Your home based business’s target market is the group of potential buyers you products or services zero in on for sales and profits. Your target consumers are people who are most likely to buy your merchandise. Defining your focus group is one of your most important tasks when creating your home based business because a poorly defined target will make your Internet marketing strategy difficult to implement and unproductive in terms of sales and profits.
Some questions you should ask when determining your niche are: Is your target male or female? How old are they? What are their occupations? What is their average income? Where do they live? And so on. These answers will help you zero in on your target and knowing this information will enable you to tailor your Internet marketing campaign toward meeting your niche’s needs.
When you create a product to sell from your home business website it should be made specifically for your target. If after beginning your advertising campaign you find your target to be too small or not as responsive as you would like to your offer there are ways you can add other targets to your existing product including using these four techniques.
1. You can bundle your finished product with another piece of merchandise in order to focus in on another segment of the market. For example, if you’re selling hockey equipment you can include a monthly subscription to a hockey news publication, so now you have targeted not only people who play hockey but also hockey fans that enjoy reading about the sport.
2. Provide a freebie with your main product which will attract a different group to your home business merchandise. People sometimes buy a product just to get the free gift which goes along with the final sale. Sports Illustrated provides a prime example of how to effectively employ this type of marketing strategy. For years they would give away a piece of merchandise for signing up to a yearly subscription of their publication which would attract an entirely different segment to their magazine.
3. Re-design your finished product to appeal to a different group of potential customers. For example, if your home business theme revolves around information products for Internet marketers and you’ve written an e-book directed toward affiliate marketers you can add a couple of chapters dedicated to how to create a home business online. This will be of interest to anyone wanting to create an income from home on the web as well as attract the attention of affiliate marketers on the Internet.
4. Team up with another home based business online that offers similar but non competing merchandise and promote their product while they promote your merchandise. If you sell DVD’s partner with an enterprise that sells DVD players and your potential customers as well as your sales and profits should increase exponentially as a result of these strategy.
As you can see, by using these techniques your target market is only limited by your imagination. If you find your home based business too restricted or limited by your niche you can always redefine or expand your Internet marketing campaign to include additional targets to get your enterprise headed in the right direction on the path to prosperity online.