Target Market Strategy

Target Marketing: Definition, Strategy, and Uses

Target marketing is a potent marketing strategy that divides a particular market into specific segments, allowing businesses to locate their niche audience. Using target marketing, firms can concentrate their marketing efforts on key segments/niches that closely match their business offerings and objectives and get closer to the best possible leads, leading to increasing conversions, and better sales.

Segmentation, targeting, and positioning (STP) is the central process of target marketing. Together, they help businesses find the right target market and devise effective tactics & long-term strategies. So, what is a target market? What meaning or definition can perfectly describe it? And how do the STP process and target marketing strategies help businesses identify the ideal target market & connect with the right audience?

This content takes a deep dive into all the nuances of target marketing. if you are working on a target marketing assignment help, review this page for quick revision.

What Is Target Marketing? How To Get Started & What Are The Different Stages of Population?

Target marketing campaigns begin with market or customer segmentation.

• The S of the STP process, segmentation, involves analysing and evaluating a market & then classifying the market population. Every category must have an overarching criterion or category variable that aptly identifies it and accurately represents the group.

 Market segmentation uses multiple attributes to classify customers into the most appropriate segments.

• Targetingis the next phase of target marketing. Businesses evaluate every market segment to determine which group aligns with their business. Companies carry out detailed investigations and studies to assess segment features & attractiveness.

 Based on evaluations, businesses choose one or more segments for targeting.

• The P of the STP processis positioning, a process where the business’s offerings (features, marketing strategies, etc.) are designed so that they occupy a clear, distinct, and prominent place in the market and the customer’s minds, relative to the competition.

 Segmentation, targeting, and placement are the three pillars of any target marketing strategy. Businesses modify and develop customised plans based on their objectives and the nature of the market.

 Target Market Strategy Definition

What is the target market strategy meaning? Well, it is a business and market-specific strategy that allows a company to understand a market, segment it in the best way possible, and find the most appropriate segment for product placement.

A terrific target marketing strategy helps businesses find the audience with whom their products & marketing strategies will resonate the most.

 Implementation & Control of Marketing Strategy

Implementation and control of the marketing strategy are essential aspects of any marketing plan. It ensures timely optimisation of tactics, reformulation of objectives, pivoting, and achievement of long-term goals.

It is all about continual monitoring and simultaneous evaluation of all marketing activities, market trends & conditions, assessment of the KPIs of implemented marketing strategies, maintaining records, and using insights to re-evaluate strategies.

So, what are some effective target marketing strategies? The following section explores.

 What Are The Different Target Marketing Strategies? A Look At The Four Most Prominent Ones

1. Mass Marketing

Mass marketing, also known as undifferentiated marketing, is an umbrella term for all those marketing strategies that target the masses.

Businesses offering essential products and services generally engage in mass marketing. These businesses generally use mass media to promote their offerings and target the maximum number of potential customers.

2. Differentiated Marketing

Differentiated marketing strategies come into play when a business needs to target multiple distinct market segments. Differentiated marketing targets every segment differently and offers varied benefits such as varied market coverage, lean & practical usage of resources, reaching a wider audience, improved brand recognition and increased revenue generation.

The downside of this class of strategies is their increased costs, intense competition in a particular niche segment, uncertainty, and limits on business growth.

3. Niche Marketing

Also referred to as concentrated marketing, niche marketing focuses on acquiring the largest share of one or multiple niche segments. It is a highly targeted form of marketing and depends on the acute analysis of the targeted market segment(s).

Niche marketing strategies allow businesses to place their products and services in front of a specific audience with well-defined attributes. Niche markets are subsets of a larger population and niche market audiences generally have very particular or quirky requirements.

4. Micromarketing

This is a specialised version of the target marketing strategy that dwells deep into the specific likes & dislikes of the customer. A particular section of customers in a niche market segment is scrutinised, and the features & marketing processes of a product or service are tailored to serve them.

Micromarketing strategies are implemented to cater to a substantially narrow customer base with particular demands & unique characteristics. It entails businesses to do focused research, identify nuances, and then define an audience using fixed & transient attributes.  

Technology plays a central role here, and various businesses use analytics to uncover valuable insights from customer data, feedback, etc. Naturally, the costs are high due to all the research involved and the need to design specific advertising campaigns for different segments. Also, the need for an economy of scale is another major limitation, as more significant demographics will not respond to campaigns tailored for a niche audience.

 Next, look at the different market segmentation techniques followed by businesses across sectors.

 Target Market Segmentation Techniques

A research-intensive activity, segmentation involves thorough research of a target market and categorising it according to specific attributes, properties, characteristics, and diverse needs of market members. Buyer behaviour, location, demographics, purchasing patterns, quirks and special requirements, etc., are common factors that are targeted and used to categorise a broad population into specific segments.

