We now know that for a startup, market is EVERYTHING.

Now it’s time to get granular.

What is the end goal to your company? Create a following? Build up those customer relationships and form strong connections? The key is to generate value and results, remain competitive in this ever-changing market, stay relevant and most of all…stay afloat. And to stay afloat, you need revenue!

The answer to achieve all of these things cannot possibly be attributed to one single concept or strategy, but once you have the proper foundation, the next step is to identify your target market and target audience. This will allow you to allocate your resources and funds in the most efficient way. Save money on marketing efforts while maximizing your results.

Deploying ad campaigns will most likely always cost money, and what does that cost typically look like? Well, with respect to digital content, that’s usually dependent on how many eyes you want it displayed to and how many people are clicking through it. And of course, aim big right? Let’s get it to everyone, the more the merrier, better to have more than not enough!!! Well, that may be true for having your friends and family over for the annual Thanksgiving feast, but in marketing…no, no, just no.

If you want to waste loads of money on advertisements to get a message to any and everyone, as the suave Lumière once said: Be our guest! But you might get burned!

This is exactly what identifying your target market and audience will prevent. Find out who exactly are the people that will generate the most results. Generating results in this case means getting your content to the eyes that are most interested, the ones that want your product, the ones that would, if the quality and value was good enough, pay for it.

Inc.’s How to Define Your Target Market further elaborates on this saying; “Target marketing allows you to focus your marketing dollars and brand message on a specific market that is more likely to buy from you than other markets.”

After all, would you pay for a 65-year-old man to see an advertisement for the latest cleavage-galore strapless push-up bra? I’m gonna go ahead and say I hope not.

Specific targeting goes hand in hand with the concept of generating value. You must first figure out who your content or product will best suit if you want to provide the most value to them.

As I touched on in last week’s post, the key to succeeding in a competitive market is differentiating your product with what your competitors lack.

In The New York Times A Crazy Idea for Funding Local News: Charge People for It, we get the example of Jennifer Lessin and her media company The Information. She took specialized tech news and focused heavily on producing content that was quality over quantity.

Giving her readers the best of the best generated the value she needed in this niche audience to in turn build a profitable business charging high prices ($399/year to be exact) for a subscription to her content. Now that there is a price, she has added the element of exclusivity to the mix and subscribing to The Information became a must for businesses in related fields.

The author of the article, Farhad Manjoo said, “many subscribers to The Information  think of the publications as a business expense — they work in tech or finance, wealthy industries that will pay just about anything for business intelligence.”

With the recent popularity surrounding subscriptions like Netflix and Hulu, it just goes to show that if you produce the right (quality) content for the right (targeted) people, the results will follow. Generating value for the consumer will generate results for your business.