The second step in developing a marketing strategy is to decide which segments of the market you’ll go after. Or perhaps I should say which segments you’ll ignore as deciding what not to do is often the more important choice.
But first, let me explain the difference between terms that we marketers tend to use interchangeably:
Target segment - a specific market segment you decide to go after.
Target market - all your target segments combined, they buy and use the products in the category.
Target audience - everyone who resonates with your marketing communications regardless of whether they buy the products. For example, technology fans likely belong to the target audience of Tesla, but only a few of them will ever buy the car.
If you’ve done a good job with your segmentation, your target segments tend to be pretty obvious and easy to choose.
To choose your target segments, ask yourself these six questions:
Does your product align with what the segment wants?
Does it bring you the most value if you increase your market share there?
Do you have the sales and marketing resources to increase your market share there?
How difficult is it going to be to increase your market share there?
Does this segment influence any other segments? If so, how?
What are the trade-offs if you shift your focus on new segments?
Your ideal target segments are those where you can make the most money given the resources available.
Keep in mind that some segments might influence the buying behavior of other segments. Those can be influential people in B2C or leading companies in your industry in B2B. Consider this spill-over value as well:
The workload like this whatsapp number list allows both the vendor and the affiliate to focus on. Clicks are the number of clicks coming to your website’s URL from organic search results.
As you can see from my market segmentation example, two relatively small segments influence the buying behavior of a much larger segment. If you decided to go after the “pro small senders” and “pro big senders” segments, you’d get new customers from the “influenced small senders” segment without ever targeting it.
Regarding the last question about trade-offs, you also have to consider that some of your current customers will inevitably leave for competitors. If you decide to shift your focus and resources elsewhere, it will be easier for your competitors to poach those customers from you.
Most importantly, keep in mind that targeting everyone is rarely the best strategy. Answering those six questions should make it obvious.