Identifying the target market for your micro-entrepreneurial business allows you to focus your marketing efforts. After you figure out who your target market is however, you need to learn where to find your target market so you can pitch your advertising to them. To do so, ask yourself these questions:
Is my target market easily found with a search engine?
Is my target market found offline, such as a local club meeting, church gathering, social or civic group, chamber of commerce, or other area of affinity?
Does my target market congregate at LinkedIn or other Internet venues?
Does my target market show up at conferences, trade shows, or other large industry gatherings?
Who reaches my target market but doesn’t compete with me?
After you answer these questions, you can formulate a marketing plan. If part of your target market is offline, find out where it meets so you can attend its events. If members of your market are in a formal association, you can go to your library’s reference section and look up the Encyclopedia of Associations for details. You can also find groups at places such as Meetup and LinkedIn.
The question “Who reaches my target market but doesn’t compete with me?” is a zero-cost marketing question because it opens up your creativity (and many possibilities) to do joint ventures with marketers that do reach your target market. (Zero-cost marketing generally means performing marketing strategies without paying any money up-front for them.)
For example, suppose you’re a videographer who specializes in wedding videos. You might spend a small fortune advertising your business in bridal magazines and wedding directories. You might join and get active in photography associations in your area, but you might hesitate you’re not a photographer.
But actually, that’s the point. Videographers and photographers reach the same target market but don’t compete with each other. By joining and became active with a photographers’ association, you will probably receive several business referrals from those photographers.