If you’re an Internet marketer, you need to know your target market. But this can be especially difficult for Internet marketers. Market segmentation can give you vital information about your target market.
Trying to market on the Internet without knowing who your target market members are, is like shooting blindfolded with a bouncing target.
Unfortunately, many Internet marketers depend totally on keywords without trying to discover anything about the people who use those keywords.
I call that marketing madness because it just throws time and money at marketing with little return on investment.
What Do You Know About
Your Target Market?
The easiest way to work with a target market is to target a market like yourself. You already know how you react, and many of those reactions can be generalized to others like you.
The problem comes when your target market is not like you. This is often the case today if you, like many Internet marketers, select a niche based on the number of searches for a keyword and the number of competing sites.
You must conduct research to determine:
How do you know how target market member’s in these niches will react?
How do you know the best appeals to reach them?
How do you know how to focus your Web site or blog to appeal to them?
What Type of Market
Research Do You Do?
As an Internet marketer if you want to succeed online, good market research is vital.
Keyword research, monitoring forums and groups, and talking to people are important first steps, but are not enough. Once you’ve learned demographics from these types of research, you can use those demographics to discover much more about your target market, by using market segmentation.
Market segmentation provides a way of using demographic information to determine psychographic, sociographic and behavioral characteristics that enable you to discover the best appeals for your target market.
If you need help getting information about your target market, I’ve researched 19 target market profiles. One may be just what you’re looking for.
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Posted 7-28-08:
Internet Marketers Need
To Know Their Target Markets
Do you use market segmentation? If you’re an Internet marketer, you probably don’t. More off line business owners use market segmentation than do Internet Marketers. Why?
One reason is because Internet marketers often target markets by key words and phrases and don’t know the demographic characteristics of the people who search for those key words.
Internet Marketers
Need Demographic Information
On Their Target Markets
If you’re an Internet marketer, you may not know enough demographic information about the people using your key words to utilize market segmentation. But if you learn, you can improve your marketing and increase your sales. And it’s not that hard.
Getting demographic information about your target markets requires some research and will likely cost you some time and/or money. But the results of market segmentation are worth it.
The simplest way to learn the demographics of your target market is to survey its members.
If you’ve already built a good list, it will be easier and cheaper to conduct research and determine your target market’s demographics than if you have to advertise for people to take your survey. So you can relatively easily and inexpensively utilize market segmentation with a list.
How To Get
Demographic Information
On Your Target Market
To conduct demographic research for the people who use your key words, you first need to have something to offer them in return for providing you with their information. Digital information products work well because you can deliver them instantly for no delivery charge.
How To Get Demographic Information
Through Pay Per Click
If you don’t have a good list, then you will have to use pay-per-click. You can get people who search for your key words to click on your advertisement and trade their demographics for your free digital product. That is if your product is something they want enough to exchange their contact information for it.
Pay-per-click advertising can be costly, and it may not reach the same people who click on organic search results for your key words. I recently read research indicating that the people who click on pay-per-click ads are usually younger and less likely to purchase a product than people who click on organic search results. They comprise two different segments so getting information on clickers to use for searchers can distort your market segmentation research.
How To Get Demographic Information
Through Forums
You may get less distorted information by joining forums that your target market members are likely to join and post your proposal there.
Whichever, technique you use to get demographic information on your target market, you have to have that information before you can use market segmentation to get personality characteristics and buying behavior.
The next post in this series will guide you to get demographic information with surveys. Then you can use information from the surveys to get even more information on your target market using market segmentation. You can access that post below:
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Posted 6-25-08: Market Segmentation
For Internet Marketers 1
Linda holds a Doctorate in Education (Ed.D.) and is accredited in Public Relations (APR). She has practiced marketing, public relations and communication skills for over 30 years. She is President of Best Books Plus, Inc., an online and off line publishing company.
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