Who is your target audience? Businesses and individuals need reliable transportation services. Whether products need to be delivered to the grocery store or people require a lift to the local airport, you are there to deliver these services to them at the specified times. Owning two to three vehicles, setting up the office administration and booking customers has been the main focus of your tasks. Yet you would love to get the right customers instead of fielding the wrong calls where people are asking for certain transportation services that you don’t provide.
Who is your target audience?
Your target audience are those potential customers that have a problem in which only your transportation company can solve. You have the knowledge, equipment and superior customer service that attracts them to your doors more often than to your competitors. These are the potential customers you want to successfully market to so they become both loyal and repeat customers.
Yet figuring out who is your target audience and where they are located are issues that are a bit more complicated. For this, you have to analyse the benefits of your services, the price, the location of your target audience, the target audience’s demographic, and who your competition is targeting to help decide on the right market you should advertise to who requires your services the most. This task eliminates the wasted time and resources of turning away people who you can’t work with because your services aren’t a great fit for them.
Here are some handy tips to help you define your target audience:
Evaluate the benefits and limitations of your service
Before you can find your customers, you need to understand the services you provide. Write out all the features to your service, such as owning trucks for freight shipping, owning refrigerated trucks, or offering 24-hour delivery. With the following examples, your target market may be commercial food companies who need to deliver products to restaurants in the region. Figure out all the types of customers that would benefit from this service, and the limitations of your service to eliminate other customers.
Who are your current customers?
Your current customers are a great way in seeking out the right market to target in your advertising and promotional strategies. They already show an interest in your service, and you have constantly fulfilled their greatest needs. See what each customer has in common based on their demographic, interests and other characteristics.
Who is the competition targeting?
Your competition can further define your target niche. You will want to focus on the people that the competition is overlooking to bring in new customers. Take a look around and you’ll find groups of potential customers that are being overlooked. Far-be-it for this post to make any suggestions – you know you own business and market better than anyone so you are best placed to begin searching for those pockets of new profitable customers.
What is the target audience’s demographic and psychographic traits?
Demographic and psychographic traits help you define the specifics about the customers and their personality traits on why they want your services. Demographic traits will normally consist of the person’s age, income, location, gender, education, occupation, and marital/family status. Psychographic traits dig deeper into the person’s characteristics such as their lifestyle, interests, hobbies, values, personality and behaviors when seeking services.
You’d be surprised how few companies take the time to look at the above four market research tasks. Interestingly, most of the information is at your finger tips so it’s not a stretch to say that you can do this yourself without having to look to an external resource to help you.
By taking a closer look into your company and the traits of your customers, you will be able to figure out your target audience. Then you have a better chance in placing your marketing strategies and funds toward advertising to the right people who will purchase your services and increase your profits.
