Marketing Made Easy:

A Beginner’s Guide to Growing Your Business

Step 1

Starting a new business involves a lot of work and planning and sometimes those involve areas you might not feel confident in. Marketing is often one of those areas.

So, would you like a step-by-step guide to help you create a “doable” marketing plan for your new business?

Marketing Made Easy: A Beginners Guide to Growing Your Business is here to help!

Over the next few weeks, we’ll walk you through it in an easy to do format to reduce the overwhelm.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• Learn the Basics: Find out how to understand your market and create a message that makes you stand out from the competition.
• Build Your Online Presence: Learn the basics of creating an effective website and setting up key social media platforms.
• Explore More Marketing Tools to Grow Your Audience: Discover the value of growing your email list, powerful brochures and networking events to reach more customers.

Let’s start with the first, most important step that will help you create a simple, but effective, marketing strategy

Step 1- Define Your Target Market

So, why is it important to understand who your target market is?

Focus- You want to concentrate your efforts on a specific segment. You can’t focus on everyone and create an effective marketing strategy or plan.

Experience- Provide a more satisfying customer experience

Efficiency- You’ll be able to manage your resources more effectively. This means things like your time and not trying to be everything to everyone. It can also mean being able to know the problems your target market has and your solution to those problems.

Better Communication– So the words you use and the message you are sending will resonate with them.

Higher Conversion Rates– When you are meeting the specific needs of a niche group, you will generally see higher sales as a result.

 

How to Identify Your Target Market

1. Analyze your products or services.

          List all the features and benefits your products or services offer.

          Then, identify the problems that they solve.

2. Do a little market research.

          Study your competitors. Who are they targeting and how are they doing it?

3. Identify the demographics and psychographics of your target market.

Knowing things such as age, gender, income level, education, marital status, occupation, etc. will give you that first level of understanding of who they are and how that matters to your business.

Understanding things such as their lifestyle, their values, interests, opinions, and attitudes will give you more clues about how to reach them.

 

How to Test the Market

At this point you might have been working from a “best guess” model. Now it’s time to test what you have come up with so far to make sure that this really is a good target market and that there is enough of a market for your business to be profitable.

Here are some ways to do this:

•  Create a sample, or minimum viable product, that will allow you to test the feedback and interest in the product or service.
•  Conduct a survey or interview with potential customers to see what they think and the level of interest they have in what you want to offer.
•  Do a Google search to see what shows up. What are people looking for and asking about?
•  Use social media. Find groups that are most like your target market and see what they are saying. Does there seem to be a lot of talk and interaction?
•  Utilize platforms like YouGov, Statista, or Pew Research Center for comprehensive demographic data.

 

Practical Exercises

Exercise 1: SWOT Analysis

• Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats: Apply SWOT to both your business and potential market segments.

Use this form to help you.

SWOT worksheets

Exercise 2: Develop Detailed Personas

Give Each Persona a Name and Background:

• Humanize the Persona: Name, photo, job title, and a brief biography.
• Day in the Life: Describe a typical day for the persona.

Include Key Characteristics:

• Demographic Details: Age, gender, income, etc.
• Psychographic Information: Interests, values, lifestyle.

Outline Goals and Challenges:

• Primary Goals: What they want to achieve.
• Primary Challenges: What obstacles they face.

Behavioral Insights:

• Buying Behavior: How they make purchasing decisions.
• Preferred Channels: Where they consume information (e.g., social media, email).

By working through these steps and using these tools, you can define a clear and actionable target market, setting a strong foundation for your business growth.

 

Next, we will look at crafting your Unique Value Proposition to help you stand out from the competition.

 

For more help with this, contact us at rhondaloweconsulting@gmail.com