If you don't know who your customers are, how will you be able to assess whether you are meeting their needs? Since success depends on you being able to meet customers' needs and desires, you must know who your customers are, what they want, where they live and what they can afford.

How can a company expect to promote a product or service that identifies with a customer's needs and wants, if they don’t know what they are?  Here are some of  the necessary steps to help a business identify their target markets:

Step One: Identify Why A Customer Would Want To Buy Your Product/Service

For example, my company offers pest control services to residential and commercial clients. For residential clients, I tried to identify our service on an emotional need using the following motto; find peace of mind knowing that you, your family, children, pets, investments, are safe from harmful insects. The commercial side runs on much of the same concept. We would market to a hotel, for example, on the emotional needs of the cliental by using the following motto; we want to ensure your customers can rest easy tonight knowing your rooms are free from bed bugs. For commercial clients we also market towards the company's financial needs and image.

Step Two: Segment Your Overall Market

Market segmentation is the process of breaking down a larger target market into smaller segments with specific characteristics. Each group requires different promotional strategies and marketing mixes because each group has different wants and needs.

Market segmentation is quite unique for some of our service areas, especially in Boston. Many of our clients are commercial based within the city and on the outskirts. Once you get outside the metropolitan area and into places such as Needham and Framingham, marketing turns more towards residential. As a company, it is important to segment our spending in order to ensure that the proper customer receives the right message. The wrong promotional message to the wrong customers can waste their time, your time, and your companies image and money.

Step Three: Research Your Market

This also seems self explanatory; however it is important and necessary to research your market, primary and secondary data collection. There are different forms of data that can be collected including:

• Federal Government Data
• Data for American States
• Commercial Sources of Demographic Statistics
• Demographic Publications

Under each of these headings, this website lists a number of helpful resources that can help you research your market further.