These days many entrepreneurs are struggling to find enough customers just to keep the doors open. While survival is the key right now, be careful not to set the stage for a business model that won’t be sustainable when the good times return.
Understanding who our target market is and what they want from us as customers, are the keys to developing a brand that customers will remain loyal to over time. It help to create what marketing folks like to call our product positioning. A strong market position can help protect sales over the long-term, even during economic downturns.
Steve McKee reminds us of the importance of a clear target market in our businesses in his recent article in Business Week:
That underscores an important principle: The further removed your brand
is from your core target, the less relevant you should expect it to
be–and to some people, perceptions about your brand may even tip into
the negative column.
So in the race to find enough sales to keep afloat, we can run the risk of alienating our core group of customers.
THis is an interesting article but I think it misses out on an important point connected with the new internet age. As more and more marketing is carried out over the net, actually targetting your market seems to get harder not easier. I run a small web-based business here in the UK and we target SME’s. The problem we have is that with Pay-per-click Search engine marketing we have no control over who actually comes to our site, and consequently we find our marketing costs higher than we can realistically sustain.
I’d be very interested in any advice there is on targetting over the web!