Target Market: Examples, Definition, and Finding the Perfect One

If the world of business were a simpler place, you wouldn’t need a target market or use target market examples as a reference point.

You could create a product, appeal to a few general wants and needs and boom – you’d be successful.

Business isn’t like that.

The most successful companies in the world have a clear target market. Their lead generation is more effective, their customer service is more helpful, and their product sells faster.

How do you find your ideal target market?

What is a target market anyway?

What strategies can you use to appeal to your target market?

This post will help you answer those questions and share target market examples so your business grows faster and more efficiently.

What is a target market?

A target market is a specific group of potential customers within a business’ entire addressable market that they choose to sell to. The business creates marketing materials, ads, and products that appeal to the group they’ve chosen.

Why does it even matter?

A while ago, it didn’t. There was little choice and little competition in the marketplace. People bought what they could find and were happy about it.

Now, there’s an almost unlimited amount of choice, people see thousands of brand messages, and buyer’s remorse is real. As a small business, it’s important to focus your limited resources on the group of people who’re most likely to buy.

For example, if your target market is out of your physical location, you don’t open a new location in haste. Instead, you can try optimal solution like having a virtual office. This helps small businesses manage resources well.

That’s where having solid virtual office management software comes in handy – it’s been a total game-changer for our remote setup. We started using it last quarter, and honestly, it’s like having a second brain that keeps all our virtual office operations running smoothly. Beyond just managing basic tasks, our virtual office management software helps us track who’s doing what, when they’re available, and even handles those pesky mail forwarding services that used to give us headaches.

Knowing your current location isn’t just about pinning yourself on a map – it’s about understanding the entire ecosystem of opportunities around you. Sure, you might be dreaming of expanding to new territories, but sometimes the goldmine is right in your backyard, with customers you didn’t even know were craving what you offer.

Smart businesses are getting creative with how they serve their market – maybe you don’t need that expensive new storefront when a well-placed virtual office could help you tap into a whole new customer base at a fraction of the cost.

When you create a business plan, it is crucial to take into account the constantly changing nature of your target market. What might appear well-defined and steady now could undergo alterations in the approaching months, years, or even within the next decade.

For instance, when developing a brewery business plan, targeting a specific group such as craft beer lovers in a certain demographic can make marketing and branding efforts more effective, similar to how Acme Inc. focuses on customers interested in luxury goods.

For instance, an event venue business plan must account for potential changes in customer preferences, such as a growing demand for hybrid or outdoor events, to stay competitive.

Embracing this unpredictability and remaining attuned to market trends will assist you in proactively adjusting your strategies to fulfill the evolving requirements of your customers.

In the sacred quest to elevate customer service from a mere obligation to an art form, one must embody the essence of a clairvoyant maestro, deftly anticipating the mercurial tides of consumer desire before they can crest.

This rarified pursuit demands an uncompromising dedication to immersing oneself in the symphonic currents of market evolution, calibrating each nuance of one’s approach to harmonize with the ever-shifting melodies of patron preference.

Only through such preemptive metamorphosis can an enterprise transcend the bounds of reactive service, instead weaving a tapestry of bespoke experiences that leave indelible imprints upon the hearts and minds of its patrons – fostering an unbreakable covenant of trust and personalised reverence.

Companies like Coke have the budget and resources to market to everyone but even it chooses to go after a specific target market with many of its products.

GLACÉAU Smartwater is a brand owned by Coke. It targets people in urban centers in their early 20s to late 40s who’re more health conscious. It has the resources to market to almost everyone but decided to gain market share by focusing on a specific group.

Marketing, branding, and sales decisions are easier because it’s not trying to appeal to everyone. The focus is on a small core group of customers who are responsible for the majority of sales.

How to define your target market

Many companies fail before they figure this part out because they use a shotgun approach to find their target market. If they find one that sticks then they stay in business. If they don’t then they’re added to the 90% of companies that didn’t make it.

There are countless ways to define your target market but in the end, it depends on your products, price points, and goals.

For example, Acme Inc. sells high-end accessories that range from $500 to $2,000. Its products last for a long time but there’s a high level of satisfaction amongst customers. It can use a number of criteria to define its target market such as income and interest in luxury goods.

As a prominent player in the field of cloud-based communication, Vonage has established itself by offering an array of services that include voice communication, video conferencing, and instant messaging. The company’s success can be attributed to its quick recognition and effective service to its intended audience, which enabled it to attract numerous users in a relatively short period.

