by William Flood

Created on: November 26, 2008

There are absolutely two essentials you must understand in order to master marketing. The process is called market analysis and is the first step in marketing.

Analyze The Who...

The first is to identify your target market. Before you run your first advertisement, you must first figure out who the advertisement is designed to reach. The group of people you want to reach is called your target market and is always a group within the larger population. No business serves universally, so identifying your target market is vital to your success. Unless you can figure out who will buy your products or services, all of your advertising efforts will be in vain. This means wasted time, lost money, and spent energy.

So, spell out, in as much detail as you can, the nature of your potential customers. The combination of identifiable traits(called demographics) and not so clearly identifiable psychological characteristics (called psychographics...ex: how they think, what their preferences are, etc ) will create a clear picture of the particular buyer you are seeking.

Analyze The Why...

Once you have your list of these potential candidates, you have your "who." Unfortunately, knowing "who" might buy from you still may not be enough. To really justify your choices you need to consider "why" these potential customers will buy from you. Part of this is not just that they might buy your product or service, but that they might buy from you as opposed to anyone selling something similar.

Looking at "why" potential customers will buy your products or services focuses your attention on their needs. It forces you to consider their problems, challenges, needs, or desires and to think about how your products or services might provide the solution. It forces you to put yourself in the buyers' shoes and consider what is important to them as opposed to the common mistake of just focusing on what you have to offer and why it's so great.

The list of "why" may be as short as one clear justification, or it can contain dozens of reasons. Regardless of how many justifications, when you have come up with the list of reasons why, you have accomplished two very important things. First, you have justified the market - if they have a reason to buy, they are worth pursuing as customers. If you can't come up with a reason why, they probably aren't potential customers. The second thing you have accomplished is that you have figured out what the customers' needs, wants, or desires are. These are hot buttons

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