If you can learn how to target your marketing efforts then you will become far more productive and efficient in your business.

First of all you need to know what you offer and the benefits of what you offer. Unless you have a clear picture in your mind of exactly what you are offering and why someone would want what you have to offer then you won’t fully understand who your ideal customer will be.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What do I offer – my products and services
• Who will benefit from what I offer?
• What are the characteristics of those people?
• Who are my existing customers and what are their characteristics?

If you don’t have any customers yet then look at your competition and see who their customers are! Look at your competitors website and check out the demographics using a tool such as Alexa.

Ideal Customer Demographics

Some of the characteristics to look for might be:

• location – this will apply if you are targeting a local market
• buying behaviours – such as impulse buyers
• their knowledge level – what level of information are they looking for?
• their beliefs and attitudes and how you would relate that to your products
• life style
• age
• gender
• education
• work location – this is important as it will affect the time they surf the internet

Knowing these details enables you to really begin to focus in on who you need to start building relationships with. Who your ideal audience is.

Many people don’t bother with this but they are severely limiting their business performance. If you know that you are spending time getting visibility to an offer that is relevant to people, at their level and within their budget then you will see better results.

Imagine you are playing target practice and someone puts a blindfold on you. Every time you miss the target you get a fine! You will waste time and energy trying to hit that target and you will become more and more frustrated as your fine goes up and up!

But this is exactly what many marketers are doing. Just playing a round in the dark. No wonder so many get fed up and in the end give up altogether! Don’t let yourself become one of them! Decide to spend the time to understand exactly who your target market is and then focus your efforts.