If you are thinking of starting an e-commerce website or if you want to diversify your existing service area/product groups, then you should decide well in which market your potential customers are.
This decision can target the whole market, or you can target a specific part of the target market you choose. Targeting the right market with your products will be one of the essential preliminary studies for your business success. The work you need to do for this process is target market research.
What is the Target Market?
Your e-commerce site can appeal to “everyone” only if your product range is extensive. In cases where your product range is narrow, addressing a specific audience is one of the main factors that will increase profitability.
Target market; It consists of all the potential customers who can be closely interested in your product groups on your e-commerce website, who are more likely to make a purchasing action, and that you want to address directly in your brand.
Target market is a term that, by definition, is specific rather than generalization. Therefore, it is essential to adopt this definition when entering e-commerce. If you know the qualities of the group you will target in your digital marketing strategy, you can draw a more efficient and accurate roadmap.
Choosing your target market is in the segmentation – targeting – brand positioning triangle at the stage of creating a marketing strategy, and you need to do serious work in this regard.
What is E-Commerce Target Market Selection?
Determining the target market in e-commerce is the act of determining the target audience where you will market your products and services depending on specific strategies. When you determine the target market, you can see your potential competitors’ status, estimate the profitability rate, and discover the products and services needed in this area.
When you make your target market selection, you can focus on the wishes and needs of the audience in the group you have determined and the positioning strategies of your target audience.
In other words; Target market selection paves the way for you to determine strategies for your target audience directly in the product, price, and promotion steps in the marketing mix.
What is the Target Market Strategies in E-Commerce?
Before determining the target market for an e-commerce website, you need to determine the path you will follow in this process. The target market you will choose and the processes of positioning your brand are also related.
Therefore, acting with the future in mind can help you take the proper steps. We can talk about four different strategies that are accepted for target market selection.
- Whole Market (Undifferentiated Marketing) Strategy
The whole market strategy focuses on perceiving the target market as a whole. E-commerce websites that want to reach the broadest possible network usually apply this strategy. It is effective in markets where masses sell standard product groups and do not look for significant differences in products.
Since this strategy focuses on the target market as a whole, you can run your work with only one marketing strategy. This can provide an advantage in terms of cost savings. However, although this strategy targets the whole market, it may not be possible to reach/dominate the entire area.
As the number of competitors is high, its market share may decrease. For this reason, we recommend that you make sure that this strategy applies to your business before deciding on the whole market strategy.
- Multi-Market (Differentiated Marketing) Strategy
In a multi-market strategy, it is preferable to focus on parts and select more than one segment: more than one target market, where product resources are available. Since each target market is divided into sections, different product and marketing methods can be developed.
It is especially effective in markets where there are product groups where price variability is possible. With this strategy, it is possible to reach a stronger position in the e-commerce market and reach high sales figures.
- Single Market (Concentrated Marketing) Strategy
A single market strategy requires focusing on only one part of the segmented market, and that segment is considered the target market.
It is an effective method that helps e-commerce websites that want to dominate the target market to reach a selected audience. Marketing methods are developed and applied specifically for people interested in products in the same class.
Although it is possible to get stronger against competitors with this strategy, competition and risks may increase in the same direction.
- Niche Market (Narrow Segment Marketing) Strategy
The niche market strategy focuses on the smallest unit of the target market. It is marketing one or a series of products that can meet a specific group’s specific needs. Gaps are found in the market due to smaller segmentation each time, and these gaps are filled with new products and services.
Niche market gaps are often located in target market segments that large-scale e-commerce sites find not worth entering or are new to entry. Initially, the number of competitors is small, and the profit margin is very high. But over time, rivals can proliferate, and the risk increases.
Therefore, e-commerce websites that implement this strategy mainly operate in more than one niche market. For the strategy to be successful, it is necessary to collect data, analyze the collected data and diversify the products.
Ways to Manage Market Research for E-Commerce Websites
There are some data groups that you should consider when doing target market research for an e-commerce website. You can find the most accurate target market you can turn to by taking the groups of the sectors you want to serve and the groups your product sources are likely to be interested in.
At this point, market research methods are divided into two main groups as primary and secondary. Companies generally evaluate e-commerce sites’ needs in primary or secondary research methods and focus on one of two methods. Applying both research methods ensures richer results every time.
Primary Research
In the first stage of the research, rather than customer behavior, the targeted market’s discovery is made. In this process, surveys can give essential ideas. The specific research to be carried out after the discovery is made through target audience analysis and provides direct information about the current situation.
You can also evaluate the social network analysis option to measure the target audiences’ behaviors and carry out the survey process in these channels.
Secondary Research
Secondary research is a research process carried out by taking into account the recently published data. Analyzes of customer, competitor, price, product, and industry data performed by other companies are also included in the research.
In this process, you can use data from public sources or benefit from private research agencies’ reports. In addition to these, you can also consider your research, if any. In the secondary research process, you can analyze previously researched statistics, trend reports, and sales charts and make comparative evaluations about both the market and your competitors.
You can also use some web tools for your primary and secondary research. You can use these tools for your target market research, where you can see your potential customers’ actions and potential competitors.
