I recently had a question from a newly graduated marketing student: How do you expand your market? In other words, if you know who your customers are and have identified your target market, how do you get more people to buy your product or service offerings?

There is a textbook answer to this question and there is a real-life business answer. The textbook answer is you advertise in places where your potential customers will see what you are offering. An example of this is what is happening in terms of display ads on web sites. You define your target market, a click-through ad is designed and placed, interested viewers click and end up on your website. They see, understand and buy your product. That sounds really easy.

The real-life answer is not so easy. There are two things that complicate the expansion of your market. First, people are fickle. Their attitudes could be going one direction one day and the opposite direction the next. We live in a world of extremes. Think of the social attitudes that have changed from swinging one direction to the other in the past year. I suggest you get to know your target market well enough that you can distinguish between what is a value for them and what is a fleeting attitude. What is the difference? Values don’t change, attitudes do. So to expand your market, you have to understand what lines are considered unchanging values with your customers and market within those lines. For instance, Subway restaurants recently hired a spokesperson who had some very harsh anti-American things to say that went viral. Did that cross a value line with Subway customers? If so, they are in trouble. But if Subway is targeting a younger demographic that may hold the same values as the spokesperson, they will expand their market. However, if the younger demographic they have targeted doesn’t really see the whole anti-USA expression as their life-long passion – in other words, it is a passing fad with them – Subway just fell hard for an attitude that will not last and risked losing other customers who value the exact opposite viewpoint.

The second complication is how you are viewed versus your competition. If you are going to expand your market, you have to distinguish your brand from your competitors. If you don’t, you will not grow. However, that distinction has to be something that impacts your target market and solves a problem for them. If it has no meaning for them, your distinction will mean nothing. For instance, if I were trying to sell the concept of windmill energy to a group of people who make their living in the natural gas and oil industry, I may be blowing air in the wrong direction. However, if I know there is a common problem that people in my target market are dealing with and my competitors cannot fix it, the door is wide open for me to expand if I can solve it. Your marketing should focus on the difference between you and them and the solution to the problem. This should be all over your marketing. Put it on your website homepage, splash it all over social media, wear it on a T-shirt.