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Identify target market

Identifying My Target Market

Considering that originally, I wanted to develop my own supplement for myself, then identifying my target market, you would think to be straight forward. However, if I also want to sell my supplement, then I need to be clear about who my target audience will be.

Like most entrepreneurs, I have a tendency to skip over this very important part of the process, because it’s not the “sexy” part of developing a product or service.

It is a HUGE mistake and many books such as “The Lean Startup” By Eric Ries and the “4-hour workweek” by Tim Ferriss talk about how you should avoid mistakes like this, that can be in many cases be very costly.

My problem is I need to figure out the nature of my target market, and to understand what problem it is I am helping to solve. When I have done this I will have a better chance of having a standout blockbuster product that is unique from my competition.

If I tried to sell a supplement that is EXACTLY the same as all the other Super Greens on the market would mean I would most probably struggle to sell my product as I wouldn’t be standing out from the crowd.

So, a good starting point is to look at how I can differentiate my Super Greens from all the others on the market.

Differentiated Super Greens Supplement

There are lots of Super Greens supplements on the market, and as I have said previously I have looked at around 60 and tried at least 10 in the last few months.

So, how do I stand head and shoulders above these other brands?

Firstly and this is very important, I am passionate about being transparent with the ingredients and amounts used – my supplement isn’t fluff and should work. For me developing an ethical is a must and I absolutely refuse to use–proprietary blends! See what I have to about the use of proprietary blends here.

Brain focus and energyAlong with providing your daily greens, vitamins and minerals I really believe there is a market for having something that has benefits for the brain.

Nootropics have been made popular by the film Limitless in 2015, and nootropic pills have more recently become hugely successful. I, like many people, have poor memory and focus, so including ingredients that promote brain function make absolute sense.

The more I read about “attention deficient” and the “focus less” generation it seems I am not alone here. There are many people in a similar position, such as young and even middle-aged professionals looking for optimal health and brain function.

Combining the health benefits of greens and multivitamins with ingredients that support healthy brain and immune functions fit in with the standing out from the crowd and if you buy Super Greens why would you ignore brain function if you had the choice?

Supplement Pain Points to Address

As I am using myself as an example of my target audience, a particular pain point for me as an older parent in my forties is; feeling knackered all the time. Keeping up with two kids is hard work and the frequently disrupted sleep patterns, in particular, leave me feeling exhausted.

Feelings of lack of energy, brain fog and low immune system are frequently experienced by older parents and are some of the more immediate issues faced on a day to day basis. The longer-term issues of health and fitness tend to get pushed down the priority in favour of “surviving” the early parenting years.

I’ve said this before, much of the point for taking an everyday supplement is the ease of taking IT. Cutting up fresh veggies and juicing in every morning is great, but the reality is few of us have the time or energy to or inclination to do it consistently.

Because the time-consuming parts of juicing aren’t limited to juicing, it’s the shopping for the ingredients and as well 30 minutes of prep work and the 15 minutes of cleaning up after that takes its toll on your very limited time. For me just taking a scoop of Super Greens and mixing it with water to get all your essential micronutrients and more in 30 seconds, is a compelling argument.

I know which option I prefer.

So, creating a cost-effective daily greens supplement, that will provide ALL the Vitamin/minerals, antioxidants, veggies, brain and immune ingredients in ONE is the goal.

Key To Success – Ensuring a Good Return On Investment (ROI)

Identifying my target niche is critical to success, as this determines:

  • Branding
  • Marketing
  • Advertising
  • Product message

Without this, it would be almost impossible to figure out the customer’s pain points and desires, which ultimately needed to help them solve their particular problem.

I say “almost impossible” as I can create a generic supplement that can be used by everyone and this will solve a very broad set of problems. But, this means I would need a much larger marketing budget and I would be spreading myself way too thin.

The scattergun approach can work but comes at a HUGE cost.

Much better than I laser into my target demographic with branding and message that’s on point.

Branding is strategic. Marketing is tactical. Marketing may contribute to a brand, but the brand is bigger than any particular marketing effort.James Heaton.

SOURCE: http://www.tronviggroup.com/the-difference-between-marketing-and-branding/

Target Market Basic Demographics

A good starting point in identifying a target market is to establish the basic demographics of a desired audience. I have taken into account:

  • Age,
  • Location,
  • Gender,
  • Income,
  • Education,
  • Occupation
  • Marital status.

SOURCE: https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/find-your-target-market/

My target audience will be older parents that are juggling parenthood with their professional working lives. This means the branding has to be clean and not gimmicky.

We’re not targeting a weight loss audience, such as the Detox Organics brand, or a male gym focused gym brand like Science Based Detox Greens (both of which I have reviewed, check out the links).

