Who Influences Your Target Market?

I’m Chris Brown, and my company is Marketing Resources and Results. I’m going to talk about who influences your target market. Knowing who influences your target market really helps because when you do your marketing, you’re actually marketing a step above your target market. That way, your money goes further, your budget is stronger, and you’re not marketing to the end user. You’re actually marketing to the referral person. Word of mouth is what a lot of companies count on. Why not market to the influencer, because that’s who provides the recommendations. The Chambers of Commerce can influence particularly consumers because they’re looking for a business that supplies what they need. When you’re a member of a chamber, you can co-market with other chamber members, and that way you actually share customers so that if you have the same target market, they can be influenced by other chamber members referring your services, your products, so it’s a real win/win.

Another example might be an association for the industry. Your potential customers probably belong to their industry’s association, so you may want to check out that association and find out what problems that industry is facing, what challenges they’re trying to overcome. Perhaps your product or service will help with that challenge. LinkedIn is also an influencer because that’s the largest business social media out there. One reason I really like LinkedIn is that you can check out other companies and see what other people in your network have worked with that company or know other people within that company. It helps to give a referral. Even if you don’t talk with that person, you can tell that they’re connected.

There’s a lot of online influencers, but Google really owns that space now. Often people, they even talk about Google as a verb. “Let’s Google it.” People will Google your company to find out what you’ve done and how you’ve served others, what services you provide. If they can’t see your company come up in the results in Google, you might not really exist to them. You might lose credibility. It’s very important to have all of your online media, electronic media, up to date, both from a quality and quantity standpoint.