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SMEJapan.com CEO Joel Devidal: How to Settle on a Target Market
The more you understand about your customers, the more successful your business can be.
The more you understand about your customers, the more successful your business can be. However, the challenge you face as an entrepreneur isn't just getting information on your target market, but who exactly should be in it in the first place. Many ventures struggle at this step, targeting too broad a market, resulting in a weakened marketing campaign. Joel Devidal, successful entrepreneur and SMEJapan.com CEO shares a few questions you should answer before settling on a target market.
1. Who Would Pay for Your Product?
The first thing you need to figure out is what problem you're solving. If you have trouble answering that question, you can instead think of how you can improve someone's life. In either event, it will lead you to people willing to pay for your product.
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Remember, you're not just looking for people who will need your product, but those who are aware of the problem it will solve. Utilizing Google's keyword tool, for example, can give you an idea what search strings people are using. Performing this keyword research will tell you if people are aware of the problem and how many of them there are.
2. What Do Others Think?
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You can only have so much perspective as an entrepreneur. Your experience changes the moment you found a start-up. From that point onward, you're a producer and a seller, not a consumer. What you find appealing may not necessarily be the same for customers.
Fortunately, there are plenty of people around you with opinions and varying perspectives. Tap your network and ask for feedback on your product. You don't have to follow their advice, but the additional information can lead to breakthroughs.
3. Is Your Proposed Reach Realistic?
Being proud of your product is natural. It's your creation, and you made it the best you can. Unfortunately, merely assuming most people will pay for your product is often a losing proposition. Just because you can see its value doesn't mean others can or will. This is why you must verify your assumptions before acting.
“Talk to potential customers and get a realistic idea of your audience. This will focus your marketing efforts and make them more effective. There are plenty of ways to reach out to potential customers, from conducting surveys to talking to people on the street,” suggests Joel Devidal.
4. Examine Your Assumptions
Much of what you do as an entrepreneur involves educated guesses. This is not an inherently bad thing. It is part of the process and the only thing you can do before you get real data. However, problems can arise if you don't examine where those assumptions come from. They can come from your experience rather than from an actual understanding of your proposed audience.
Just because you've worked in the food industry doesn't necessarily mean you understand everyone who likes fast food. The only way to truly understand your audience is to interact with them. Make sure any assumptions you make are based on your customers and not on you.
5. How Will You Sell Your Offering?
What many companies often forget is how they can reach their audience. Your audience could involve the whole world, but you can only sell to people who can access your selling point. Who you choose as your start-up's reach should determine your initial target audience. How you sell your product has as much impact on who you market to as who will find a use for it. Online businesses, for example, tend to attract younger audiences.
6. Whom are the Competitors Targeting?
One of the great things about becoming an entrepreneur is that it's been done before. Your product may be new, but founding a successful start-up is nothing new. You have points of reference, and you can use that to your advantage.
Study the competition. Take a look at who they initially targeted and figure out why. You're not looking to copy them; you're looking to learn from them. Everything they did was for a reason. If you can figure out why they made certain decisions, you can use that information to help shape your own path.
Figuring out your target market is integral to your success as an entrepreneur. You may have a great product, but if you don't know whom you're selling to, you won't know how to angle it, or what price point to set. Everything revolves around the customer, and your start-up is constrained if you don't know who the customer is.
About Joel Devidal:
Joel Devidal is a veteran in the business world; as a founder and CEO, he has a knack for finding investors, launching companies, and keeping steady growth post-launch. Beyond business, Joel is an active part of his community supporting local organizations and helping young entrepreneurs get their start.
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