7 Best Ways to Reach Your Target Customers

Introduction

Every retail business is defined and designed around their specific and target customers. Retailers need to understand before starting any retail set up as who are their target customers and how to reach to them on regular basis to do effective sales

A target market is the precise group of people you want to reach with your promotion and marketing activities to sell your product or services.

They are very many people who are most likely to be interested in your product or services. They may be consolidating by some common attributes, like demographics and purchase behaviors.

The understanding of the retail math for the target market and specific customers is the entire ballgame which decides the success of any retail store/brand.

To answer the above queries, let’s ask the following questions to your business to understand the retail math of target customers.

Who are your target customers?

• Age group – The age group of customers is the prime detail to start with, e.g. for a denim retailer main target age group is between 15 to 35 years consumers.

• Gender – Simple but important to decide men or women customers to focus before going ahead choosing a segment. 

• Style quotient – What style quotient they prefer to exhibit before making a buying decision such as choice of Fashion, Trends, colors, technology, millennials preference, etc.

• Home-grown or Outgoing – Are they home-based or outgoing type shoppers, depends upon your nature of business & later how you want to connect with them.

• Profession – What kind of jobs they are into, the understanding the profession of your customer is externally important before designing your marketing strategy as the channels for marketing completely depends upon the customer’s market touchpoints. E.g. office going customers spend a lot of time while driving to or from office and radio ads can play an important role to gain mind share.

What your target Customers do in free time?

• Hobbies and interests – Hobbies and interests play important role in buying decisions and help retailers to improve the engagement process with shoppers once they know in advance the likes and dislikes.

• Way of spending their leisure time – Somewhat related to hobbies and interest-only but in a more elaborated way to understand the “happy time” spending habits of customers.

• Activities for fun – The activities they spend their money and time while with family and friends. It helps to design the assortment, advertisement, and promotion channels.

• Passion – What they are passionate about helps retailers to know the customers in person as a whole and their emotional touchpoints.

What is their preferred shopping medium?

• E-commerce – Prefer to buy online will change the complete game here.

• Physical Stores – Prefer to buy offline in shops to have a better shopping experience. These are the most important customers for your business among all.

• High street– Are these shops in high street old markets establishment

• Malls – Are these shops in new age malls kind of retail environment

• Affiliate network – Do they prefer to buy through an affiliate network around them due to trust factors or familiarity factor.

• Social media – Do they buy via social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Pinterest, etc. This is a new trend breeding quite fast.

Where they live or the targeted catchment?

• Catchment Area – Deciding catchment area to focus to gain maximum customer touch base will decide the major footfalls well in advance.
• Local neighborhoods – Important especially if you have Grocery, dairy, bakery, or food business.
• The whole city – If the whole city is your customer such as Boutique, fashion, bookstore, automobile showroom, etc.
• National – Whole country is your customers, depends on the product or service type such as a paintings business, artifact, some regional ancestral product line, astrology, etc.
• Online forum or community – If you are catering online customers with global reaches such as any online course, astrology, or service which only you can offer.

What appeals to your target customers?

• Price competitiveness – Pls research if your customer base is price sensitive and looks for value for money buying in terms of value.

• Offers & Discounts – Again an important factor for direct customer interface business like a garment, electronics, mobile, luggage stores.

• Features – Are they instead a feature and quality conscious customers and looking for a value for money in terms of satisfaction.

• Unique and new attributes – See if a new launch or any new feature appeals to them to visit your shop to browse.

• Prize or contest – Sometimes customers are even looking for a sport or a catchy event for excitement along with shopping.

• Free shipping – Not free literally but a “Buy now and deliver at home for free” kind of idea attracts some customers. Works especially in white goods or heavy item shopping.

How they spend time online?

How to connect with your target customers?

Last but the most important aspect of “target customer reach matrix” once you know who, what, why, when… now let’s decide the channel to connect with them.

• Online – We are living in a digital age and the online reach has become the most important one. Also, it is quite cost-effective and measurable one with precise performance tools available. You get your results quickly and with long term expectations.
• Offline – The old but still effective in connecting with your target group. There are various ATL and BTL activities retailer’s can opt for to go ahead such as TV, Print media, Electronic media, Radio, billboards, etc. this is a costly medium as involve a lot of stakeholders.
• Omnichannel approach – The new way of reaching customers via the amalgamation of both offline and online channels. This new approach is the way forward and becomes a lifesaving tool in this pandemic period where each customer is of prime importance and needs to cater and close. We can say that today’s customer is an “Omnichannel customer” who decides and buy as per his/her convenience without any prejudice of the preferred channel.
• Social media- Very effective and bang on the way of connecting with your customer base. This is the best way to get feedback or any product suggestion direct in your inbox. You can run a contest or giveaways through this medium quite easily. Your authority also increases over time here due to an increase in loyal followers. This also helps in reducing grievances and dissatisfaction as you get to measure the outcome in lesser time.
• Email Newsletter– Another effective way of getting your product and service to your target customer base. To name a few advantages are Cost-effective, direct connect, brief and specific feature listing, but lesser conversion rates being a demerit.

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Thank You