Back to basics 9: the target market
By Pierre Mare
Pierre Mare is a Windhoek-based brand consultant. He has contributed to many of Namibia’s leading brands and has worked with leading Namibian communications agencies

The unwritten rule of business is to maximise profits in the interest of shareholders. This generally entails cutting costs on as many aspects of the business process and achieving the widest possible spread and volumes for the product. Adoption of this approach by marketing and in the process of brand management has a number of implications however, and few of them are positive.

The three most obvious implications are high costs, diminished effect and difficulty of management. The wider the campaign, the higher the cost. Generally as the campaign goes wider, the effect will be diminished. And the effort of implementing a huge campaign, managing it and tracking its results, is vast. The solution to the problems entailed in massive marketing drives can be diminished with the use of sound target marketing. If the brand is a relationship between a product and a consumer, it is important to recognise that there are consumers who will be less receptive to the campaign and those who will be more receptive to it. By isolating the correct target markets, the brand manager can build a campaign model in which those who are most likely to spend receive the bulk of the spend, those who are less likely to spend receive less of the spend and those who are unlikely to spend receive the least of the spend.

Conventional wisdom has it that those who are less likely to spend or least likely to spend should receive most of the budget, in an effort to convince them other wise, however it must be recognised that in these groups there is a diminished propensity to spend and that development of awareness and interest will probably not lead to demand and acquisition. Nor will any demand and acquisition be of a long term duration. In other words, put your money where your market is. The question becomes how to identify those markets who are most likely to adopt and use a product on an optimal basis. The first indicator will be demographics. What income group does the product indicate? What age and sex does it target? Where is it easiest distributed? What are the media choices of the target market? Beyond the demographics lie the psycho graphics that are implicit to the product and the basis upon which the consumer will form the relationship. If it is a need, the relationship may be based on security issues. If the product fulfills a want, the relationship may be founded on a far broader set of factors such as a sense of fun, a sense of sophistication, a feeling of empowerment, etc.

In finding the correct target market, the brand manager must be rely on psycho graphics as much as the demographics. There is often a level of subtlety in psycho graphic phenomena that may be intimidating to the brand manager. This may be compounded by the fact that the organisation may have different views of the product than psycho graphics may indicate. In order to identify the correct target market and psycho graphics for a product, it is worthwhile presenting the product to a number of panels constituted from potential target markets and requesting their opinions of ‘the sort of person who will use this product’.

Once the responses have been elicited and a target market has been better defined, a panel group consisting of the most likely target market should be consulted to ascertain if the product is a match, and how the target market should be addressed concerning the product. The point behind a clear definition of the target market boils down to cost and effect, as mention earlier. In the absence of the correct target market, communication will not produce remarkable results, and it will lead to frustration as consumers who should not be using the product develop frustrations. It will also lead to confusion as consumers try to develop a relationship based on unclear signals. An additional benefit of clear target markets is that an understanding of the individuals who acquire the brand develops, a strategic resource for the organisation.