How To Be Specific With Your Target Market

If you get asked who is your target market and you answer along the lines of “20-30 y/o females”

You are not being specific enough.

If I had a nickel for every brand that says they want to target everyone, I would be a millionaire by now.

Targeting everyone will hurt your brand anymore than it helps you.

Because when you target everyone, you are trying to please everyone. And we all know that is impossible.

To target everyone, you will have to dilute your message. And it can also be expensive.

A brand like Coca-cola can easily be known as a brand that targets everyone right? After all, who hasn’t tasted a Coke in their life?

But remember the time that Coca-cola released Coke bottles with different names on it? Like Amber, Alex, Cathy, Richard, etc.

Even though Coca-cola seemed to target so many groups in demographics, you can see how each of their commercials are designed to target a specific group of people.

In this first commercial, they are targeting young people probably around their late teens to mid 20s. People that are active and socialising with friends. They try to make Coke as one of the ways to spend time together as friends or make friends or reach out to a crush.

Cleverly playing around the dynamics in friendship and the biggest motivation within teenagers and young adults: friendships and relationships.

This other commercial Coca cola made is now about a dad reconnecting with his son.

We can now see how they are playing on the dynamics of a father and son and how to reconnect families.

Different target markets, different motivations, different commercials.

If you want to target everyone, try creating a separate campaign for each of your target market. This is surely more expensive. If you create a commercial that is talking to both teenagers and older people, your teenagers are probably going to zone out immediately because you just started talking to their grandma and grandpa and that is just not relatable for them.

Well, you might say “Everyone uses my products, my customers range from teenagers to 65 y/o and older.”

Think of it this way, if you are targeting teenagers and really talking to them through your commercials, hitting their desires and motivations so well that they become loyal to your brand and they absolutely love your brand.

What happens when they go to their grandma’s on a Saturday night for dinner and they won’t stop talking about how good your products are and how much you love them to your grandma?

The grandma might want to try your products as well!

Here’s the thing, sure everyone can be your customer but not everyone is going to be a loyal customer parading your products to everyone they know. Focus on that group of people that will talk about your product so great and will be loyal ambassadors of your product and everything else will stem from that.

So, going back to what I said earlier.. If the answer to the question, who is your target market, lies around 20-30 y/o females is not specific enough then, what is?

Being specific in your demographics is great but even 20-30 year olds don’t all get along. Each of them have different wants and desires and motivations.

Some of these groups are into sports, gyms and fitness while some are into reading books, painting and meditation. Rarely do you ever know a person who is equally into both.

So, when I say be specific, you should deep dive into their personality..

What is their belief?

How do they live their life? Do they go to the gym and cook their food everyday or are they he kind of people that does take outs and rarely touches the kitchen?

What drives them? What’s their motivation? Do they want social status, do they want more money, career progressions? Do they want a partner?

Who are the people they follow and listen to? If you know who influences them, you are most likely to understand how to talk to them, you can also use these influencers to promote your products to them.

What are their goals?

And what is stopping them from achieving these goals?

If you can get as specific as this, you are going to create commercials, ads and messaging that really catches their attention.

But here’s the question, how do you even know the answers to this question?

You have to ask them.

You can’t assume your target market's psychographics based on your own life experiences. You have to ask them.

This is where you ask a group of people to answer a survey for you or pay them to come into a focus group meeting where you ask them questions or you let them test your product for research.

And I believe, a lot of businesses, skip this very important part of research. They assume their audiences based on what they know and how they live their lives and this is why most brands are not hitting the nail on catching their audience’s attention.

Look, if you are your target market, it makes it easier for you but at the end of the day, I still encourage you to do a market research and ask people like you and see if there is a common denominator that you are missing. It could be the one thing that could change the trajectory of your business forever.