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[Kerry Beare Company: Magnetic Sponsoring Contribution Level: 1]

Hi All

I was wondering if I can get some help with this question please.

I have read that I really need to know who my target market is - both for my mlm business and also for my products of my primary business. I realised I don't really have a good picture of who they are so, therefore, how can I target them... I don't know their age groups, what type of people would respond to me and my profile or when I write articles or on my blog (that I'm going to be creating).

Can you offer some suggestions on how I might start to do this and what resources I might use. Particularly, some ideas that are either free or a small investment.

One suggestion was to create a survey. What type of questions would be good and where do I post these to get feedback.

Any help would be fully appreciated.
thanks
Kerry

[Andrew James Contribution Level: 2]

Kerry,

I think that this is one of the best, most insightful questions you could ask. I see that you just joined our community not too long ago, so let me give you one really really good tip that may seem obvious. Then if you'll send me some more detailed questions, I would love to do a longer article on just this.

The number one tip I can give you is to search for questions.

Your target market if you are building a network marketing opportunity will be people who want to build an MLM. The biggest problem most people run into when building their MLM the first time is they violate the two fundamentals of marketing.

1- Find something that people want or need with an immense amount of desire
2- Win their trust that you can solve that problem or meet that need with your product/service/etc

Most people in MLM go to those who don't want what they are selling, and sell it in a way that doesn't lead the person being sold to believe that they can deliver the promised results (that the prospect didn't want in the first place.)

So, for these reasons and more, the most important thing for you to do is to focus on serving people who already want to build a network marketing business. The easiest way to identify these types of people are the people who are already in a network marketing business.

HERE IS MY BEST TIP: Read the questions here on better networker, and start to form what is called an avitar. An avitar is a sum of all the common characteristics of your target market, blended into one person. You may even name the person, and then everything you ever create is for that avitar. You will quickly get a sense for this market by simple browsing the profiles of people in this network and more specifically of people like you who are just getting started and are posting about their companies. Do your own market analysis ( I would love to see it) how many people can you find that are: male, female, in wellness companies, etc. What are the top five questions you most often see repeated, etc. After a while you should get a general idea of who this market is and what they want.

The other thing(s) you asked for were some tools, and those kinds of resorces, specifically for your company's products.

1- Quantcast.com is good
2- Twitter/Facebook have imeanse possiblities too detailed to explain here
3- MSN's adcenter has some amazing research capabilities within their PPC engine, as does google in their tools. Setting up an account with both, even if you aren't going to be doing PPC will cost you about $5 each, so pretty simple to get started.
4- For Survey's use survey monkey.

The issue with survey's is you need a way to distribute it, and a compeling reason for people to fill it out. So it may be hard to get people to respond if you don't have a list to send it to, or a good reason why they should fill it out.

One of my first and most unsuccessful forum posts was something like "so what does everyone want to know?"
Didn't work that great.

However, if you have a list and some expertise about a certain topic, then it will make a lot of sense to ask people what they specifically want to learn about that. If you were doing a tele seminar for example.

[Kerry Beare Company: Magnetic Sponsoring Contribution Level: 1]

Thanks Andrew...

There were some great tips there, and I have now something to work with. Thanks for the offer of taking a look at what Ive come up with... I will take you up on that.

I liked one of the points you made changed my mindset from the old way of thinking where I would think about how I could sell my product to someone who doesn't want it in the first place, and trying to convince them ... changed to think about what does someone want or is looking for and do I have a product that could met that need.

All the best
Thanks
Kerry

[Gregory Elfrink Company: ViSalus Sciences Contribution Level: 3]

Ah, I love this question!

People in the network marketing industry forget so much of the world's population when they start talking about target marketing.

They narrow their eyes and focus on such a TINY market that is the network marketers currently gone online. Yes, not even an entire industry. JUST network marketers who have gone online!

This is a bad mistake, you leave a lot of money on the table doing this. However when you first begin, definitely focus your attention to one target market at first, and well, our market is an easy one to target : )

Other markets you got to play the game a little bit differently, but it is fairly similar in the end. Some of these markets include internet marketing, people interested in making money online and affiliate marketers.

You can go for the more classic target markets too. Such as people just getting laid off from work, stay-at-home moms and etc. With the power of the internet, you can actually target these people now.

I've targeted people who love to travel before. People who want to be constantly in motion but not constantly broke, great little niche there.

I think I'll make a post about this.

To the top,
-Gregory

[Prashant Char Contribution Level: 2]

Agree with Greg, First of all list out all the possible targets that would become your leads and then choose the best one. Well its easy to say; choose the best one but how do you choose one would be the next question then. Here's one of the trick that I use for my business. See for this you have to understand a psychology a bit of your listed targets. Then think what problems are been faced by them and then how your biz can give solution to there problem. Now people take it wrongly when its said that provide solution to there problem by just starting the sale pitch about it. Sorry you just lost a prospect then. Try to give genuine solution.

What you have to look into your targeted list is which is the best one to do so. The more value that can be passed on to the people in the targeted field would generate you leads for your business. For e.g. If you are into a business of say health product and you try to target to a doctor community there is a slight chance of getting success coz they know hundreds of better product than yours but you do the same on a common person not a doctor your chances increase. Give a sight more value than a doctor does and your product gets a sale.

Thanks
Prashant.