A primary target market is the segment of a marketplace a business believes will give it the best chance to sell. A primary target market may not be the largest segment of a marketplace. For example, the majority of people who play golf may be men under age 50. The primary target market for a company that makes women's golf clothing for seniors would be women age 50 and older.
The Marketplace
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A marketplace is made up of a variety of customers, potential customers and those not likely to use your product or service. Marketing strategies seek to keep current customers and increase their spending with you, lure potential customers to you and avoid spending advertising and promotions dollars to target the wrong consumer.
Definition
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Your business's primary target market is a specific group of consumers you want to attract to your product or service. You can determine this using different methods: an analysis of your customers to see if the majority have something in common; an analysis of your competition to determine if their customers have something in common; sales figures and related demographic information provided by industry organizations or other researchers; an analysis of the minority group of customers you may wish to target.
You may have several groups buying your products or using your service--for example, married women make up 53 percent of your customers; single women, 31 percent; and all men, 16 percent. If you decide to focus your marketing efforts on your main demographic, married women, they are your primary target market. If you feel that your biggest opportunity for growth is among men, you may target them.
Demographics
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Demographics are characteristics of customer and potential customers you can use to create a profile of heavy users, primary, secondary and tertiary markets or other groupings to help you better market, advertise and promote your goods and services. Demographics can include age, gender, race, education level, geographic area, income level or a combination of these factors. In the example above, married women are your biggest customers, and it may be that most of these married women are age 35 to 55; this knowledge will help you better market to single women to target those between the ages of 35 and 55.
Market Segmentation
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The above example has three market segments: married women, single women and all men. Your product may not appeal equally to all segments. In order to increase your business exponentially, you may need to target men--there are more potential customers in that market segment because a large percentage of women already buy your product.
Offering your product with different features or under a completely different name are examples of segmenting the market to create different target markets. If you are a new product or service entering a marketplace with established competition, you may choose to make the smallest part of the marketplace your primary target market to avoid competition. For example, in a city with 10 Italian restaurants, there is apparently a demand for Italian cuisine. You may choose to open a Tex-Mex restaurant to capture diners who don't like Italian food. Even though that number of people may be much lower than those who like Italian food, you may get a larger number of customers from that population than among the larger customer base you would have to split 11 ways.
Niche Marketing
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For small or new businesses that can't compete with large or established competitors, the concept of niche marketing allows you to create a primary target market that is not being served by your competitors. If women age 35 to 55 are the main consumers of a particular product, it may be that women under 35 don't need or want that product or that the product has not been made, priced or given an identity that appeals to them. With niche marketing, or branding your product as a unique variety of that good or service, you can create a target market that decreases your competition. For example, in a marketplace with many junior tennis academies, an academy that accepts only girls ages 14 to 16 creates a niche in the marketplace for parents wanting a tennis academy that addresses the specific needs of their daughters. While most tennis players in the area may be boys, your primary target market would be girls, age 14 to 16.
