5 Factors when determining your companies demographic

                This is a common question: “why narrow your marketing to a select group of people?” The answer is both simple and complicated. Simple first, because only certain people want your product! Ok, and now the more complex. Marketing costs money! Even free advertising is not free! Think about it, you are taking time out of your valuable day to do some free marketing online. That is time you could be doing something that can make you money. Once you know how much your advertisement really is costing you, the next thing you want to know is what you are getting back from your marketing. This is considered your return on investment (ROI). If you send out 5,000 fliers but only had 5 customers from those, which is not a good marketing campaign. So what can you do to get more customers by sending out the same amount of fliers? Determine a better demographic to advertise to! Here are five things to really think about when narrowing a demographic:

Age- What age group does your product fall into? Is it a product that is meant more for elderly people, or a younger group? Think about this, your company has a product to help reduce wrinkles. What would be a good group to target? You can narrow this slowly by removing the obvious choices first. We can remove newborn to 18. Kids do not need wrinkle medicine. We can cut the high age as well so let’s remove 55+. If you research this industry you will notice a large drop in consumers at the higher ages as well, why? After a certain age people begin to care less about their appearance when it becomes the norm for their age group and accept it. So based on this, you can see we are at 18-55. Rule of thumb is to narrow to 5% population. We will get to this more later.

Sex- Is your product aimed for a certain sex? Can it only be used by men or women? Going back to the wrinkle cream, most men do not use cosmetic products. So this is a simple one. We would only gear it towards female! Most products have a favor towards one sex or the other. Many unisex products fail because by catering both males and females, it generally becomes a product no one wants! 

Ethnicity- Is your product used more by a certain ethnicity? Will your product offend any specific ethnicity? I first want to say you should never have a product that purposely segregates or offends ANYONE. Not only is it something that will bring bad publicity, but it is just morally wrong. This is not always a big factor to look into, but it can be used in some products. Let’s once again look at our wrinkle cream example. This is a factor we would not really put much importance on. This product is used by all ethnic groups so you would want to market to them all.  

Religion- Is your product geared towards a specific religion or has any aspects of religion involved in it? This is again one that is not always a factor that needs to be used, and again this is one where you should never have a product that is meant to offend or segregate a religion. With our example of wrinkle cream we would probably not use this factor as people of all religions can use it. This factor is sometimes hard to understand when we would use it so here are a couple examples. Is your product spiritual in the fact that it involves doing certain rituals that is not looked at positively by some religions? Meditation products, alternative medicine, jewelry with certain religious emblems are all things that you may be able to narrow it down to a certain group. If you can narrow this section down you can look into advertising in venues with religious groups such as church functions, faith based websites, or networking with religious groups.   

Location- Is your product meant in certain regions? Are you marketing locally only or nationally? Location is very important for so many reasons. You do not want to sell things that cannot be used in certain areas. You would not market surfboards in Arizona! You also wouldn’t market snow shovels in San Diego! You also want to look at other aspects in location as well. Let’s continue with wrinkle cream. Say your product is at the higher end of the price range. It is also cosmetic and not a necessity. These two points play a big factor in where you want to market it. You want to aim for cities and states with high populations of your other factors we discussed that have higher income levels and, if you can find it, where more people use similar products. So when you think of high end cosmetic products where do you think of first? How about Los Angeles, New York, or Miami? These are all major cities with high incomes and are generally big on appearance. Not to sound mean, these are big cities with major influence in the fashion industry. 

Now that you have a group of people narrowed down, you then want to make sure it is specific enough or make sure it is not too specific. Again, general rule is 5% total population. Now target your next marketing campaign towards these people. Ways to actually do the marketing will be discussed in a later publication. It is always good to go back and analyze a marketing campaign when it is done. Did your ROI increase? Where there more people in one area of your demographic buying your product more than others? Do you think you may have left a group of people out? If you find any opportunities during your analysis, adjust them for your next campaign. Even after you found your market, you should continue to analyze in case a shift changed. This is why it is a good idea to get a marketing consultant or hire a marketing firm. Half the challenge is determining your market and how to get to that market the best.