For Marketing: Business Players -> Your Target

Communication comes in hand for Marketing Planning in every step of your daily work. Once you have clear business objectives, finding and deciding how to move with your key business players will become a piece of cake.

Player #1:  Your Target
When you think of your target, are demographic stats the first thing that cross your mind? That's not bad, actually it's quite good to be honest.
Your target needs to be defined based on demographic details ONLY to help you see what reach your product and campaign really have. Once that is set, move on to psicographic details to help you narrow down to people who can really be engaged to you product or service, along with the messages your campaign may use.

Having said that,  sit back for a moment and think if the target you just defined is your actual target, results to be a new easily and reachable prospect or a completely new and different user that may live on the other side of the world.

Rechecking who we are talking and selling to is a very healthy practice, try to do it at least every six months.

Remember:  defining new targets must go ahead only if your business objectives can be reached with the new prospect. Your target is the #1 player in your playground.

If you do decide to have new target, be sure to plan to not change it again next year because your business objectives were not met as planned.  Targets and brands need time, just like a relationship, to evolve together and fall in love and find new ways of coexisting in the near future. A good lapse of time can be from 1.5 to 3 years so new targets can have time to try your product or service, purchase it, fall in love with it, recommend it and feel the confidence to recommend you some improvements....it's all about the relationship.

Key questions you must ask regarding your target are:

Who are they?
How are they?
Where and how do they live?
In what lifestage are they at this moment?
What is the next step in their life?
What are relevant messages to them at this point?
What are relevant products and services to them at this point?
What type of media do they use?

Sketching day in the life maps can help you narrow down some of these questions.