Vonage supplements traditional instant messaging with visual, ephemeral messaging capabilities. Vonage enables seamless coordination between instant messaging, video conferencing, and voice within one interface.

Vonage offers enterprise-grade security, compliance, and administration controls around instant messaging. Vonage integrates third-party apps and workflows into collaborative instant messaging.

Age and location wouldn’t be as useful to them because that’s not a determinant of whether or not someone will buy their products.

Here are a few ways you can begin to define your target market:

Surveys

The fastest way to find your target market is to communicate with the people who already buy from you.

It may not be feasible to call every one of your customers on the phone. You also don’t want to do all the work of building a compelling product page then lose the sale because you asked for too much information up front.

A survey is a great way to bridge that gap. Ask questions that will help you define what your target market looks like. If gender is important then use the survey to break down what the gender mix is. If income or type of business matters then be sure to ask questions that give you a better idea of that info.

Keep in mind that the way you understand your consumers’ communication preferences directly affects your understanding of the market.

How to achieve this? Employing project management software for marketing agencies is a brilliant approach to manage your audience and their survey responses with ease. Most prominently, these instruments enable centralized data storage and fully automate the survey effort overall.

How do you put this to work for you? You acquire relevant info, and so your team members can base their decisions on the findings you get from the poll.

It’s all about getting more convenient and efficient for your clients. Take internet phone services, for example.

With the rapidly advancing tech landscape, such services become game-changers for personal communication as well as for those companies who want to maintain reliable and efficient interaction with their TA. By utilizing such solutions, you can gain valuable experience and smoothly adapt your business plans and strategies to the ever-changing expectations and needs of your clients. This way, you will always remain competitive and convenient for your audience.

A few general data points you may want to capture are

• Age;
• Location;
• Gender;
• Income;
• Interest;
• Family breakdown;
• Etc.

Take a look at this post on psychographic segmentation and demographic segmentation to get a better idea of the kind of information that would be useful for defining your target market.

Your analytics tools

You are using analytics tools to understand how people are interacting with your website and social media accounts – right?

Of course you are.

In Google Analytics, you can find basic demographic information by clicking audience > demographics > overview.

If you’ve not done so already, you’ll need to activate this feature. Social media platforms also provide analytics for you to dig into. For example, your Instagram handle provides information about the location, gender, age-range, and best time of day to reach your followers.

For further analysis, for example, Instagram, you may want to export Instagram analytics and share it with your team for better decisions.

Each platform gives you different information and you may even attract different audiences on each one. Check the analytics for all social platforms where you have a decent amount of followers.

There are also a variety of social media analytics tools that can help you monitor your social media data, key metrics and target audience insights.

Navigating the modern digital landscape demands a keen understanding of the intricacies surrounding online presence. As businesses and individuals alike seek to maximize their reach, the need to run multiple social media accounts becomes evident.

Each platform offers a unique tapestry of information and the potential to captivate diverse audiences. From the succinct quips of Twitter to the visual narratives of Instagram, every avenue holds its own allure.

Yet, amidst this captivating burstiness, it’s imperative to remain grounded in data-driven insights. Delving into analytics across all platforms with a substantial follower base unveils the nuanced preferences of these audiences.

In a realm where perplexity meets strategic execution, the harmonious orchestration of diverse content strategies becomes the linchpin of successful digital engagement.

It’s always better to ask customers directly but when that’s not possible then your analytics information is the next best thing.

Look at what the competition is doing (use with caution)

Take this suggestion with a bit of salt. It’s important to know who your competition is and what they’re doing but never imitate them outright.

Considering innovative solutions like advanced energy storage can set your business apart and offer additional value to your target market.

Only use this method when you’ve done preliminary research and have an idea of who your target market is. The goal is to determine if your competition is going after the same market as you and whether they’re reaching segments you’d like to go after.

The information you gather will be topical at best because you don’t have access to their data. You can get a general sense of what they’re doing and how it’s working. That’s enough to decide whether or not you’d like to double down or change directions.

Leveraging competitor analysis tools can provide a deeper understanding of your competitors’ strategies, helping you make data-driven decisions about how to adjust your own approach for better results.

Working with a professional localization agency can help you better understand and cater to the specific needs of diverse markets, ensuring your messaging resonates effectively across different regions.

Test different messaging

At this point, you have a pretty clear idea about who’s using your products and services because you’ve asked them directly and have done your own research.

This will help you create a hypothesis about different messaging you can use and find a unique value proposition that resonates with your target market.

