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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Smith How to Access Your Target Market: Targeted Sales For Small Businesses
By Alexander Gordon 
If you do not practice targeted marketing, then all funds spent on marketing are being wasted. Targeted marketing helps you fine-tune your marketing campaign, which is crucial for a small business. Unless you know to the potential investors in your products and services, marketing will not help you reach your goal.
Why Targeted Marketing?
There are many reasons why mass marketing does not work anymore. Targeted marketing is the brand new marketing mantra, and there are many reasons for that. Two of these are
1) Growing consumer awareness: With the information boom courtesy of the Internet, consumers have access to more information than ever before. They now have the power to read, compare and exchange views, and select, all at the same time and without getting out of their seat.
2) Need for recognizing potential markets: Targeted marketing campaigns allow you to choose the markets you want to sell to. You need to recognize the most lucrative markets and sell to them.
Four Steps to Targeted Marketing:
As a small business owner, you cannot afford to throw away what little funds you have on ill-conceived marketing campaigns. Targeted marketing streamlines your campaign and makes it more effective.
The section below discusses the steps involved in targeted marketing campaigns and how to access target markets.
1) Identifying the Market
Unless you know who the potential customers are, you cannot target them, right? There are two kinds of targets, individuals and organizations. Individuals are more difficult to target, since they are unpredictable and tastes vary from individual to individual. Organizations and groups are better when it comes to targeted ad campaigns, since their preferences depend on an average factor. You can target both types of markets in order to make more sales.
2) Market Research
Market research is not confined to big businesses anymore. Small businesses need it equally. The Internet is the best source of information when it comes to market research. For more information, you can hire professionals who will carry out surveys and analyze the results. Find out more about the market of your competitors and identify a gap that you can fill.
3) Choosing a Market
Now comes the most difficult part of the entire process, how to choose a market to target. Your final decision should be based on:
3.1) Access: Who can access the market? Are your products available to the area you plan to promote in?
3.2) Need: Does the market need your products and services badly enough for people to pay a reasonable price for them?
3.3) Competition: What is the competition like? Will your products be able to stand out from among the many products in the market?
4) Market Profile
Create a database of potential customers and profile them. This helps you target the market better.
Targeted marketing saves time and resources, both crucial to small businesses, and you get better results out of targeted marketing than you would from mass marketing. To streamline your marketing campaign or to carry out market research, you could consult professionals. Professional guidance will help your small business use its resources more effectively in marketing and promotion campaigns.
Alexander Gordon is a writer for http://www.smallbusinessconsulting.com - The Small Business Consulting Community. Sign-up for the free success steps newsletter and get our booklet valued at $24.95 for free as a special bonus. The newsletter provides daily strategies on starting and significantly growing a business.