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So let’s say you are selling crochet doilies. Should you be marketing to young urban men? Um, let’s go with NO. A hugely important part of running a successful creative business is understanding your target market.

So, we’re going to talk about who your target market is and how to find them, as well as doing a shop critique of one reader’s shop! But before we get into figuring out all of that … why is it so important to know your target market?

In the questions you asked me in the opening post, a lot of people asked “how can I increase views and sales”? What is the different between those two? Let’s say for a moment I had a guaranteed way that for $10 you could get 5,000 views tomorrow, but that ALL of the views would come from 12 year old girls who love horses, listening to whatever is the current top 40, and glitter. Some of you might find that to be a great opportunity. Others of you might be thinking, “5,000 views in one day would be nice … but I don’t think they would be into what I’m offering”. Or here is another scenario – let’s say you could get a celebrity endorsement of your product, and the options were Paula Deen, LeBron James, or One Direction. Your choices reflect the importance of knowing your target market.

You need to know who you are marketing to in order to be able to market to them effectively.

We can talk about marketing, photography, views, etc., etc. – but if you’re trying to market pearl necklaces to bikers, or photographing baby hats on adults, or getting views on your photography only from fellow photographers who prefer their own work anyway – it’s not going to do much good, because you’re appealing to the wrong crowd. Yes, you want to make your shop more appealing and draw people in … but you want to make your shop appealing to and draw in the people who actually want to BUY your items. Would you rather have 800 views where only 1% of the people buy, or 300 views where 50% of the people buy? Your target market is the people who actually want to BUY from you.

So you want these people to buy from you. How do you make that happen?

Step 1 – define and describe your target market. And no, just saying “women between the ages of 20-50” isn’t enough. That describes waaaaaaaay too broad of a group. That could cover a new grandmother, and an indie singer/songwriter, and a stay-at-home mother of 5, and a college fashionista. Those four people all will have very different buying habits. When figuring out out target market, you want to narrow down much more than that. Here is a printable list of questions – not all of these may shed light for every seller, but hopefully this will get your thoughts rolling:

Once you have a good feel for who your target market is…

Step 2 – find and appeal to your target market. There are a variety of ways to appeal to your target market: firstly through your product itself (like we talked about last week), as well as how you do your product photography, through your descriptions, through the style of your shop as a whole, and through the price of the product (and this does NOT necessarily mean a low price). Those various topics, though, are all ones which I will be devoting an entire post to in the future, so in this post we’ll be focusing more on FINDING the people in your target market.

I have three basic strategies when it comes to getting in touch with my target market:

So, firstly, finding the places where my target market already goes. Personally, this why I sell my prints on Etsy rather than on my own site. If you are running a creative business, probably one of the features of your target market is that they like to buy from small/handmade businesses. That target market is shopping on Etsy, and other such similar sites. But, of course, that is still too broad, so even within Etsy you need to be seeking your target market. Think about how your customers actually search. Will they be searching “chunky cobalt knit neckwear” or will they be searching “blue scarf”? If your target market is trendy, and cobalt is a trending color, then you’ll be more likely to include that in your tags/titles. If your target market is less trendy, then blue will be of more value to you than cobalt. In general, make sure you have the more simple terms covered first right at the beginning of your title, then move on to more specific terms that are helpful, but probably not as often searched. Make sure you use ALL 14 tags on your listings, and fill them with words and phrases that have meaning to your target market. And, as we will talk about in later posts, make sure your photos are styled in a way that your target market will be drawn to them.

But even if you are only selling on Etsy, that doesn’t mean Etsy needs to be the only place you are seeking out your target market. Think about other (and non-commerce) sites where your target market is already gathered. Some of these would have some cost – for instance, taking out an ad on a website that your target market likes to visit, or do a giveaway on a blog your target market likes to read, etc. Some of these wouldn’t have to cost any money at all – for instance, you could join a forum that your target market uses and include your website in your profile there if that is allowed, or do a guest post on a blog your target market reads, etc. Yes, it takes time to find these places, and it is different for every target market.

Side note here – One thing you should not do is spam. Each of your reading this may have very different target markets, but I will tell you one thing that I know about your target market: they don’t like to be spammed. Think of it the same way as if your target market was all hanging out in one coffee shop – would you run in, yelling at the top of your voice about your products? Or would you put a flyer about your products on the bulletin board, maybe ask they cafe if they are interested in carrying your items, etc. Behave the same way online.

Ok, moving onto part 2 of my strategy: creating places your target market would like to congregate. I think this is most easily done with a blog. A blog allows for much more interaction than a shop alone. Plus, with a blog, you can offer highly valueable content for your target market for free – and that will draw them in. I think it was Mayi Carles who first enlightened me to this: a good way to come up with blog content is to ask yourself, “What problem does my target market face?”, and then post ideas and solutions on those topics. Is your target market made up of stay at home moms? Post family friendly recipes, home organization tips and activities to do with kids. Is your target market made up of outdoors-y types? Post camping how-to’s, tips on what to pack while backpacking, or give instructions for your favorite trail mix. Posting about topics that your target market will find helpful – and clearly linking to your shop on your blog – can be a great way to get in touch with your target market.

