Identifying target markets is important for every business in making sure that our efforts are on point and effective. The identification starts with one's self – assessing your own interests, work style, and personality, and then slowly expanding it step by step to include your ideal clients and their needs.
Assessing Yourself
One way to assess yourself is by asking basic questions like the following:
What am I good at
What do I enjoy doing
What passions do I have that I haven’t explored yet
What do I hate/dislike doing
What of my current services are not profitable
What services are not requested often enough to keep them on my service list
By answering these questions, you get a clear understanding of what you want and where you want to go. Isn't that the first thing one has to get a good grasp of for a solid foundation?
Also, upon arriving to the answers for these questions, you may notice patterns that can clue you in on what possible services to focus on for a selected market. Recommendation is for you to concentrate on the services that you enjoy and that are profitable and cut the ones that you dislike and/or do not provide enough profit.
Assessing Ideal Clients
This is just similar to the previous assessment. Ask these specific client-focused questions to yourself so get an idea of what your ideal client/s is like.
Which existing clients do I enjoy working with
Why
What are the characteristics of my ideal client
In which industries do they work
It is also important to understand what benefits your services have to these clients. List these benefits, but make sure to list “benefits” and not only “features“.
A feature is what something “is“.
A benefit is what it “does“.
For example: You can compile and maintain databases fast and accurately (that’s the feature). The database however, put all the business’s key information in one place, makes it easily accessible, and easy to update (that’s the benefit).
Understanding this difference is important because people do not make use of your service to get a feature. They use your services to get the benefit produced by the feature.
After listing all the benefits, list some of the clients whose current situation could be improved by those benefits. You should begin to see a definable group emerging as a niche market.
It is however also important to determine if the group you’ve identified as a niche market is a profitable market. This can be determined if you’re able to
identify a few individual clients within the group and can find contact information to communicate with them
determine if these clients have a need for making use of your services
deliver a sales message to these clients
ensure this group is large enough to produce the volume of business you need
If you’re able to do these few steps, you are on the right tract to identify target markets for your virtual assistant business.
You may want to check out the original post here by Be Virtual Assistant Wise.