or updates and modifications to the product itself (you’ll likely work with the product team, which creates the effect, to do this).

7. Guide marketing strategies for new products.

In product marketing, you'll need to pay close attention to what worked in your strategy and what didn't so you can better plan marketing strategies for new and future custom products . Pay attention to where your audience is and what they are looking for. What channels got the most traction and led to more converted leads?

All this information and more should be applied to marketing strategies for new products.

Your product marketing strategy serves to guide the positioning, pricing, and promotion of your new product. It helps you take your product from development to launch and informs what new audience(s) and markets to which to launch and market your product.

Now, let’s take a look at five steps that can help you optimize your product marketing strategy.

1. Define your product’s target audience and buyer personas.

As a product marketer, one of the main roles you have is to define a specific target audience and create buyer personas for the product being sold (different products will likely have different target audiences). This is the first step to marketing your product.

By understanding your customers and their needs, challenges, and pain points, you’ll be able to end that all aspects of your product marketing strategy (as in the rest of the steps we’ll define below) are tailored to that target customer and persona. This way, the product and the marketing content created for the product will resonate with your audience.

2. Determine the positioning and messaging to set your product apart.

After your customer research and learning about your audience, you’ll have identified their needs, challenges, and pain points. From here, you can think about how to highlight the ways your product resolves those challenges for your customers.

However, that doesn't necessarily mean you’ve differentiated yourself from your competitors. After all, they are your competitors because they solve your customers' needs in a similar way to your company.

The key to setting your product apart is positioning (which we touched on earlier ) and messaging . Positioning answers key questions your customers might have about your product and what makes it unique and then turns those answers into the main points behind your product’s marketing strategy.

It’s your job as the product marketer to ensure your customers and audience know the answers to these questions and don't have to dig around for (or make assumptions about) them.

Examples of questions you’ll need to answer to develop your product’s positioning and messaging include the following:

What specifically makes our product unique?

Why is our product better than our competitors’?

Why are our product’s features ideal for our target audience?

What will our customers get out of our product that they cannot get from our competitors’ products?

Why should our customers trust and invest in us and our product?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can compile these responses into one impactful and shareable statement that captures your positioning and messaging. To do this, follow these steps:

Turn the answers to the positioning and messaging questions into an elevator pitch .

Use action words to excite your customers.

Ensure the tone of your statement captures the style of your brand.

Focus on the benefit of your product as a whole (not just one specific feature).

Pro Tip: As product marketers, you should ensure the sales, product, and (the broader) marketing teams are also aware of your positioning and messaging around the product so they, too, can communicate the same information to prospects and current customers.

This allows you to ensure the entire company is consistent in the content and information they share about your product. Additionally, you can provide this information to your support team if you think it’s necessary, as they may be fielding support calls and working with your customers who’ve already invested in the product.

3. Set goals for your product.

Next, you’ll want to set goals for your product. These will vary based on your specific product, the type of company you work for, your overall marketing goals, and more — your goals will be specific to your business and situation. However, let’s review some common goals product marketers aim to achieve:

Increase revenue

Engage with customers

Improve market share

Gain customers from competitors

Boost brand recognition

Pro Tip: Feel free to combine several goals or choose one to focus on — every company and product will have different plans. The key is ensuring you view and set these targets in the SMART goal format, meaning they’re specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.

Use a free template to help you create and achieve your SMART goals.

4. Price your product.

As a product marketer, you’ll also have to contribute to the discussion of the price of your product . Depending on your company, you might work with other teams on this part of the strategy, or it might be a job just for you and your fellow product marketers. Either way, you can consider competitive vs. value-based pricing.

Competitive vs. Value-Based Product Pricing

Competitive pricing means you’re basing your product’s price off similar products your competitors sell. It’s ideal for companies that have an effect similar to one that several other companies sell.

Suppose you believe your unique features warrant a significantly higher price e of your competitors’. In that case, you might price your product above the other similar products on the market. An excellent way to evaluate the fairness of the pricing of all of your competitors is by studying financial reports and industry trends.

