Growing Small Businesses

Lesson 1: Finding your target markets

Which groups can you access easily?

In business in general, you always want to operate in the most efficient way possible. The most efficient way costs you the least time and money and lets you give the best possible value to your customers. Most efficient, when you're approaching a group of potential customers, means most business for the least effort. Which group can you approach the most easily, i.e. which of the groups you have created are the most accessible for you?

In the computer example, there were two groups which were going to be approached two different ways. One was the retirees and parents and one was the small businesses. To approach a member of either group, you have to have their name, address and phone number. You have to decide which group is more easily accessible for you, personally and then start with that group.

You may be a retiree yourself and know a lot of potential customers. You may be a member of a club or association for retired people and have a lot of contacts that way. You might be a parent who uses e-mail to keep in touch with your college students and know other parents from the same university. Or you may have contacts from past work experience which fit.

On the other hand, if you're already in business, you might have business contacts which would be interested. You might know people through a Chamber of Commerce or a business association. You might have relatives in business who could help you with additional contacts or you could use the yellow pages to sort out those businesses which fit.

To determine which of the groups you have created is the most accessible to you, imagine not only finding a lot of contact information for you to work with but also imagine yourself contacting the potential customers. The first part of accessibility is the actual contact information; the second part is how you will interact with the members of your target group. If you feel comfortable contacting them, they will be comfortable buying from you. If contacting the members of a group would be difficult for you, that group is not easily accessible.

The process you've used to arrive at this point, the point of starting to contact new potential customers in a new target market, is for getting a new source of business. It will let you identify, access and get business from new customers. Once you have customers in that group, other mechanisms can take over which are more efficient than contacting new people, even if they have been pre-selected to be likely to buy from you. But to enter new markets, that's the most efficient way to ensure new business.

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