Before you can appeal to your target market, you’ll need to define that market. Who is your buying market — and who is not? One way to do this is by utilizing empathy mapping, which allows you to answer these questions and gear your efforts toward a market that’s right for your product or service.
Getting to know you
Once you’ve defined that market, how do you get to know your audience on a deeper level — and why is this so important for current and future relationships? Here are four ways you can determine your market based on information they can give you:
- First, find out details about them that will allow you to reach them on a more personal level. Ask people to fill in the information for you. Who employs them? What are their marital statuses, genders, educational backgrounds, and industries?
- Build implicit nuances. To do this, you can ask questions that will give you contextual clues to find out about their personalities and preferences. Who do they interact with every day? What do their clients or employers say about them? Who affects them? What do they say to themselves in private moments? If you can flesh out answers to these questions, then you can begin to create an image of these people and appeal to them more effectively.
- Find out what they think and feel. What stresses them out? Who inspires them, and what kind of people do they aspire to be? Find out their goals, motivations, and ambitions. Overall, what do they want for themselves — and how do they plan to attain their aspirations?
- Be able to describe what their existing mentality is toward what you can offer them. How familiar are they with the benefits of your system? Find out the reasons, right or wrong, for their interest in your services. Keying in on their motivations for working with you can provide great insight into where the relationship is going and what you can both expect from it.
Finding this kind of information is vital to truly understanding your target market. Put yourself inside your ideal client’s mind so you can tailor your relationship. It can be the key to increased efficiency and more closings.
Streamlining the process
Going from a more general marketing conversation to a more specific conversation that’s tailored to your target market can impact your sales, as well as the cost of appealing to a certain market. If you spend the same amount of money on more specific leads that produce better results, then you’ll have no need to do a sweeping marketing campaign; you can appeal to those who truly want to hear what you have to say.
Before you even begin the sales process, you should determine whom you’ll be talking with. By the time you get to the sales pitch, you’ll know that you’re already working with people who are interested. This can get you to a decision much faster, and the chances of that decision being a “yes” are much greater.
Knowing what, exactly, your target market is looking for is the most efficient way to conduct sales. You can spend X amount of dollars marketing to a random selection of individuals and hoping that a few will take the offer. Or you can spend X amount of dollars marketing to pre-selected candidates whose interest in your service is evident and are, therefore, more likely to take the offer. Which scenario seems more efficient and effective?
When you have pertinent information about your target market before the sales process even begins, you generally know what their answer is going to be, based on that information. You can glean much more information about your service from a “no” answer if it comes from the mouth of one of those pre-selected candidates than you can from a random person. If a likely candidate says no, then you can start asking yourself why that is, rather than blow it off with a defensive “They weren’t interested in the first place.”
Let the results defend your transition
The people who are defending the traditional sales pitch of marketing to a random audience are becoming dinosaurs. The progressive process of actually knowing your target market is a change that companies should welcome if they’re looking to improve.
Everything is constantly changing, and the sales process is not immune. Try this approach. Give it a shot with a small sample, and see how it turns out. You can’t necessarily predict sales results, but you can anticipate the results much more clearly if you can forecast the client’s answers before you even make the pitch. In the ever-changing business world, the only risk you take is remaining stagnant.
Go forth, learn about your market, and conquer your sales aspirations more efficiently than you ever have before.
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