Value-based pricing allows you to maximize your profit, although it’s a bit more time-consuming to establish in comparison to competitive pricing. It’s ideal for companies selling a product with very few competitors on the market or one with exceptionally new and unique features.

Value-based pricing quantifies your item’s value in a way your customer can relate to their profitability. It allows you to base your product’s price on its value for your customer rather than whatever the market, industry trends, and your competitors say.

5. Launch your product.

Now it’s time for the most impoessentialt of your role as a product marketer — not to mention, the most exciting: the launch of the product you’ve been marketing.

There are two main parts to the launch to focus on as a product marketer: the internal launch (what goes on within your company upon product launch) and the external launch (what goes on outside of your company, with customers and audience members, upon product launch).

Internal Aspects of a Product Launch

As previously stated, your job as a product marketer entails ensuring the entire organization is on the same page about your product. This way, your customers only receive consistent and accurate details about the product.

The marketing, product, and sales teams at your company should be aware of the following information:

The product’s benefits

Any available product demo information

Sales training opportunities on your product and details about how it’s used

What the positioning and messaging looks like

Who your buyer personas, and ideal customers are

What the goals for your product include

What your product’s features are

The pricing of your product

How your product is being launched to customers

Now, you might be wondering how to provide this information to marketing, product, and sales. Which channels are ideal for sharing these details with your fellow employees?

Here are a few examples of ways to do this:

Sales enablement kit (ideal for sales)

Presentation (ideal for the broader marketing department and product)

Knowledge base (ideal for support)

External Aspects of a Product Launch

Externally, there are many ways to market your product launch so your current base of customers, prospects, and target audience learn about whatever it is you’re selling.

First, determine where you’re going to focus your product marketing efforts. Here are some examples of channels and places to do this (you might choose several of these or just one to focus on depending on your needs, goals, and resources).

Social media

Product launch event

Website landing page

Exclusive product preview (prior to the official launch)

Promotional event/ campaign (in-person and/ or online)

On whatever channel you choose to focus your product launch marketing efforts, you should include relevant product information ( focused on your positioning and messaging ) so prospects and customers can learn all about your product and why they need it. This includes your product’s features, what makes it unique, pricing, demos for customers, training for customers, and any other materials you’ve created and want to share.

Congrats! You’ve just worked through the steps to marketing a product. Remember, this process is one that should be thought about and updated as your products change and evolve so they remain relevant among your customers. (This shouldn’t be an issue as long as you have a member of your team focused on product marketing, considering it’s one of their main responsibilities.)

Now that you know how to create a product marketing strategy, how do you market a product across your channels? Let’s take a look.

How to Market a Product

• Create a product marketing deck for other marketing teams.
• Publish product-focused content on your blog.
• Insert product mentions naturally in your existing marketing collateral.
• Try comarketing with a similar brand.
• Launch PPC ads and bid on your and competitors’ keywords.
• Focus on the benefits, not the features.

1. Create a product marketing deck for other marketing teams.

Non-product marketers — i.e, social media marketers and content marketers — won’t have the full know-how on your product, impeding them from marketing it properly on customer-facing channels. As a product marketer, your job isn’t necessarily to execute marketing campaigns or write content. Instead, your job is to enable specialized teams — such as your social media and content team — to market your company’s products effectively.

The first step is to provide a deck, presentation, or document that outlines your product marketing strategy to other marketers. That way, when it’s time to execute on a strategy, they know the positioning they are aiming for, the wording they are to use, and the personas they are targeting.

2. Publish product-focused content on your blog.

A blog is primarily a place to attract inbound leads. Rather than trying to hammer them with information about your product, you might write content that helps them solve an issue instead, and then offer them a free guide or ebook to help them further.

But did you know that your team can publish content that attracts inbound leads and encourages purchases and sign-ups? At HubSpot, we call this product-focused content. It’s just as helpful as our other content, but with a critical difference: It has a call-to-action to try one of HubSpot’s products.

