When you market your business, you want to be sure you are reaching the right audience-potential customers! You don't want to invest a lot of money or time reaching the wrong crowd. Invest your time and money wisely, deliver your advertising message to your target market.

A target market is the business owner's ideal audience. These are the people who would be their best type of customer. If you specialize in baby albums, your target market would be new moms. If you sell Christian scrapbooking products, your target market would be Christian scrapbookers.

For example, if your custom scrapbook albums contain several embellishments, sewing and techniques that are more expensive or timely to produce, you more than likely will want to target a higher end consumer. You wouldn't want to advertise on a frugal mom website. Yes, moms want to showcase their children in a beautiful keepsake, but a site catering to moms who are trying to save money isn't the place for the ad of a business which sells $400 albums.

But if you turn that around, and write an article which contains a link back to your own site, for an ezine targeted to new moms with lots of disposable income, you could do quite well and see an increase in traffic and sales. Then have that article work for you by submitting to article directories for other ezine owners to pick up and use in their ezines, giving you maximum exposure!

I tend to watch a lot of football with my husband. Let's take an example from the football field. A quarterback throws a pass with a target in mind-his wide receiver, running back or tight end. He wouldn't throw it in the air aimlessly hoping someone would catch it-preferably is own teammate! The same applies to you and your scrapbook business. Aim for your target.

There are several ways to determine your target market. One of these is to take a few minutes of quiet time and visualize exactly who is in need, or want, of your product or service.

Try to picture them as clearly as possible. Are they male or female? How old are they? How will your product or service help them? What benefits does it offer them, and how is that going to make their life easier?

You can also do a search for competing and complementary products and take a look at their websites. When you look at it, who do you feel they are marketing to? Do you find a similar image to their target market and your own?

Once you begin to target your marketing efforts and make sure your message is being sent to the right market, you will see a much better return on your investment.