And the third part of my strategy: have a product and brand that appeals to strongly to your target market that they want to tell others about it. Like we talked about last week, having a really strong product is so crucial. But once you have a really sellable product, and a good feel of your target market, and put in some work to start getting in touch with your target market – the good news is that the internet offers soooo many ways for people to share the things they like. Pinterest, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, etc., etc. Word of mouth is such a great thing, and when your target market starts spreading the word about you, things can really take off. The thing is – that doesn’t necessarily come easy to get to that point. It takes a lot of work of experimenting with your products, as well as studying and finding your target market.

OK! Enough of general discussion, let’s go ahead and take a look at one of the shop owners who asked specifically about target markets. It is Mollie Doyle, owner of the shop The Bottle Garden – take a look:

First of all, let’s point out things she is doing really well on:
-Photography. WOW. These photos are just absolutely gorgeous. The photos have a great ambiance without distracting or competing with the items themselves. The items really stand out, which is great. Also, there is a great cohesiveness to the shop as a whole, with all the items being photographed in a similar way. Gorgeous photos, Mollie!
-Profile. If you browse her shop and visit her profile, she has some great info there on what she does, written in a friendly and interesting way .. this is a great thing to have in a shop!! People who buy handmade love to know something about the person behind the shop.
-Policies. Filled out, clear, concise, and professional, which is exactly what you want. People are less likely to buy from a shop with no policies … or policies that leave them confused or uncomfortable.

And a couple things that are good, but might be tweaked:
-Descriptions. With a name like “The Bottle Garden”, and with the beautiful products in your shop, people are naturally going to be curious about your work – what you did and how you do it. And I don’t mean giving away trade secrets or anything, but along the lines of what you shared on your profile page … that these are recycled bottles and the neat things you have done to transform them. I really like how you put some of that info right at the top of this listing:

…where you wrote, “I designed this bud vase with a smooth broken edge. The top of the glass was carefully broken to create curves and then polished smooth.” That gives some great insight into the work you put in on these pieces! That kind of info is so valuable to a potential buyer. I know you mentioned price being a question – we’ll be getting into price more in a future post, but the more you make it clear the work that goes into each piece, the more likely people will be to pay a higher price tag. Also, in terms of searching, having really relevant words like “recycled” right near the top of the description would be great. I’d encourage you to start of each description talking a little about what it was you did to the piece, a couple sentences, and sprinkle in good keywords. That will be good in terms of people searching, as well as the top part is what the most people will actually read.

And lastly, a couple things to improve in, especially with regards to today’s topic:
-Target market. Really take some time to think about who you are trying to sell to – look at your beautiful products and think about who it is that would be buying this. A couple things jump to mind as I look at your products – because of the recycled nature of your products, the eco-conscious go-green demographic is one that I think would be a great fit for you. Another angle you could look at is the home decor aspect. Think of women with beautiful houses who enjoy decorating them with unique and quality items, and how much they would enjoy your items. Combine those two, and you’re definitely getting into a niche market! Green home decor is a topic I see around the web quite a bit … in fact after a quick search, I found this list of Top 50 blogs about Green Interior Design … sounds to me like 50 places where your target market already is! I’d suggest looking into pitching your products to relevant blogs – you’ve definitely got the great photos that blogs like that love. Also, if I were you, I’d tweak the tags and titles to involve more terms that pertain directly to your target market. Things like “eco friendly”, “go green”, “eco conscious”, “upcycled home decor” “up cycled” (different spellings are good to cover!) “green interior design”, etc. Monitor your stats to see which terms are bringing people in, and tweak as needed. And, of course, if you find that “eco-conscious women with expendable money for home decor” is too narrow, you can always try marketing to the eco-friendly sector more broadly, or to those interested in home decor and housewares, whether green or not.

A couple other ideas for getting found – have you considered joining an Etsy treasury making group? Having high quality photos is a prerequisite to the groups that give the best results, and since you have that, you might want to go for it. Teams like that do have a time comitment, so you’d have to weigh it. I used to be on several treasury teams and while I was doing that, I made it on the front page of Etsy quite often. Eventually, though, I grew to the point that I was bringing in my own traffic and the time commitment was just too much. But it can definitely be a helpful way to network and grow when you’re starting out. Same thing with social media, or if you would want to consider a blog – you have to weigh which ones are really beneficial and useful to you. We’ll be talking more about social media and such in more detail in a future post.

Overall, Mollie, GORGEOUS shop! I think it’s just an issue of really honing in on your target market and starting out seeking them where they are, in the Etsy search terms, on green design blogs and so forth. Good luck!

I hope this post has been helpful for Mollie and for others as well. Are you trying to figure out your target market too? Have questions or comments about it? Leave them below, I love to hear from you!