Bless your soul if you have a die-hard support system, clique, posse or squad, who will do anything to support you. Unfortunately, that is not sustainable when you are starting out in business. What is also not sustainable is deciding to do the exact same thing another business or competitor is doing. This is risky in that you are blindly following something and not being intentional or strategic about it and so when your competitor decides to do something else, do you do the exact same thing? Jump off a cliff? And who says it will even work out for you? Here is what I mean.
What I Did Wrong
When I started out with my sewing business, I was not strategic about it. I was fortunate enough for my target market to make itself known to me (you have to be very observant of this) but I decided to go with what was popular and trending that everyone was doing. What was the thing I did? Trying to sell the African Print Maxi Skirts because everyone was making them and making money from them. Now don't get me wrong, those skirts are the bomb and there is absolutely nothing wrong with making and selling them. I know quite a few seamstresses who are making a killing selling them but I had no strategy and all I knew was that they were popular and people were making money. So I went ahead and started making them too. But guess what? That has been my least selling item to date. It's so bad I still have skirts that I am trying to sell. That is the biggest lesson I learned because instead of making money that is money that I spent and is just sitting there. It would hurt my heart to have to give these away after I spent time and money on them.
So back to target market, we can see that it is very important to be strategic and intentional about who your target market should be.
Who is a target market?
Your target market is the people who your product is specifically aimed towards. These are people who are guaranteed to buy from you because what you have is exactly what they are looking for. From my example, I did not have anyone I had aimed towards. I just had a product I needed to sell, and so that was the problem. Who exactly was I selling it to? How would I market it?
Your Avatar
Your target market has to be specific. If possible create an avatar, an exact character with specific descriptions of the person that would buy your product. For example, the avatar for my African Print Maxi Skirts would have been Jane about 29 years old and loves the African culture. She is a wife and mother of 2 and usually does most of her shopping online. She has several social media handles including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and is on several Facebook groups that showcase African Print fashion and clothing. Her and her husband both work and average about $100,000 household income. They have enough money leftover to spend on whatever they want and so she spends her money on good quality clothing. She also loves to be unique and stand out.
I could hone in so much more on Jane from ethnic background to her location. But the idea is to identify and analyze your avatars spending habits and see how you can cater to that. Believe it or not, there are several Jane's out there and imagine the potential income if you could zone in on all Jane's (different names of course) and sell your product to them.
What Characteristics to look at
The characteristics to help you identify your target market are:
- Demographics - Age, gender, location, income, education level, occupation, marital status,
- Psychographic - Personality, lifestyle, values, hobbies, attitude
Once you figure these out you have to see if that market is big enough for you to cater to and how your product will cater to your target market.
That was alot huh, but very informative. Join me in the next part of the Business series when we take a look at how to seek out your target market.
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