Friday, July 07, 2006

How to Research Your Target Market/Customer

How to Research Your Target Market/Customer

In order to communicate a message through the grapevine about your greeting card business a marketing/advertising plan should be developed. I have listed some steps for you to follow to help you do research on your target market.

The first step is to research industry trends that are and are not favorable.

The second step is to find your potential market(s) or “total” market(s) within the list of favorable trends. When you find each potential market, look at whether the market is at beginning growth, growth, maturation, saturated, or declining stage.

The third stage is to choose your target market and sales strategy method(s) to reach each target market (e.g., buying mailing lists, internet, direct mail, etc.). This step also involves predicting how many greeting cards your target customer will buy in a month, quarter, and/or year in order to determine how much revenue you can expect in the same period of time (e.g., one customer could buy ten cards per year, five cards per year, etc. depending upon the target market they are in).

The fourth step is to document your research and sales strategy into a marketing/advertising plan.

Hope this is helpful.

Please post a comment ofr contact me at david@greetingcardprofits.com if you have any questions or visit my website at: www.greetingcardprofits.com