Five of the most prominent techniques are discussed in brief below.

1. Demographic Segmentation

Demographic segmentation uses specific, measurable statistics based on characteristics such as:

• Gender
• Age
• Income level
• Marital status
• Education
• Religion  
• Net worth
• Nationality
• Number of children

Demographic segmentation is one of the most rudimentary techniques for identifying target markets. The strengths and benefits are many and allow businesses to determine how successful a marketing campaign will be, how to tailor a campaign, which products/services will resonate with whom, etc.

1. Geographic Segmentation

Geographic segmentation is all about segmenting markets & customers according to geographic location. People living in rural areas have different needs than urban and semi-urban areas. Again, for businesses targeting multi-national audiences, the demands and requirements of people from third-world & developing countries will differ from developed countries.

Geographic segmentation takes into account the following variables such as:

• Neighbourhood
• Postal or ZIP code
• Area code
• City
• Province or state
• Region
• Country (if your business is international)

Geo-segmentation is often used in tandem with other techniques to identify target markets accurately.

2. Psychographic Segmentation

As the name suggests, psychographic segmentation studies the mindset and psychology behind a customer's preferences, buying patterns, etc. Much more in-depth than behavioural segmentation, this particular technique looks at the intricacies of how the audience thinks.

Psychographic segmentation complements demographic counterpart & looks into aspects such as:

• Consumer perception
• Way of thinking
• Pain points that they are looking to resolve
• Potential opportunities

3. Behavioural Segmentation

Behavioural segmentation investigates the buying behaviour of customers. It tracks the typical process a person goes through while buying a product or purchasing a service. Unlike psychographic segmentation, which focuses on the personalities & thinking patterns of a buyer, behavioural segmentation looks into buying behaviour by studying things such as:

• The reason for buying
• The benefits of the product being brought
• The entire journey that led to the purchase, such as other products/services looked into, the links or ads clicked upon, search intent, etc.
• Buyer preferences, product benefits, the nature of a particular customer engagement, etc.

 Research and analysis are crucial for accurate segmentation & lie at the core of target marketing campaigns. Read on below to find out the overall process of target market analysis and why data is considered as valuable as money by marketers all over.

 How To Analyse A Target Market?

Dedicated analysis and understanding the total addressable market are the first steps in target market analysis.

1. Gathering Intelligence - Compiling different kinds of data from multiple sources, gathering qualitative & quantitative insights, acquiring data from both primary & secondary sources, etc.;
2. Creating Customer Profiles and Developing Market Segments - Using acquired demographic, psychographic, behavioural data, etc., to craft customer profiles & buyer personas, generalising said profiles & personas over a wider audience, and establishing well-defined market segments to accurate targeting;
3. Scoping the Competition - Identifying the most significant competitors, understanding their strengths & weaknesses, looking at their campaigns & level of engagement, spotting trends & setting benchmarks, etc.;
4. Conducting Fresh Primary Research - Carrying out fresh research for new campaigns to acquire the latest data & identify current market trends, validating assumptions, finding out pain points, identifying any new problems & limitations, etc
5. Aligning Strategies with Business Goals - Using acquired insights to develop new perspectives and reframing existing marketing strategies accordingly, aligning marketing & even business goals with the latest customer insights & implementing the most appropriate & effective tactics, etc.
6. Formulating a robust Target Marketing Campaign - Crafting an effective target marketing campaign based on insights & pertinent tactics, modifying product & service features to ensure maximum customer engagement, etc.

Though the overall process remains the same, different businesses, markets, products and services require different approaches, research and planning. If you are working on a strategy for your target market assignment, connect with MAH.io’s experts for acute assistance.

We wrap things up with some famous examples of target marketing.

 Some Examples of Target Marketing 

Check out the following examples of target marketing to understand how effective a target market analysis can be for a business.

• Uber

Uber employs a location-based micromarketing strategy in every city it operates in or intends to expand into. For example, when the firm first forayed into the Vancouver market, it used the city’s rainy weather to nudge people into using their ride-hailing app to save time & effort.

• Gucci

Gucci has repositioned itself from a luxury brand to one that caters to the progressive, more generic demographics. Such retargeting has turned it into a much more inclusive brand that supposedly non longer serves only the rich and elite.

• Netflix

Netflix used segmentation, targeting, and positioning to provide accurate recommendations to its diverse audience.

• Airbnb

Airbnb segments its market demographically, geographically, and psychographically to suggest ideal travelling destinations, activities, accommodations, and the like.

Well, those were some prominent target marketing examples. Hope all the information above is handy for anyone working on their target marketing assignments.

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