Target Market: women, ages 18-65 with a pulse
It’s tempting to aim for everybody when you create your new marketing campaign. After all, you’re product/service is the perfect solution to a problem near and dear to your heart. You know everyone will love it; therefore it’s almost a give that you promote it to everyone.
Yet how does a 22 year old woman just out of college and starting her first job relate to a 36 year old woman with two kids in elementary school buying a home upgrade?
How does a newly married 30 year old woman plan for retirement compared to a 62 year old newly divorced woman who just received a promotion at work?
The key is they don’t. In both of these examples, the women are on completely different tracks of life. They all may be looking for financial advice. But the method they will use to find the advice, and the advice they are looking for, are completely different.
And if you make one blanket statement to try and reach them all, you will fail even before you begin.
“We offer financial advice to women,” just doesn’t cut it.
Because each of these women are different. And they want something that speaks to them before they are willing to listen – and invest – their hard earned money.
In this case, it doesn’t matter if the business – the financial adviser – chooses to develop their company around offering advice to women. What does matter is how they present themselves to the various groups of women they are trying to attract.
Their mission may be:
To help women achieve financial independence.
Yet when they further define whom they target, it may be:
20 somethings who are starting out in their first positions after college, saving for life changing events such as marriage, kids and a first home.
30 somethings starting a family who have the desire to give their kids the best education possible in the future while saving for a meaningful retirement
40 somethings approaching “empty nest” with kids leaving for college, changing career and lifestyle goals, and reevaluating what the future means
With three distinct groups of women in their core market group, they can begin developing marketing strategies to reach out to each.
They can create stories that make each woman who reads their marketing materials say “Wow, they get me.”
People don’t want to work with companies. They want to work with a friend. They want someone who understands everything about them, right down to the problems and frustrations of their daily lives.
If a company gets that, if they can tell the story that makes them feel like “they get it”, they will have a much easier time reaching their own success.
Ready to learn more about writing and how to reach out to your own target market? Join me in April for my Blog Writing class.