How to Define Your Target Market

We are constantly on a quest to find new customers and increase our sales volume. Whether you’re a real estate agent, lender or title rep, the pressure to keep producing can be tremendous.

However, if you’re expecting to increase your market share without understanding who you customer is, all you’re doing is spinning your wheels. Let’s do some basic market research, and see if we can’t isolate that target market.

Define Your Database

It can’t get more basic that evaluating your current and past client database. What we’re looking for here is trends and commonalities between all these clients.

A recent Gallup Global Management study found it costs five times as much to win over a new client than it does to serve an existing one.

If you’ve run your business based off referrals for any time, you know that statement to be true. So, instead of always chasing after that new client, take the time to define your existing clients. With this knowledge you can isolate certain characteristics you work best with.

During this process you’re going to want to break down the data into as many fields as you can:

• Age
• Gender
• Marital Status
• Location
• Personality
• Values

The list can be endless. This type of information can help you understand motivations and help you build better marketing materials, videos and blog posts.

Where Is Your Competition Focusing

The next phase of research is going to revolve around your competition. You only want to target those agents or lenders that are doing more business.

Where is your competition’s marketing dollars going? Who are they targeting?

You’re not doing this exercise so you can go after the same market. You want to see if you can find any tricks or techniques within their message you can use.

Above all, don’t be afraid to embrace niches. See which niches these top producers are targeting. Rather than focusing on VA buyers, why not focus on recently married VA couples with a little one on the way?

Among all the homogenized marketing in our industry, your laser-focused message will cut right through.

Assess Your Decision

Now that you’re narrowed down who your target market is, you’re going to want to assess your decision.

At this point you’re going to want to ask a few questions:

• Count. Are there enough consumers that fit my criteria?
• Motivation. Do I really understand what drives this target audience’s decisions?
• Reach. How will I reach them with my message?

Action!

The last thing you want to do is get too specific about your target market. You’re looking for the perfect balance between the size of the niche, your knowledge and your desire to work with them. Just because you know everything about short sales, doesn’t necessarily mean you want to work them.

So, what’s your target market?

View the original article - and much more - on The Ticker Show blog!