I say hypothesis because, until you test them, they’re educated guesses that haven’t been proven or disproven. The way you go about proving them is through systematic testing.

Create a series of landing pages that use different messaging you think would appeal to your target market. Or if you have a more sophisticated landing page builder, it can make it dynamic. This will allow you to Set up social media ads or search ads that match the messages on the landing page and measure how well people respond to each one.

Measure conversions, not clicks.

Strategyzer is an online business education platform that helps small businesses and enterprises reach their goals. It was hosting a 2-day workshop with Alex Osterwalder and wanted to fill up seats so it turned to Facebook.

In the above image, very few people were able to connect with the message and the company ended up spending over $4,000 to acquire a single customer.

It later changed the ad copy and focus of the message.

The cost of acquisition reduced from over $4,000 to roughly $123.

Continue researching and testing

Your target market may change over time. It might be clear now but that may not be true in six months, two years, or the next decade.

That’s not a bad thing but it’s something you should be well aware of.

Your customer mix changes, your products evolve, and consumer preferences shift. Together, these factors may change what your target market looks like. Revisit the information you’ve gathered often to ensure you have the most accurate description.

Target market examples

It’s difficult to find target market examples because it’s not something that’s publicized like a mission and vision statement. With that being said, there are a few iconic target market examples to pull from.

The first one comes from Apple.

It created a series of commercials that compared Mac to PC. Mac was a hip young man while PC was the opposite. These ads targeted PC users as well as those who were looking to buy a PC. From the language used and the way the characters were depicted, it was clear Apple was targeting a young tech-savvy demographic.

Corona is a popular beer company but its massed produced and doesn’t have much flavor like a craft beer. Because of that, it can be marketed to a large group of people who drink beer. Their messaging seems to focus on a younger crowd that’s out drinking casually with friends.

The process of establishing a distinct identity for craft beer is a remarkably demanding endeavor. Considering the vast array of beer offerings available in the current market, effective craft beer branding is pivotal.

By employing strategic branding techniques, your craft beer can achieve a notable level of recognition, significantly enhancing its popularity within the desired consumer demographic. This approach is crucial in distinguishing your product in a highly competitive industry.

Mercedes is one of the most successful car companies in the world and have cars that range from a few thousand dollars to over a million dollars. A single target market example is more difficult to pin down because, technically, it doesn’t have one. It has many.

In the following commercial, Mercedes uses humor and a bit of awkwardness to appeal to a young professional market while highlighting key features.

Target market strategies

There are a few target market strategies you can use after you’ve identified the groups most likely to buy from you.

Single Segment

Focus all your attention and energy on a single market segment. This can be a good strategy when there’s a market that responds much better than any other or you don’t have the resources to go after multiple target markets at once.

When you gain ground in your key segment and expand your business operations, you can move on to the next strategy.

Multi-Segment

This is ideal when you have multiple products or multiple target markets that respond well to your messages. This takes a lot of resources. If you’ve not differentiated in this way before or haven’t gained considerable ground in your first target market then it may be best to hold off on the multi-segment approach.

Multiple product businesses lend themselves to this strategy but it’s not a requirement. You can market a single product in a different way to multiple target markets.

A target market example from Vonage is health organizations. Vonage provides business and internet phone services to everyone but it creates specific messages for each market it targets. It has a specific page for health organizations where it uses languages that relates to the industry.

Another approach is to aim for different segments of a specific geographic area where your service can be adapted to multiple types of businesses. For example, if you offered English-language marketing, accounting, or translation services, you could appeal to different business segments in other countries where English is a secondary language.

This is especially true in countries where businesses want to expand into western markets and need native-English speaking support, as they do in the Dubai Silicon Oasis, Turkey, or India, for example.

In today’s interconnected world, English-editing services are more than just a finishing touch; they’re essential for any business looking to connect with international audiences. These services help polish your messaging to ensure it’s clear, engaging, and culturally appropriate, which is key when you’re trying to make a good impression on a global scale.

Whether it’s sprucing up a website or refining marketing materials, having a professional editor who can tweak your English to perfection can make a big difference. This helps not just in avoiding miscommunications but also in building a brand that’s taken seriously anywhere in the world.

Another crucial component of business development is a website. If you’ve ever pondered the significance of small business owners who need a website, then delving into this topic with meticulous attention is essential.

