The statement is counter intuitive, the further you narrow down your market allows you to increase your profit – the driver for this is you will better understand your customer needs and your marketing message will resonate with the customer. Instead of reaching out to a very large number of prospective customers with a generic “me-too” marketing message, it is much better to reach out to a well defined customer base which has the specific pain point that your product is resolving. Identify your served addressable market as follows:

Target Region:

Identify which region you will be focused on. You might want to target just North America, or Americas, or EMEA or APAC or you might be very specific to certain countries.

Think about which languages you will be able to support on your website, which languages you will be able to provide documentation in as well as any legal requirements that your product might have to support for specific countries you are aiming at selling into.

Create a beach head, a country (or state) that you can establish yourself with a significant market share and then build further from that strength.

Market Segment:

Within a specific target region, further narrow down to which market segment you want to serve. For example are you going to serve a specific niche market that is currently underserved by your competition?  The niche market could be based on a specific vertical Hospitality, Education, and Transportation etc or within a vertical it could be based on size for example University, College or Schools within the Education vertical.

Narrowing down to niche allows you to define your customer profile more accurately enabling you to reach the customer and have your marketing message resonate with the customer.

Positioning:

Further narrow down the market segment based on the product pricing (low end pricing vs high end pricing will depend on your positioning of the product), technology (for example you might only be addressing Windows based OS), support levels (for example some customers might want 24*7 local support).

Identifying the served addressable market allows you to clearly identify your customers and create a marketing message that will resonate with this specific target customer rather than a generic “me-too” marketing message.

How have you defined your target market today? Let us know how this having a defined target market has helped you via the comments link below.

About the Author:

Along with being a guest blogger at Entrepreneurcommunityonline.com, Pooja (CEO Blueknee Marketing) specialize's in  developing marketing strategy, competitive analysis and pricing strategies.

You can follow my regular blog at http://blog.blueknee.com or contact me via email at pooja@blueknee.com.