Steps to Starting a Business: Step 1: Identify Your Target Market

The 5 Essentials for Starting a New Business

Do you have a great idea for a viable business? How do you go from that initial inspiration to actually getting your business off the ground? Starting a business has many moving parts and it requires quite a bit of planning, but anyone can do it if they approach it in a focused and organized manner. 

There are just five essential steps to starting a business. If you break the process down into these steps, it gets much easier to turn your vision into a reality. 

Let's talk about the first step a bit~

Identify Your Target Market:

The first thing to do is to identify your target market. Your target market is the ideal person who will buy your products. This person has a particular need that your products or services meet for them. When someone starts a new business, they create a target market profile. This is a persona of an individual person that is representative of your market as a whole.

Why narrow it down to just one person? If you can narrow your market down and make it as specific as possible, you can compete with bigger or more established companies. A big company has a huge budget for marketing and a great deal of resources to put behind its efforts. You don’t. 

You may already have an idea of who your target market is. You might say something like, “small business owners” or “work-from-home moms.” But this is still too general. Bigger companies are targeting these same groups. 

We have to get more specific.

Instead, a good target market persona would be something like, “small business owners who run established businesses that take in X amount of income per year based in the American Midwest,” or “work-at-home moms in their 20s and early 30s who value their independent lifestyle.” 

A good profile would include information like:

Ø Age
Ø Location
Ø Income level
Ø Stage in career
Ø Industry or area of expertise
Ø Education level

It would also consider psychological and behavioral factors, such as how this person spends money, what they do in their leisure time, and what values are most important to them. You should obtain this information through research on your market. Try to rely on objective data and not just your assumptions. 

What if your product or service could be used by a broader group of people? It will be used by more than just your specific target market. But you need to identify it as one single person to whom you can focus your marketing efforts. Others will buy it too. 

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