Web Marketing 101 - Defining Your Market

Do you think of the Internet as one big market for your product? Think again. The Internet is just like any other market place, it is made up of a vast number of smaller markets. The only way to succeed is to define your market and focus on a strategy for reaching that market.

This doesn't mean that your product can have only one target market. One of the beauties of Internet marketing is the easy in which you can design strategies for a number of target markets, All focusing on different user groups or on different aspects of the same product.

Due to the cost of reaching a target market, in the broadcast advertising world, markets are broken into larger more general segments:

• Geographic - a specified geographic area
• Demographic - Gender or age groups
• Socio-economic - Occupation, education, or stage in the family life cycle

Other minor marketing segments include:

• Psychographic - Attitudes, life style, religious affiliation
• Behaviour - Sports fans, hobbyists

These are broad definitions that allow the broadcast advertising to be targeted, but only in a very general fashion.

On the Internet, you have have much more options in defining a market. While small businesses may target a niche market, on the Internet it is possible to target smaller market segments, some times called micromarkets, that focus small segment of a niche market. Even these relatively small markets can produce viable businesses. People who play musical instruments is a niche in the Psycographic segment. But, left handed people who play stringed instruments is a micromarket within that niche - and a market targeted by Southpaw Guitars.com.

While your product or service may have a broad market appeal, there are a number of reasons to consider a more focused marketing strategy:

• Cost - it may seem counter intuitive, but, due to the nature of on-line advertising, selecting a target market of people searching for "left handed guitars" is a lot cheaper than one for people searching for "guitars".
• Effectiveness - by more narrowly focusing in on the features people are looking for you increase the chance of making a sale.
• Measureability - a narrow focus allows you to measure the success of your advertising. You will be able to see right away if you have defined the wrong market.

Profiling

One of the most effective ways of defining a target market is to profile your customers. (Or potential customers.) Create a general profile of your customer:

• Where do they live?
• How old are they?
• Do they have a family?
• How much do they earn?

And the list goes on --.

Once you have the broad outline look for smaller groupings. You can do this by creating individual profiles. In this case you want to create some individual profiles. Give the person:

• A name
• Gender
• Age
• Occupation
• Household Income
• Family

And, again the list goes on.

One word of caution however, know who actaully buys your product. For most families, women make most of the purchasing decisions.

These profiles will not only help you define your market, but will assist you later when you are designing your advertising and even in the design of your website. They may also help show patterns that you may not have noticed before.