Sneak Peek: 1 of 5 Essentials for Starting a Business
Updated: Jul 7, 2021
01 -Identify Your Target Market
The first thing to do is to identify your target market. Your target market is the ideal person who will buy your products. This person has a particular need that your products or services meet for them. When someone starts a new business, they create a target market profile. This is a persona of an individual person that is representative of your market as a whole.
Why narrow it down to just one person? If you can narrow your market down and make it as specific as possible, you can compete with bigger or more established companies. A big company has a huge budget for marketing and a great deal of resources to put behind its efforts. You don’t.
You may already have an idea of who your target market is. You might say something like, “small business owners” or “work-from-home moms.” But this is still too general. Bigger companies are targeting these same groups. We have to get more specific.
Instead, a good target market persona would be something like, “small business owners who run established businesses that take in X amount of income per year based in the American Midwest,” or “work-at-home moms in their 20s and early 30s who value their independent lifestyle.”
A good profile would include information like:
Age
Location
Income level
Stage in career
Industry or area of expertise
Education level
It would also consider psychological and behavioral factors, such as how this person spends money, what they do in their leisure time, and what values are most important to them. You should obtain this information through research on your market. Try to rely on objective data and not just your assumptions.
What if your product or service could be used by a broader group of people? It will be used by more than just your specific target market. But you need to identify it as one single person to whom you can focus your marketing efforts. Others will buy it too.

Next Steps:
Create a target market profile that includes demographic information and psychological factors. Write a description of this person. Get data from conducting research on:
Your existing customers if you have any.
Your industry.
Your competitors.
Online forums or social media groups where people are talking about products/services like yours.
Trending topics on social media.
Come right out and ask people who follow you.