For instance, our blog post, What is a CMS and Why Should You Care? , aims to inform readers about content management systems, but then includes a call-to-action to try CMS Hub .

While the blog post is still informative and not overtly promotional, it still promotes one of our products. In the same way, you or your content team can write helpful content for your readers, help them the inbound way, and still encourage customers to try your offerings.

3. Insert product mentions naturally in your existing marketing collateral.

If you’ve had a longstanding marketing strategy prior to beginning product marketing, we have good news: You can retroactively market your product in existing collateral. For instance, if you already have an expansive library of blog posts, you can update them with information about your products (so long as the mention is natural).

Recent social media posts can also be candidates for an update, and your website content should also change to show your brand new product. Internal links from related pages can help drive traffic to your new product pages.

In addition, if your marketing team has created marketing offers in the past, you can have them update the offer and add a call-to-action to try your newest product — like in this example from HubSpot’s Case Study Templates offer , where we prompt users to try CMS Hub.

4. Try comarketing with a similar brand.

Comarketing is an excellent way to market your product to a related audience. You can do something as simple as filming a video together, writing a collaborative blog post, posting on each other’s social channels, or running a webinar.

Your product should be an excellent match for the other company’s customers. Ideally, both of your products can be used in conjunction and not compete directly. For instance, Ankor Software and HubSpot partnered for a webinar, but Ankor Software doesn’t compete with HubSpot CRM — it complements it.

5. Launch PPC ads and bid on your and competitors’ keywords.

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an essential product marketing tactic. While content and social media marketing can help you attract inbound leads, you can get the attention of even more potential customers by posting PPC ads on search engines.

When setting up your PPC campaign, bid not only on general product keywords (such as “crm software” or “[insert category]”), but on your own branded terms and your competition’s as well. That way, customers who are considering purchasing the same product from a competitor will consider you as an alternative.

6. Focus on the benefits, not the features.

Regardless of the channel or platform you’re promoting your product on, highlight the benefits customers will experience, not the features of your product. Not only can features feel jargony (like “Customizable attribution models” or “Automated contact workflows”), but they shroud the benefits and alienate non-technical customers.

Try, instead, leading with the benefits, such as “Know where exactly your leads come from” or “Save time by automating tasks using contact workflows.” For instance, on the Marketing Hub page, the features snapshot reads:

“ Attract visitors through blogging, social media, ads, and more. Convert visitors into customers with landing pages, email, marketing automation, ABM, and more. Track ROI with revenue attribution reporting. All powered by the customer data in your CRM to enable personalization at scale .”

Using benefit-first language will engage customers and prompt them to try your products. The “how” of the benefit — such as features or functionalities — come after.

Let's review four real-life examples of stellar product marketing.

Apple is a household name for leading technology products and software. Not only are its products gorgeously well-designed; it’s also super useful. But Apple's product marketing doesn't focus on the many product features — it markets the user benefits.

Apple doesn't simply list the impressive features of their products; the brand uses those features to tell consumers who they could be and how they could work if they have those products. Apple tells a narrative using its products and encourages people to buy in the process.

Billie is a women's razor brand. In a highly competitive market, Billie has helped its products stand out. How? It established a sharp competitive edge (no pun intended) by doing what no razor brand had done before — show body hair in its advertising.

Not only did this advertising approach get Billie's audience talking about the brand, but they also appreciated the brand's accurate portrayal of women's bodies and body hair. These differentiators were more than enough to set Billie apart from other razor brands and products.

3. Pepsi Cola

As a brand, Pepsi has positioned itself as one with youthful energy and excitement, and this can be seen consistently through its product marketing campaigns.

Pepsi's customers are mainly aged between 13 and 35 years old with modern and active lifestyles, so it only makes sense to hire popular celebrities like Doja Cat for a commercial in a homecoming tailgate.

Through highly targeted positioning, repetitive advertising, and consistent branding, Pepsi has become a truly global household name and product.