The nearest competitors we have to our demographics are Athletic Greens and Organifi.

A couple of points on Location, whilst I have identified the USA, I will look to sell my supplement in other locations as well, but the initial focus will be North America. To quickly also mention that I will be narrowing my target by looking at states that more fit my demographic, for example in terms of higher earners.

From the demographic data above I used these to build two customer avatars for one each gender. I will write another post with my supplement brand-customer avatars.

Disposable Income

It’s no good having the best product in the world if your target market can’t afford it!

Recently I had a great conversation with a fellow entrepreneur who had this rather expensive problem. They spent a lot of time and money on designing a luxury clothing range aimed at a particular audience, in the end, it was a very different group of that ended being interested in the product.

As I have already said in this article as well as others. I am looking to create an effective supplement that contains properly researched ingredients and such this is a premium brand. The supplement will be at the higher end of the price scale, and during my research stage, I identified my competitors' pricing to be between $30-$100 per month.

Looking at my nearest competitors my price point is more around $70-90 per month. Watch this space for an article on pricing strategies as well.

With this in mind, it’s incredibly important to know that my target market has the disposable income to afford to purchase my supplement on a monthly basis. I’m not selling this as a one-off purchase, the business is all about repeat business.

Whilst there will be benefits to short-term use, the real benefits will be experienced after a number of months. It’s just like exercising, the health benefits of exercising remain while you exercise.

Step by Step Process to Reverse Engineer Competitors Target Audience

To gather information on the typical audience for my Super Greens competitors on the market I used a couple of online tools (see recommend tools below).

To identify the typical target audience, I did the following:

  1. I collected a list of competitors by doing some simple Google searches after a couple of hours I had my list. Once I had my list I used then used the Ahrefs tool (see more below) to see which of my competitors had the most traffic going to them, which in essence gives me the most popular products searched for in Google.
  2. From this list I then produced a top 10 as the basis for analyzing my target audience
  3. To get the audience demographics I used the Alexa tool (see below) which gave me target age, gender, location and income data.

Spending some time on a competitor’s website an also give you a good feel for the target market, by looking at the style of the site colors of another branding.

For example, when I checked out DetoxOrganics it’s clear they are focused more on weight loss as a benefit and the audience is most likely female, and considering their testimonials their product is aimed at a younger market.

I used Alexa to determine audience demographics of Athletic Greens customers, check out below.

Alexa Research Athletic Greens

Recommended Tools

Not long ago researching and understanding your competitors was severely limited, but these days there are many valuable online tools that can help take a lot of the guesswork out of this process, turning it from art into more of a science.

All the tools I use are paid for. Some do offer a 7-day trial period and so if you’re organized and quick you can do most of your research during this time, however, I really do advise you to buy them, they are invaluable as targeting is a continual process. It’s not, “do once and forget”.

Ahrefs

Is my favorite tool and a must-have if you’re doing anything online that requires competitive analysis in Google.

Ahrefs can analyze websites providing their keywords rankings, backlinks, and metrics for the site. This information can be used to track and reverse engineer your competitor's website performance in Google.

Prices for Ahrefs start at $99 per month for the “Lite” package, which is sufficient for most users. There is 20% saving if you opt for the annual package ($990).

Ahrefs screenshot on laptop

Check out Ahrefs here – https://ahrefs.com/pricing-plans

Alexa

This tool owned by Amazon is great to get demographic data for competitors’ products.

You simply enter the website address into the tool and if they have enough data, it will return Gender, Age, Education, Income, and if there are children.

Whilst it is a great tool, at a starting price of $149 it may be a little expensive for those just starting out, but they do offer a 14-day free trial.

Alexa Website

Check out Alexa here – https://www.alexa.com/plans

Summary

My first question was how can I differentiate my supplement from others on the market. The answer was to be completely transparent make ingredients easily seen and understood and to find ingredients that can be backed by real science. In addition, to this, my formula would be designed to fit my target audience and therefore would differ from most Super Greens currently on the market.

From there I identified current brands and their positioning in terms of age, gender, and income and I used the online tools above to gather my data.

Of course, my target demographic is still fairly broad but it is a good starting point and will allow me to focus on specific “pain points” for my future customers.

As I do further research and get more feedback I will update this post.

Adam Author

About the LifeHacker Guy

Hi, I'm Adam the founder of the LifeHacker Guy.

I have a First Class Honours degree in Sports Science from Brighton University, specialising in exercise physiology and nutrition. In my youth I was a competitive Triathlete and long-distance runner placing top 10 in most triathlon races I completed.

Since suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I moved into web development, after a couple of years I then moved onto developing a number of online businesses. I've recently taken a sabbatical and I'm now looking to make big changes in my life, hopefully this may resonate with you - join me in my journey!

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