Target Market Secondary Effects

Much of market research is designed to help you learn about the characteristics of your market. For example, you may learn that your primary demographics are middle age men in the middle tier of economic status, and this may tell you something about the appeal of your product and how it can be better marketed/targeted to those individuals. But as you continue your research, you should remember that there are secondary effects of targeting a specific market – effects that you can negate with future research.

When you look at specific demographics and focus on them accordingly, you run the risk of losing out on other opportunities, because you accidentally or intentionally avoid additional markets. That's why your research should always be focused on the following: Explore Other Markets No matter how well you've discovered a specific market for your products, never forget to look at other markets as well. You may find that your current marketing strategy was only appealing to a specific market because you accidentally created a marketing campaign that only appealed to that market – not because your product wouldn't appeal to the market.

So continue to explore other demographics and other potential customers to see if there is an opportunity you might be missing. Explore Other Products Sometimes all it takes is a very small variation on your product to make it ready for a completely different market – a variation that would take little time and effort on your part. An example would be if you had a toilet paper that for some inexplicable reason was only appealing to men, but then you find that making a packaging that has a floral pattern suddenly appeals to women.

It would be a small change with a potentially large effect. Explore Generalization Finally, remember that defining your market will always exclude outliers, but outliers are still potential customers. So you should look for methods of marketing or product development that will appeal to your target market in a way that doesn't exclude others in your market – or excludes as few people as possible.

Every decision you make with your company has a positive and negative impact. There is very rarely anything you can do to your company that is 100% beneficial. But you can reduce the negative effects by continuing to expand your research, exploring other potential advantages and never limiting yourself to your discoveries.