For some businesses, the process of identifying a target market comes intuitively and for others, not so easy. You might have a product or service that you believe is beneficial for everyone, and that might be true. The only problem is that for effective marketing and branding, you need to have a specific target market.

For example, think of the difference between a generalist and a specialist – if you had to undergo a surgery, would you trust a doctor who does everything or a specialized surgeon? The answer is obviously the latter.

The same idea goes for your marketing efforts: if you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to the least amount of people. To sum it up:

Can your target market be everyone?

No. If your goal is to appeal to everyone you should instead have multiple target markets that you can define and market to accordingly.

Let’s start by identifying the definition of the target market.

What is the target market?

A target market is a group of people bound together by characteristics like behaviors, demographics, and interests who are most likely to purchase your products or services.

People have different opinions, tastes, preferences and so on. At some point, you have to decide, who you wish to appeal to, in order to create a loyal following and a solid brand.

Here’s why you need to identify your target market:

1. Knowing your target market will help you provide better quality products and services

You need to be able to pinpoint the exact needs you are solving and the people you are doing it for. If you know your target market, you can identify their specific needs and problems for which you can develop better quality services or products.

Targeting everyone will make this task much harder, because of the variability increases. It is pretty much impossible to make a product that absolutely everyone likes.

For example, the taste of Coca-Cola is loved by many people, but there are also many people who dislike it. Should they change their recipe because of that? No, their solution is to develop different products for different people.

2. You won’t run out of opportunities

The most common fear business owners have in this subject is, that by focusing on a specific target market they lose business opportunities. As Entrepreneur said, once you know what you are best at, choose customers who are most likely to appreciate your skills.

Even though going for a larger audience might feel better, in the long run, it is more beneficial to have a more focused target group that consistently bring you business. As your business grows, you could find yourself in a situation where you don’t want certain types of clients.

3. Knowing your target market will help you with branding

Knowing your target market is extremely beneficial for building your brand.
When creating a brand, you have to choose a certain style and message that you want to communicate through it.

If you know your target market, you can customize your brand image according to the elements that you believe will attract your target audience. These elements can range from colors, fonts, creatives, and designs to communication style, marketing core messages and so on.

Knowing what kind of approaches work best for your target market will make your marketing process much easier because it eliminates a big portion of guesswork.

You still have to be creative and innovative, but at least you know who you want to reach with your message, and that’s what matters most.

4. You will waste less budget on non-effective marketing activities

Being able to focus on a specific target market will help you choose more effective marketing strategies.

Marketing to everyone is not only expensive but also isn’t cost-effective in terms of the marketing budget. This is because your message will reach many people who aren’t interested or even dislike what you are offering.

Knowing your target market will enable you to choose the best possible ways to promote your business and to ignore budget wasting approaches.

Thanks to digital marketing innovations we now have the ability to target very specific audiences and quite accurately calculate our return on budget spent.

Targeting everyone in digital advertising is usually not a good idea that will result in high cost-per-action (unless it’s a part of a specific strategy).

The better you know your target market, the better your marketing becomes!