4. MailChimp

There are dozens of email marketing tools on the market, but MailChimp hasn't been fazed by competition. In fact, the company has risen above its competition by positioning itself as more than an email marketing tool: it's an all-in-one marketing platform that helps businesses grow.

Like Apple, MailChimp primarily highlights its benefits for the end-user, not just its product features. A recent rebranding and site redesign further drives this narrative home.

Start Marketing Your Products

Product marketing is the process through which a company brings a product to market. Being a product marketer (or product marketing manager) means you’re at the center of your company’s marketing, sales, and product teams.

You’re an integral part to the success of your product, as you create and manage your product’s specific marketing strategy, but you also serve as a liaison between all three of these departments, ensuring everyone is on the same page with your product, it’s features, capabilities, and more. So, start developing your latest product’s marketing strategy to ensure it’s a success among your target audience and customers.

This post was originally published in February 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Don't forget to share this post!

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Free Business Plan On Target Customers

Type of paper: Business Plan

Topic: Business , Market , Strategy , Students , Turkey , Company , Marketing , Education

Words: 2750

Published: 02/02/2020

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Business Development Plan for Education

Introduction

The current Education First company business segment in Turkey is performing below its potential level. The education system is influenced by factors such as inaccessibility, shortage of teachers and other factors. To improve the business segment of Education First, one has to ensure that that there is complete realignment of the system. This will ensure that every level of education in Turkey is streamlined to ensure students at all levels benefit from the system. The company needs to develop new strategies that are inclined to benefit learners rather than make them suffer in their learning environment in all its business segments. The current Education First segments in turkey are not designed to meet the market potential. The new business development plan aims to align the Education First business segments to make them efficient through the new strategy. It also aims to increase the accessibility of education by poor people in Turkey. The new strategies will be based on three main lines of business. The strategies are supposed to maintain the initial objectives of the Education First tasks but make improvement to boost productivity. Therefore, the new plan will contain three sets of strategies. The first set will focus on linking the education system to an international club, the Lions Club, which is located somewhere close to the country. The second strategy will be aimed at developing links with the Rotary club, which is also located in various places in the country. Lastly, the strategy should develop links with the Turkish ministry of national education. This will be with the intention of taking advantage of scholarship opportunities that are available for Turkish students.

Business development strategies

The business development plan will be based on strategies that are meant to raise the efficiency of the Education First operations in turkey. The strategies will make realignments to the system so that there will be greater productivity in the company. It will increase the target customer base while at the same time enhancing the market breakdown. The strategies are also meant to make a proper marketing mix that will see an increase in the number of products. The products will be aligned to the needs of student in the three business lines that have been identified as the areas of interest. The Education First business segment reaches out to high and middle school students through long and short term language courses that could last between two and 5 weeks. The courses are taken abroad at selected education first centres, which offer students native language opportunities. The new strategy will improve on this by linking these students to other countries in a program in partnership with the government. The students will be offered scholarships by the ministry of national education to go and pursue foreign languages abroad in the education first centres. High and middle school students will also be able to access these programs through new partners such as the Rotary Club. The Rotary Club is found in almost all countries around the world. They take part in charity, awareness and education support programs. They can be instrumental in making the education first program successful because they can be used as education first centres in countries around Turkey. This will make it possible for students to travel abroad knowing there are sufficient centres of learning. The intention of reaching out to the international Lions club is also to ensure that there are partners who will ensure students are taken care of whenever they go to foreign countries for learning and training. Furthermore, the ministry, the Rotary club and the international lions club will be expected to provide financial support to students who are willing to go abroad for the education first programs. The program will be similar to the one for Young Professionals and University Students. Therefore, the Education First Company seeks to use the partnerships to make its operations in Turkey successful. The strategies will be used differently for the group of professionals aged twenty five and above. The professionals will be able to access business language courses all around the world through the partnership between their segment and the Rotary club, international lions club and the ministry of national education in Turkey. The professional segment will be able to take their courses at any location around the world unlike the other two segments where they are restricted to countries around Turkey. Furthermore, the education first program will seek to partner with interested clientele to help develop their skills and prowess in English language.

