Concept of Targeting

"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter Drucker

Targeting is the process immediately followed by the segmentation which actually demonstrates the elect markets and planning the promotional and advertising media which is used by the marketers to make the market segment appealing. The way of targeting is continuously changing with the environment as traditional targeting practices incorporated print and other media source whereas nowadays social media presence has changed the way of targeting completely which is now completely web focused. Moreover, the targeting of the market is the process of deciding to target one or more segments because the company cannot satisfy each segment i.e. only limited segments are targeted. Generally, the targeting is the selected target market which consists of a group or groups of buyers to whom the organization wants to concentrate.

Further, the targeting can be used as the major tool in analyzing and selecting the most profitable market for the business because the targeting is all about the attracting the consumers considering their wants and needs because they are the potential customers who will purchase the products. In addition, it can be stated that target marketing is the most current process or method of marketing to customers which is completely based on research into their needs, hobbies and interests of the customers.

[Source: https://marketing-insider.eu/market-targeting/]

Any business organization can easily target their market using mentioned four stages; define the target market, reach the target market, recognize the type of consumers and tailor the organization’s marketing to the consumers. The initial step includes defining the target market in which there should be a clear profile of target customers. The three major constraints that should be considered about the customers are demographics, psychographics and behavioural aspects of the customers. After defining the target market, the second step involves reaching to that market wither via online or offline advertising according to the profile of the readers. Further, the third stage incorporates recognizing the type of customers, for example, are they new or existing, repertoire or lapsed etc. finally, the last stage of the targeting include tailoring the marketing of customers in which marketers ensure that all the communications of the organization are on message and communicated via the right media and channels.

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF TARGETING:

Initially considering the benefits of targeting, it allows the organizations to focus on and prioritize consumers because by evaluating segments one can prioritize which states which consumers would be most valuable. Further, it helps in building the marketing calendar around the seasonal offers in which markets can begin to demonstrate the types of customers for targeting at a different time of year. Furthermore, the method of market targeting the most cost-effective method organizations would be wasting money on the other than the target segment. At last, the targeting helps in increasing the ROI and results of the organization in terms of productivity and profitability.

Initially, the major drawback of the targeting is that it is quite a time consuming because it takes the considerable amount of time to recognize the target audience, research the data and create the advertising campaign. The second drawback of the targeting is that there may be an omission of other customers because focusing on specific customers may overlook other users. At last, there may be some ethical issues so all the ethical ramification should be considered by the organization while targeting the customers or markets.