What do you call the group of potential customers to whom a company wants to sell its products and services?

Target Market Definition:

A specific group of consumers at which a company aims its products and services

Your target customers are those who are most likely to buy from you. Resist the temptation to be too general in the hopes of getting a larger slice of the market. That's like firing 10 bullets in random directions instead of aiming just one dead center of the mark--expensive and dangerous.

Try to describe them with as much detail as you can, based on your knowledge of your product or service. Rope family and friends into visualization exercises ("Describe the typical person who'll hire me to paint the kitchen floor to look like marble...") to get different perspectives-the more, the better.

Here are some questions to get you started:

• Are your target customers male or female?
• How old are they?
• Where do they live? Is geography a limiting factor for any reason?
• What do they do for a living?
• How much money do they make? This is most significant if you're selling relatively expensive or luxury items. Most people can afford a carob bar. You can't say the same of custom murals.
• What other aspects of their lives matter? If you're launching a roof-tiling service, your target customers probably own their homes.

Once upon a time, business owners thought it was enough to market their products or services to "18- to 49-year olds." Those days are a thing of the past. Because the consumer marketplace has become so differentiated, it's a misconception to talk about the marketplace in any kind of general way anymore. Now, you have to decide whether to market to socioeconomic status or to gender or to region or to lifestyle or to technological sophistication. There's no end to the number of different ways you can slice the pie.

Further complicating matters, age no longer means what it used to. Fifty-year-old baby boomers prefer rock 'n' roll to Geritol; 30-year-olds may still be living with their parents. People now repeat stages and recycle their lives. You can have two men who are 64 years old, and one is retired and driving around in a Winnebago, and the other is just remarried with a toddler in his house.

Generational marketing, which defines consumers not just by age, but also by social, economic, demographic and psychological factors, has been used since the early 80s to give a more accurate picture of the target consumer.

A newer twist is cohort marketing, which studies groups of people who underwent the same experiences during their formative years. This leads them to form a bond and behave differently from people in different cohorts, even when they're similar in age. For instance, people who were young adults in the 50s behave differently from people who came of age during the tumultuous 60s, even though they're close in age.

To get an even narrower reading, some entrepreneurs combine cohort or generational marketing with life stages, or what people are doing at a certain time in life (getting married, having children, retiring) and physiographics, or physical conditions related to age (nearsightedness, arthritis, menopause).

Today's consumers are more marketing-savvy than ever before and don't like to be "lumped" with others--so be sure you understand your target market. While pinpointing your market so narrowly takes a little extra effort, entrepreneurs who aim at a small target are far more likely to make a direct hit.

Updated September 13, 2022

Target marketing is a marketing strategy that breaks a market into segments and then concentrates your marketing efforts on one or a few key segments consisting of the customers whose needs and desires most closely match your product or service offerings. It can be the key to attracting new business, increasing sales, and making your business a success.

Key Takeaways

• Successful target marketing improves the efficiency of marketing efforts.
• Target marketing is easier than ever thanks to social media, email, and other technological advances.
• The three most common types of target marketing fall into demographic, geographic, or psychographic categories.

How Target Marketing Works

The beauty of target marketing is that aiming your marketing efforts at specific groups of consumers makes the promotion, pricing, and distribution of your products and/or services easier and more cost-effective, and it provides a focus to all of your marketing activities.

For instance, suppose a catering business offers catering services in the client’s home. Instead of advertising via a newspaper insert that goes out to everyone, the caterer would first identify the target market for its services. It could then target the desired market with a direct mail campaign, flyer delivery in a particular residential area, or a Facebook ad aimed at customers in a specific area, thereby increasing its return on investment in marketing and bringing in more customers.

Social media platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, have sophisticated options to allow businesses to target users based on market segments. A bed-and-breakfast business, for example, could target married Facebook followers with an ad for a romantic weekend getaway package. LinkedIn, on the other hand, is more B2B oriented, so you can target businesses using a variety of criteria such as the number of employees, industry, geographic location, and so on.

Although you can approach market segmentation in many different ways, depending on how you want to slice up the pie, three of the most common types are demographic segmentation, geographic segmentation, and psychographic segmentation.

Demographic Segmentation

Demographic grouping is based on measurable statistics, such as:

• Gender
• Age
• Income level
• Marital status
• Education
• Race
• Religion  

Demographic segmentation is usually the most important criterion for identifying target markets, which means that knowledge of demographic information is crucial for many businesses. A liquor vendor, for instance, might want to target its marketing efforts based on the results of Gallup polls, which indicate that beer is the beverage of choice for people under the age of 55—particularly in the 18 to 34 range—whereas those aged 55 and older prefer wine.

Geographic Segmentation

Geographic segmentation involves segmenting the market based on location. Home addresses are one example, but depending on the scope of your business, you could also use:

• Neighborhood
• Postal or ZIP code
• Area code
• City
• Province or state
• Region
• Country (if your business is international)

Geographic segmentation relies on the notion that groups of consumers in a particular geographic area may have specific product or service needs. For example, a lawn care service may want to focus its marketing efforts on a particular town or subdivision inhabited by a high percentage of older residents.

Psychographic Segmentation

Psychographic segmentation divides the target market based on socioeconomic class or lifestyle preferences. The socioeconomic scale ranges from the affluent and highly educated at the top to the uneducated and unskilled at the bottom. The UK-based National Readership Survey segregates social class into six categories:

The lifestyle-preferences classification involves values, beliefs, interests, and the like. Examples include people who prefer an urban lifestyle as opposed to a rural or suburban lifestyle, people who are pet lovers, or people with a keen interest in environmental issues.

Psychographic segmentation is based on the premise that the choices people make when purchasing goods and services reflect their lifestyle preferences or socioeconomic class.

An Example of Target Marketing

According to QSR magazine's 2021 QRS 50, McDonald's is the largest fast-food chain in the U.S. ranked by sales. It's also one of the most successful examples of demographic target marketing, aiming its products at children, teenagers, and young urban-dwelling families by offering PlayPlaces & Parties, the Arch Card (reloadable cash card), free wifi, Happy Meals that include toys such as Marvel Studios characters, special promotions, and clever ad campaigns. Targeted advertising and aggressive pricing have enabled McDonald's to capture nearly 29% of the fast-food market share in the U.S. as of the second quarter of 2022.

However, around the time millennials surpassed baby boomers in 2016 to become the largest generation in the U.S. workforce, McDonald's revenue saw a sharp decline as fast-food menu items, such as the ubiquitous Big Mac and fries, have less appeal to millennials. In response, McDonald's has altered its marketing strategy to target the millennial generation by advertising fresher, healthier menu options and upscale coffee products such as espressos.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the target marketing concept?

The target marketing concept believes that your marketing can be highly effective when you focus your marketing on certain segments of the population.

How many target markets are there?

The number of target markets that exist varies depending on who you ask. Generally speaking, target markets usually fall into one of three segments: demographic, geographic, and psychographic. You may also hear about firmographic and behavioral segments, too.

What are potential customers known as?

Who are the potential customers of market?

What do you call a people who have not yet purchased your product but are considering it?

What do you call a set of customers or clients who are already using a particular product or service?