The business development plan is designed to increase the customer base of all the four business segments owned by the Education First Company. Target customers in this whole project include the high school and middle school students. There are also the university and college students who are seeking to pursue foreign languages in neighbouring countries. The third group of the target customers is the segment of professional individuals aged over 25 years. These customers are located in any place around the world and pursue the education first program based on their profession. They are also trained in business to enhance their entrepreneurial ability. Finally, the fourth group of customers is the one where interested clients apply to join the program to learn and develop their English skills through online learning forums. The clientele will also be useful in improving the service provision standards to first class levels in countries around Turkey.

Market breakdown

The market currently operates at a level that indicates there are several inefficiencies. The Education First market has a vast potential that can be harnessed using appropriate strategies and market changes. The market also needs to be expanded to ensure that every possible customer has access to the education first services. The market breakdown is gives the detailed analysis of the various components of the market and how it operates. There are three main segments of the Education First market. The first segment is the high school and middle level segment. This segment deals with students who are in their teen ages. They are those who attend middle level schools and high school. These segment forms the business’ largest target market. This is because most students at this level in their education want to expand their future opportunities by seeking to expand their language awareness. Most of these students want to learn foreign languages such as English so that it is easier for them when they are seeking scholarships in the later stages of their education. This segment forms about 40% of the total market size. Furthermore, there are very many students at this education level. The Turkish ministry of national education estimates the number to be around 5% of the national population. However, only 20% of these students are undertaking the education first programs. This means there is still a lot of potential to exploit for the Education First Company in the Turkish market. Students can be convinced and encouraged to join this program in order to improve their chances of success in future. The second segment of the market is the University students and the young professional segment. This segment targets young people who have graduated from institutions of higher learning and those that are in the higher earning institutions. These students form another 40% of the total current market. These students are the biggest beneficiaries of the education first program because they already know the kind of profession they want to pursue. They require the necessary knowledge in foreign languages and are seeking scholarships to go for further studies. Statistics indicate that these students are fewer than the high school and middle school level students. However, most of the young professionals and university students know the importance of learning hence; a bigger percentage of them are already enrolled in this program. It is estimated that around 50% of this level individuals are pursuing or intend to pursue education first programs. The third segment is the professional level, which is composed of individuals who are above 25 years old. This group accounts for about 15% of the total market. These are Turkish professionals seeking to improve their business and language competence. They include business people based in various places around the world. They pursue this program with the objective of creating awareness of other languages in the countries they are based in or where they intend to live. This target market is not large since most people at this stage have learnt foreign languages at the previous two levels. The final target market is the clientele groups. In this case, interested parties join this program to help provide sufficient and competent services to clients. These groups are those that aim to take a share of the profits from the business. The new focus points on the three target markets is to help bring in new partners who will be able to provide the resources and facilitate Education First operations in Turkey to grow in all segments. The Rotary Club is an international group that would be instrumental in coordinating these programs in countries outside Turkey. They can also facilitate this program by being learning centres for students who go abroad. The international lions club would be a partner in the provision of services outside Turkey. The club can be used as a facilitator in the provision of language lessons. The professionals can also use the club forum to interact on business matters and improve their language skills.

Marketing mix

The products of Education First can be aligned in a manner that will ensure there is efficiency, transparency and growth. The three lines of focus strategies can be implemented for each segment in the business to ensure that they are effectively harnessed and their potential exploited.

Increased presence through partnerships

Education first will seek to improve its operations through forming partnerships. The main reason for the three strategies to involve the ministry of national education of Turkey, the Rotary club and the International Lions Club is to create new partnerships. Partnerships are lucrative options for any business since they ease the pressure on the company resources. Through a partnership, the company can easily accomplish big tasks using the combined resources from the government and the other two partners. The government as a partner increases the probability of many students accessing this program. The government, through the ministry of national education in Turkey, offers scholarships to students to go abroad or to pursue their studies locally. When the government is a partner, needy students will also benefit from education first through the scholarships. The partnership of education first with Rotary and International Lions Club, which have presence all around the world, will boost the achievement of the company’s objective. The partners will provide assistance to needy people by offering charity and facilitate things like seminars and training sessions. These clubs can be used as education centres for this program and also sponsor some of the needy children and professionals. Facilitation programs include provision of language teachers in the respective countries the training s held and provision of places to study.

