Knowing your target market is critical to your success. There's no point in putting yourself all over the web, buying ads, sending out promotional materials, or anything else if you are not fulfilling the needs of your specific niche. And the needs of one target group can be very different from another.

The more you know about your target market, the better off you are. You can be sure they want to know two things, no matter who they are:

1. what are you offering

2. what's in it for them

If you aren't able to connect with the way your potential customers see your product, you won't make any sales.

My daughter is proving to be a savvy marketer and has a thorough understanding of her target market. She is a musician and has been working on songs to be released on her first CD.

When she came up with her first song, she posted it on YouTube to see what kind of response it got. From the comments, she could tell that she was attracting a young audience--mostly teenagers. So she began working out her promo plan with this target market in mind.

Having been a teenager herself not all that long ago, she knew three things about her market:

1. Their love of music borders on obsession.
2. They have money to spend on their music.
3. Status among their peers is of utmost importance!

She moved to MySpace.com and began posting her songs, one at a time and testing her market to see which ones got a good response. She tracked the responses, and made adjustments to the new material she was writing.

Every day she spent time answering any comments that had been left on her page. Within two months, she had 2,000 fans! That's Web 2.0, or social marketing at work!

Now she's begun holding contests. The latest one is for the best video made to her new song. Entries are to be posted on YouTube and the winner will receive the first copy of the CD when it is released this summer. This means she will generate even more traffic by all these videos which feature her music. She brings in not only the prospects she has attracted to her, but now she'll be bringing in the prospects that are attracted to her prospects!

As her fan base has grown, she has decided to offer the "opportunity" to be part of her official promotional team. For thirty dollars, she'll send the exclusive promo team t-shirt, along with fliers and posters to distribute.

I can just imagine the way my target market would react to such a proposition. "You want me to pay you to do your advertising for you?" This approach would never work for an adult group of business people.

But my daughter's target audience is made up of teenagers, remember? And what did we say about teenagers? They are completely wrapped up in the music they love and the most important thing in the world to them is to look good in front of their friends. To a teenager, being part of a popular band's promo team is a status symbol. It is totally worth thirty bucks to them! And it is the way your market perceives things--the concept in conceptual selling--that is not only important, but what drives the sale.

It will be well worth your time to sit down, right now, and really think about your target market. Try to see things from their point of view. What is important to them? What can you offer that would be as important to them as status is to a teen? Kids are driven by the need to fit in. What needs drive your market? Do they need more time with their families? Do they need a break on the cost of everyday items? Do they crave a healthy lifestyle? Then think about what kinds of things are creating a gap between what they feel they need and what they actually have.

Now that you have thought of what their needs might be and what problems they are having fulfilling those needs, you can begin to look at how your product or service might provide solutions. To help you figure it all out, you can start looking at the various types of social marketing and begin interacting with your market in a social setting. You can learn a lot here. Then start brainstorming ways to market that will show them the value of doing business with you.

6 Ways to Follow Kendall's Example:

1. Give first -- Kendall put rough cuts of her songs up for free
2. Track market response to different approaches -- Kendall studied which of her songs generated the most comments
3. Adjust where necessary, from use of keywords to the "tone" of your writing or style of your video -- the look and feel of Kendall's website reflects her visitor's tastes, not necessarily her own!
4. Interact with your target market through social sites -- Kendall spends at least an hour a day responding to comments left on her MySpace page
5. Offer a solution to their problem -- giving the "inside scoop" helps Kendall's fans gain status with their friends
6. Have fun! Use your creativity!

Don't let your time, money and effort be wasted by a lack of understanding of your specific target market. Get to know them, keep up with the sometimes weekly changes that may occur in their concept of need, and be ready to provide a logical, valuable solution.

Meanwhile, I'll be either at my desk working...or at a loud, wild, rap concert. Ugh! I'm not in that target group! But, since it's my kid, my concept of what makes good music is changing--and I have a need to see her in action. Hmmm. Anybody got tickets?

Barbara Silva is a Network Marketing Consultant. If you are building up your mlm, small business or network marketing business, join Barbara at Renegade University for step by step training to get prospects coming to you!