Finding Your Target Market In 1998
...for selling your products
One question I keep hearing over and OVER is, "I've got this great product, now how I do go about marketing it?" I've got just one question for you. How can you hit the target if you don't even know what the target is?
Before we can even worry about which weapons we'll use to hit our target market, we've got to know what the target is. Which takes us back to where we started. Many of us want to put the cart before the horse. We develop the product then look for the market. Gary Halbert says this is exactly backwards. I really like Gary's example about this concept. Suppose you had the opportunity to open a hamburger stand. What would be the one thing you'd want most of all? Think about that for a minute before answering. What is it? Most people answer with things like plenty of money, location, a good hamburger recipe, plenty of parking space, etc. You know what Gary's answer is?
A STARVING CROWD! Think about that. Do you see Gary's point? Without a hot target market, none of the rest of that stuff amounts to a hill of beans!
So here's the point. You need to do some homework before you develop a hot product. You need to find out if there's even a market for the product.
So how do you do that? Well, here's a little known secret that won't cost you ONE THIN DIME!
Take a trip to your local library. Go to the business reference section. Ask where you can find a book called the Standard Rate and Data Service or SRDS. Be prepared for a walk through a gold mine of information. And I do mean a gold mine. Just to familiarize yourself with it, thumb through it for a few minutes. After you've gotten an idea what it's all about, go to the section that would cover your product idea. Next you'll see all the mailing lists available for your target market.
Big word of caution here! Don't see any listings? You might want to think twice about your proposed product.
Once you've found a few listings, look at them in detail. You'll see things like the size of the mailing list, average purchase in dollars, etc.
OK. So you've found some listings in SRDS and it looks like your idea might just work. So we're ready to start selling our stuff, right? Wrong!! Now you have to set up your marketing program.
by Rick Smith "The Guerrilla Computer Consultant"
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