Target marketing simply refers to building a marketing campaign for your product or service based around a niche audience or a “target” audience/group of people. The thing that you want to do before you launch your marketing campaign is to obviously figure out who your audience is in the first place. After you've determined who your audience is, then you'll more effectively be able to figure out how to market things to them. For example, if you are trying to market a running shoe, you'll probably want to figure out where all of the athletes-specifically runners- hang out online. In order to do this, you may have to do a little leg work (no pun intended) to figure things out. Also, you'll have to ask yourself some questions such as: What age group is the running shoe targeted for? What kind of people would buy my running shoes? Are the running shoes for men or for women or for both? What is a competitive price for this type of running shoe?



Another thing that you'll want to do is look at your competitors to see what they are doing. So, again, if you are targeting people who run, you may want to look at other big brands such as Nike, Adidas or Saucony to see what their advertisements look like. Think along the lines of viral marketing as well as guerilla marketing. Do most athletes prefer one type of marketing to another? What sorts of advertisements would work best and in what sorts of settings? Do most people run in the morning? Could you build a campaign around morning joggers? What about deals and specials? Would you be willing to give a prize away to the first person who purchases your shoes? How often would you throw out prizes and competitions like that?

When done correctly, target marketing is highly effective. One example of how businesses are taking advantage of target marketing is on the Internet in social media avenues such as Twitter. On a site like Twitter, you can set up a profile and gear it specifically towards a certain product, thing or activity. For instance, someone who is interested in running may put a picture in their Twitter profile of a runner of themselves running. They may then include a link to a running blog that they manage and also include a few words in their profile talking about their interest in running. The next thing that they'll do to further restrict the type of people that they want to interact with is they'll use the Twitter search feature to seek out other athletes and/or runners. Once they find other runners, then they can exchange links and ideas as it relates to running and athletics. Over time, if they feel comfortable in their online relationships, then they may want to introduce the fact that they are marketing a product related to running or athletics such as the running shoe idea mentioned earlier.

As stated before, target marketing can be extremely effective and is typically not too difficult once it is done the right way because the people you are targeting to market your product are usually already interested in your product to begin with. For example, runners are already interested in running shoes because they need it for their sport just as people who do yoga are interested in yoga mats and accessories (usually). You have to do the research and know your market as well as the audience prior to making your pitch and moving forward.