In the digital marketplace, a meticulously crafted business website serves as more than just a virtual storefront—it’s the cornerstone of your market positioning strategy. While social media platforms come and go, your business website remains the enduring hub where target markets converge, interact, and ultimately make purchasing decisions. Think of it as your digital command center, where every element, from the user interface to the content strategy, works in harmony to attract and engage your ideal customer segments.

This owned platform becomes particularly crucial when fine-tuning your market approach, allowing you to gather invaluable data about visitor behavior and adjust your targeting strategies in real-time, making your business website the most powerful tool in your market penetration arsenal.

A website serves as a potent instrument that empowers small enterprises, irrespective of their scale or budget, to distinguish themselves. Moreover, a well-crafted website plays a pivotal role in aiding small businesses in their growth endeavors by enticing and retaining new clientele, enhancing customer relationships, and ultimately boosting revenue. – says Piotr Gorecki, Head of Marketing at Gorrion.

Recognizing the significance of a well-identified target market is crucial, as it greatly impacts business success. Consider the example of translation service companies, which offer an extensive array of services, subsequently broadening their customer base.

In today’s globalized marketplace, where the harmonious interplay of cultures holds the key to unlocking new frontiers of opportunity, the demand for exceptional translation services has soared to unprecedented heights.

These linguistic virtuosos, adept at navigating the intricate nuances that separate languages, serve as indispensable conduits for cross-border communication and collaboration.

By meticulously preserving the essence of intent while seamlessly adapting to the idiosyncrasies of diverse tongues, they empower enterprises to transcend geographical boundaries, forging indelible connections with audiences that might otherwise remain elusive.

In an era where perplexity and burstiness define the rhythms of international commerce, these translators emerge as beacons of clarity, illuminating pathways to mutual understanding and catalyzing the free flow of ideas that fuel innovation.

It’s important to note that continuously introducing innovative ideas can substantially enhance your business, eventually leading to its expansion on a larger scale.

In today’s dynamic business landscape, the strategic deployment of startup tools has emerged as a catalyst for sustained growth and competitive edge. These powerful digital instruments transcend their functional utility, becoming indispensable allies that empower organizations to navigate the ever-shifting tides of the market with unparalleled agility.

By seamlessly integrating cutting-edge Business Tools into their operations, enterprises unlock a realm of possibilities, where data-driven insights harmonize with streamlined processes, paving the way for informed decision-making and operational excellence.

From sophisticated analytics platforms that unveil the intricate tapestry of consumer behavior to CRM with email marketing software and project management solutions that orchestrate cross-functional collaboration, these tools have become the linchpins of strategic execution, empowering businesses to proactively adapt to emerging trends and seize fleeting windows of opportunity.

Product specialization

You can position your product to appeal to multiple segments or you can create a product for only one segment.

Rela creates software that small business owners use to build micro-sites and generate leads. The features are peculiar to the needs of real estate agents. As the product develops, it continues to add tools for the target market instead of all small business owners that need a website.

Rela software allows small business owners, especially in real estate, to effortlessly create micro-sites and generate valuable leads by providing specialized features tailored to their specific needs and continually expanding the tool-set to effectively serve this target market.

In the ever-evolving digital arena, the ability to generate leads is the modern-day alchemist’s quest – to transform virtual interactions into tangible business opportunities. Rela stands as a prime exemplar, masterfully tailoring its software solutions to the nuanced demands of real estate professionals.

By infusing its platform with industry-specific functionalities, it empowers its users to effortlessly craft bespoke microsites that resonate with their target audiences. This razor-sharp focus, coupled with a commitment to continuous innovation, positions Rela as an indispensable ally for those seeking to unlock the lead generation enigma and emerge victorious in their respective markets.

Similarly, in the realm of accounting, businesses shouldn’t adopt a one-size-fits-all approach. By understanding the specific requirements of various industries or segments, software developers can craft specialized accounting solutions.

For instance, the best accounting automation software may cater specifically to freelancers, focusing on aspects like invoicing and tax deductions for home offices, while another might be tailored for e-commerce businesses, emphasizing inventory management and online sales tracking.

This method of product specialization ensures that users get a product that fits their unique needs, much like how Rela serves its niche in the real estate market.

Conclusion

There are two ways to market your business.

• As the solution to any and everyone’s problem
• As the solution to a problem that a specific group of people has

It’s been proven time and again that choosing a target market is one of the best things you can do for yourself.

Why?

Because you’re able to create products, services, and messaging that appeals to a specific group as opposed to every one.

Use this post as a springboard for choosing the perfect target market for your business.

Let me know what you think of the target market examples in this post and how you’re using them to grow your business.