What is the one thing you can do to become more effective with your marketing? That is a question I am often asked. People are expecting me to tell them something like you need to have a strong social media presence or you need to advertise in a particular medium. Those can be effective methods of marketing, but if I could back you up a step or two, the best marketing advice I could give you is to know your target market very well.

Define your market

How do you determine your target market? Who buys from you now? Who might need your products or services that they are not buying from you now? Can you define them demographically or by some other characteristic? These people would make up a target market. Is it possible to appeal to more than one target market? Yes, it is. However, not everyone is a great fit for what you sell. It is important to make a distinction between three groups: those that are a great fit, those that are a good fit, and those that are not a fit at all.

Get into their skin

Once you have defined a target market, you need to understand them. You need to know what they think and how they act. How do you go about that? The easiest method is to simply ask them questions that reveal what they are thinking. That may take the form of a customer satisfaction survey or by simply spending time with them and asking them what they think. What kind of questions should you ask? Find out where there are pain points in their lives, especially where it pertains to your products and services. For instance, if you are selling office equipment, you might ask, "Are you satisfied with your current printer? Does it do everything you want it to?” That would lead to some sort of answer that would give you a clue as to what they are expecting from the office printer. They might not like the print quality or the amount of ink it takes to run the machine. Maybe they think it is too expensive to maintain. Maybe it works slowly. Whatever the problem, if your products could solve the problems they are having, you would have an easy time with your marketing.

The first job of marketing is to make a connection with the target market through awareness of the brand. Your first message to a potential customer is how that brand fixes their problems. The second job of marketing is to get the potential customer in the target market to give your product or service a try. Enticing them to see for themselves that it works. You can never effectively take these first two steps if you are not close enough to your target market to be able to define the problem. You have to get into their skin to have this kind of impact on them.

Years ago, I was working at a publisher, and we had a vendor who supplied us with film, printing plates, and chemicals. The business was owned by two brothers. Every Friday, one of the brothers would show up with a box of donuts and spend time with the people who were working the floor. He spent the majority of his time talking with the people who were actually using his products instead of with the management of the company. Why did he do this? He knew that the people who were using his products had a big impact on what products were actually purchased by the company. He was there to get into their skin for about 45 minutes on Friday mornings.

What is one thing you can do to become more effective in marketing? Get inside the skin of your target market. It will pay off in the end.