Products, promotion, price and place

The product of Education First is the language lessons to different segments of its market base. The product will be designed to suit each of the segments. For example the professional level will be taught language as well as business relations and management. This will make the course lucrative for professionals seeking to learn new languages. The product will also be designed to suit different levels of target markets. The high school and middle level students and the university ad young professionals will be benefiting from the language skills. They will also benefit from government scholarships. Promotion of Education First services will be done to ensure the product and services are popular to all the target market. As shown by statistics, only 40% of the target market has been exploited. To increase this percentage, promotion has to be done to popularize the programs. Therefore, internet marketing will be employed to attract people from different target groups. Other marketing methods such as televisions advertisements, promotions will be used to make the target market aware of the products. The prices of the company’s products and services will also be adjusted so that as many students as possible can access the company’s services. Currently, a huge percentage of the target market is interested in enrolling for the program but cannot because they cannot afford. There will be scholarships from the government for college students seeking to study foreign languages. The rotary club and the international lions club will also facilitate some of the services such as payment of teachers, provision of venues around Turkey. Therefore, partnerships will help the company reduce costs hence; the prices will reduce for other people to access the services. Education first can also use the new strategies to enhance the accessibility of their services by ensuring that target groups at almost all places can access the services. The partnership with the rotary club and international lions club is meant to ensure that students can go anywhere to study. The partnership with the ministry of national education will give target groups all around the country the equal opportunity to earn scholarships.

Benefits and marketing strategy flow

The Education First Company’s target market will be penetrated through aggressive marketing initiatives to make the public aware of the benefits of education first. There are also other strategies that would make the market penetration process successful. There is need the start an initiative where families would be helped so that children are sponsored from the kindergarten level to the graduate level. This will ensure that student groups of all levels are considered for this program. There is also needed to know the expectations of parents and their children’s expectations. The parents’ expectations outweigh the expectation of their children. Education first should check the definition of the academic atmosphere, which would help develop interest among the potential target market. There is also need to design study modes to ensure it is in line with the English language and required academic levels. The introduction of short courses to go along with the language study at the correct prices will also attract more people who will feel there is an increase in the quality of education. Advertisement and the display of distinction on media such as the internet and television would attract more students. The introduction of vocational training courses for professionals would also make the course more resourceful hence; attracting more people. There is also need to apply technology tools to enable students get updates quickly. There is also a need to respect the culture and moral values of the local people. Curricula activities are also necessary to ensure that students harness their talents and have leisure time.

The Education first initiative is can be realigned to ensure that learners get maximum benefits. The new strategies to be Education First Company will be based on three main lines of business. The strategies are supposed to maintain the company’s initial objectives of the Turkish education system. Therefore, the new plan will contain three sets of strategies. The first set will focus on linking the education system to an international club, the Lions Club, which is located somewhere close to the country. The second strategy will be aimed at developing links with the Rotary club, which is also located in various places in the country. Lastly, the strategy should develop links with the Turkish ministry of national education. This will be with the intention of taking advantage of scholarship opportunities that are available for Turkish students. The three new strategies will be used to penetrate the market and enable the realization of the new objectives. The customer base will also be expanded due to increased efficiency. The partnerships of Education First Company with the other two clubs and the ministry will be pivotal in ensuring that the company realizes its alignment objective.

Nohl, A.-M., & Akkoyunlu-Wigley, A. (2008). Education in Turkey. Istanbul: Waxmann Verlag. Yıldıran, G. (1997). Recent perspectives on Turkish education: an inside view. Istanbul: Indiana University Turkish Studies Publications.

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