By: Christopher Pereira

A lot of people ask me "is it really important to know my target market?" I always answer "YES!" Why do I answer "yes," well, simply because it's true. In order to sell a product, you must first know who you're going to sell the product to. If you want to sell a car, you're not going to advertise it to toddlers; you're going to advertise it to people who can drive. If you want to sell an 80's rock-and-roll CD, you're going to advertise it to people who lived in the 80's, and liked the music. You won't sell an 80's rock-and-roll CD to people who were born in the 20th century, because they don't listen to 80's music, they listen to the music of today, the music of Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, and Rihanna.

There are four categories to describe your target market:

· Geographics

· Demographics

· Psychographics

· Behaviouristics

The first one is geographics. Geographics relates to the location of you target market (your consumers). They can be located in North America, Asia, Brazil, Pune India, or Toronto Ontario Canada. They can also be located in an urban or rural area, with a population of over 250,000 or under 20,000 people. They can live in a cold climate near the North Pole, or a warm climate near Peru. It all depends on what your product is. For example, Lays® Ketchup Chips is sold in Canada, but not in the States. The cereal Trix is sold in the States, but not in Canada. They also sell different cars in Europe compared to North America.

The second one is demographics. Demographics relates to the type of people who love in a given population. This relates to your target market's age (toddler, 12-17, 18-24, 35-49, 65+), gender, family size, income, occupation, stage of family life cycle (young single, young married, older married, no children, no children under 18, old single), education, ethnic background (country of origin) and home ownership. All of this plays a specific role in defining your target market. For example, Rona advertises to home owners, because they own houses, so they have to fix it. People who rent don't fix the house they live in, because it's technically not theirs. Baby bottles are advertised for babies, but their parents buy them. Bras are advertised to women, because women wear them. Colleges and Universities advertise to high school graduates, and people who want to further their education.

The third one is psychographics. Psychographics is all about your target market`s personality and lifestyle. Are they extroverts or introverts? Are they adventurous or cautious? Camping activities, events, and products are all advertised to adventurous people; people who want to have a good time sleeping outside, and don't mind getting a little dirty.

The last category is behaviouristics. Behaviouristics relates to your target market's benefits (nutrition, entertainment), usage rate of your product (light user, or heavy user), their user status (ex-user, first-time user, or frequent user), and their loyalty status. Shoppers Drug Mart has a loyally program, and every so often they have huge loyalty program events for their consumers, where they have a chance to earn 3X the points on certain products. HBC also has a loyalty program, which consumers can collect points at all of the HBC stores (Zellers, The Bay, Home Outfitters and Fields). Tim Horton's has a lot of loyal Canadian consumers, because of their coffee, and because it's a Canadian company. Consumers who buy organic food want to be healthy, and stay healthy.

It is extremely important to know who your target market is, or else you will go bankrupt. If you advertise to the right group of people, your sales will sky rocket, but if you advertise to the wrong crowd, you can forget about expanding.