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YOUR MARKET

Your business is unlikely to have the whole population as its customers. The market can be broken down into ‘bite-sized’ chunks representing groups of people most likely to become your customers.

You can break down (segment) markets in lots of different ways.

Age/gender
Distance/time away from your business
Income/Occupation
Benefits sought
Family life cycle

You can use as many of these segmentation tools as you like. The more you use, the more tightly defined will be your target market. Your market will become smaller each time you introduce another segmentation criterion.

Example:
If you are developing a new business then think about the sort of people you think are in your target market and describe them. Or if you have an existing business then describe customers who have seemed very happy with your product.

Perhaps they are:

Age: 45 – 69
Gender Couples
Income/Occupation Predominantly office/professional
Family lifecycle Children grown up/left home (empty nesters)
Distance away from your business Around 2 hours driving time away
Benefits sought Short relaxing break in the countryside.

So starting with a UK population of around 56 million once you put a drive time of 2 hours then the population shrinks considerably depending on where you business is.

If you run a bed and breakfast in North Wales, close to Llandudno across North Wales, the 2 hours might take in Liverpool, Manchester and a number of other areas across North Wales, the Midlands and North-west of England. If your business is in Tenby the a drive time of 2 hours will reach a different size of population.

Not everyone in this area is age 45-69 so the population shrinks again and so it goes on as you apply each of the segmentation criteria.

You might want to widen you market to include slightly younger people, e.g. 25-34 year old couples with double incomes but no kids yet (DINKYs) also looking for a relaxing break.

When you promote your business to more than one clearly-defined segment, you obviously have to think whether the two segments are compatible. There seems no reason why the two segments identified above are not compatible and you should be able to accommodate both in your guest house at the same time.

If your second segment were to be 18-30 single people on a stag or a hen party then the two segments would clearly not be compatible and you would be heading for trouble.

You know need to think about how best to target your target market. You don’t want to waste money on poorly targeted promotion. Most businesses have a much smaller marketing budget than they would like and need to spend it carefully.

You have a range of options:

Regional newspapers published within the area defined by the driving time.
Special interest magazines, e.g. for walkers, birdwatchers.
Radio and television advertising is probably too expensive for a very small business
Website
Direct mail
Can you ‘piggy-back’ on someone else’s website, e.g. your local tourist association, tourism company or trade organisation

If you would like to download this document please click on one of the links below:

Your Market (Word Document 115Kb)
Your Market (PDF Document Kb)



Developing a marketing plan Promotion Developing a Website



Word of Mouth Word of mouth is one of the best promotional tools. Perhaps your current guests would be prepared to recommend you to their friends. You might offer a small incentive like a free bottle of wine or a small discount to them for making recommendations.