Your key to content success: target markets

Definition of a target market

A target market is a group of people who usually have similar interests or traits who a business will focus on to market and sell their products.

When it comes to your target market and positioning your content correctly, there are some rules that you should certainly follow. The idea of a target market is to make it easier to sell to those who might be interested in your products and services rather than to everyone in the world. Focusing your efforts towards your specific market will save you all kinds of resources in the long run!

Who is your target market?

We’ve done a couple of posts on this subject using the term “persona” – this is a form of target market specified down to a single idea of a person. Ultimately, it’s the same thing!

When you think about the term target market, you should be thinking about the people who might want to buy your products. Let’s take a look at a target market example, The target market of a PC gaming chair might have these similar traits, demographics, likes and dislikes.

• Plays video games and spends a lot of time on it as a hobby
• Has a PC or console at home
• Is likely between the age range of 16 – 40
• More likely to be men than women
• Needs a comfortable place to sit, something that will be good for their posture.
• Has some disposable income
• Will likely frequent these social media platforms regularly: YouTube, Reddit, Discord, Twitter, Twitch, Facebook, Instagram.

Have a think about your customers or who your potential customers will be. What are the characteristics that you could use to group them together?

For more information on working out your own check out these two posts: Creating customer personas using an empathy map and Creating personas for products, customer service and marketing.

Be specific about your target market

You might be thinking “Why does all of that information really matter, I just want to sell to people that want to buy my products” – it’s a fair point and it would be great if things could be that simple but there are a few reasons why this doesn’t really work as a strategy for most businesses.

Competition – it’s not uncommon to have a lot of competition within your sector, people open businesses all the time and there are usually businesses out there that will be more established than you. One of the ways that you can stand out is by making your voice heard by the right people.
Knowledge is power – You want to be selling your products to people that are already open to buying. Selling a gaming chair will be more difficult for someone that isn’t in the market. Knowing where those people are and advertising to them is a step in the right direction.
Writing becomes a whole lot easier – It makes it so much easier to write content for your website, social media platforms etc. You should have a good idea of what the people your targeted are interested and curating content for them will be a piece of cake.

How to position your content for your target market?

You’re already in a great position if you know who your target market consists of but it takes a little work to get your content in the right position.

Let’s take another quick example here:

You are a new shop owner selling a make-up subscription box, a little bit like Glossybox or Birchbox. Your products are ethically sourced, top of the line moisturizers and makeup testers. Your customers will likely be ladies with disposable income, around the ages of 30 – 60. What kind of content will attract these people?

You need to make sure that your content is doing two things – first, it should be proving that you are an authority to be trusted within your industry. Secondly, it needs to be interesting to your audience whilst giving them a little taste of what you and your brand have to offer. People want to buy products from people (as opposed to robots), and people that they trust!

So, an example of curated content for the target market in our subscription box example would be related to these kinds of topics; Sustainability/ethics, classic staple products, new products with a focus on ingredients, benefits of certain ingredients, posts about working women, topics that might be interesting to millenials/gen y/gen x.

These are some of the ideas that might be pertinent to the target market for this kind of product.

Why is your content so important to your marketing strategy?

It can be so easy to default to attempting to attract everyone and honestly, sometimes that strategy does work, but it shouldn’t be your go to option. You have to work harder to prove to a wider market that your product is relevant to them, you have to expel a lot of effort sifting through people that might be time wasters or just not interested in your product. Being a little more targeted in your marketing gives you a much better at attracting the right kind of attention.

So, spend a little time nailing down who your target market truly is and what kind of content they might want to be reading. Sometimes this can be a bit difficult, especially if that target market isn’t you. Try to place yourself in the shoes of someone from that segment and think about what kinds of things impact their life, what do they need to know from you and how can you offer them the best service possible?

If you’d like to chat to us a little more about what it takes to write great content for your website then pop us a message over to hello@avidmode.com.