The primary elements of intentional marketing were previewed in yesterday’s post. Today’s post covers the second element - target markets.

Intentional marketing requires determining the target market and designing marketing efforts to reach and serve target market members.

One of the biggest mistakes that small business owners make in their marketing is trying to market to everyone. They think that is the way to reach the most people and make the most sales. But it just isn’t so. Because marketing to everyone amounts to marketing to no one.

Intentional marketing considers the target market from the design of a product, through all marketing activities, distribution, and customer service. Every decision throughout the process considers:

target market members,

what they want and need,

how to best reach them, and

how to best serve them.

In other words, intentional marketing is also relationship marketing. Maintaining a positive relationship with target market members should be the primary objective of all intentional marketing activities.

Unfortunately, the target market element of intentional marketing is also what makes intentional marketing controversial. Some marketers target children, a particular race, or some disadvantaged market, to persuade them to make or influence decisions that are not in their best interest.

Of course such “intentional marketing” is controversial because its intention is to benefit the business with no regard for the welfare of target market members. It’s manipulative. The business may make short-term gains with such “intentional marketing.” But in the long run, it hurts more than it helps.

The more positive approach to intentional marketing, relationship marketing, helps both the business and customers. It’s mutually beneficial. The business makes money and the customers get their needs and wants met with good products and services.

The first step for this second element of intentional marketing, is to identify your target market. The second step is to learn everything that you can about your target market members.

If you’ve identified your target market and know its members’ demographics, you can get a Free Target Market Analysis by clicking on the link in this sentence.

Read more about the Elements of Intentional Marketing.

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Posted 7-16-08: Elements of Intentional Marketing 2:
Target Market

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Category: Target Markets

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