Do you have a very clear understanding of your customers ? Do you know who they are; what they like; where they live; what at else they buy; and what they like about your products ?

Perhaps more importantly what do you know about the visitors to your site (or shop) – who don’t actually end up buying a product. What encouraged them to visit (or pop in), but didn’t entice them to buy ? Were they really potential customers at all ?

If you don’t know who your target market is – if you don’t understand who your best prospects are (and I mean if you don’t know everything about them) – you’ll end up wasting a lot of blood, sweat and tears (not to mention time and money) marketing to those who will never buy from you.

Of course, you may be targeting several markets. But if you can’t properly identify all your audiences, you’ll almost certainly end up chasing after the wrong crowd. You’ll waste your time promoting your products and services to someone who, was never really interested anyway.

Spending some time and effort very carefully defining your customer and thinking outside the box for who might be potential customers can be very a powerful exercise. One of my clients recently doubled annual sales once they realised their best target market was actually one they had never considered would be interested in their products.

So, what are your best target markets? Can you clearly define them? Can you get narrower in your description? How are you addressing each in your marketing communications? Do you truly understand their objectives, key pain points and potential buying objections?

Whether your products sell for $10 or $1 million, make sure you’re absolutely clear about who’s going to “get it.” Then, go to market with a message that each of your clearly defined target markets can relate to.