by Lesa Seibert, President, Xstreme Media

Last week we discussed how to define your target market.  You defined:
  • What age group do they fit in?
  • What gender are they?
  • Are they college graduates?
  • What is their income level?
  • What is their main job?
  • Do they read blogs, discussion forums, use facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, etc.
Today, we will discuss where to find that target market online.   To a certain degree, your audience finds you. When you started out you had a business plan with specific targets and assumed behavior responses. After 6 months you found a different segment all together were engaging with your site. Looking at your traffic and analytics/metrics for any product will give you volumes of data on your product. You can do this via, Web forms, surveys,etc....You may have a great product, but if your delivery or assumptions are wrong you could be pitching to a black hole. Engage with your prospects or clients often. Talking to buyers and non buyers will give you more than one A-HA moment.

Do your potential customers/clients frequent facebook?  Do searches on facebook for target keywords that best represent your company and/or product.  Look that the ones that have lots of "friends" or "likes" and see what they are posting and who their friends are.  If you see potential customers there, then it would benefit you to have a facebook fan page for your business.  Invite all your friends, friends of those similar fan pages, etc. and only post information that is informative to your friends.  DO NOT SPAM.  It's not about you but about how they perceive you.

Do your potential customer/clients frequent discussion forums?  Do a google search and find discussion forums and blogs that are in a same or similar market as you.  Review the questions posted and if appropriate, make a post using your web site link in your signature.

Businesses that know where their target market is are able to much better serve their clients/customers and prospects with precisely targeted information and advertisement creating value in their marketing efforts and bolstering their brand as a “Gold Standard” in the online marketplace. To market any other way online relegates businesses to the masses of spam who eventually fade away as more and more online businesses “get it right” and tailor their efforts to precisely meet the needs of their target market.

It takes some research, but once that is done you will know where your target market lives online and will be able to interact with them where they are, with the goal being to drive them to you and your website.

Part III will discuss your website - what are it's objectives and is it ready for your target market.