Developing a Marketing Plan for Your Box - Pt3: Target Market

The next step in developing a marketing plan is crucially important. You’ll need to develop your target market. This is important because you need to know who you are trying to reach. And don’t say everyone. Everyone is not a target market and you’ll fail if you try to target everyone.

It will be much easier to market to people if you know exactly who you want to reach. I’d suggest to start by looking at your current members. What do your best members have in common?

You can base your target market on:

• Age
• Income
• Education
• Interests
• Attitude
• Lifestyle
• Values
• Marital Status

You can basically create your target market on anything.

Here are some example target markets
Example 1: Working professional Moms in the Bay area.
Example 2: Middle-aged adults on heart medication.
Example 3: Professional gamers under 25.

Your target market should be specific, but sometimes it might be too specific. For example, Single Jewish women who are 30-35 years old who watch reruns of Lost and live in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This target market might be way too specific and may not have a large enough market to sell to.

Once you have a general idea of who your target market is, you can even create a customer archetype. I like to think of a customer archetype as if you were making up a customer and creating a Facebook profile for them.

You could make up an archetype that says: This is Sara Jones. She’s 27 years old and works as a 5th grade math teacher in Denver. She likes to keep in shape by doing Yoga and running and she reads lots of health and style magazines and books. She’s been in a relationship for the past three years. Her friends say she’s funny and is one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. She’s volunteered at an animal shelter since she was a freshman in college.

The purpose of this exercise is to bring your potential customers to life. It’s so you can start to see them as real people. But more importantly, it’s so you can figure out how and where to market to these people.

For example, where does a young mother who does Pilates 4 days a week eat? Is she more likely to eat at Burger King or shop at Trader Joe’s. I’m going to say Trader Joe’s and maybe you start marketing to places like that.

Remember the golden rule: Know thy customer.

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