Target market analysis is one area of Internet marketing that is often overlooked or only briefly mentioned, but it is a vital part of setting up a marketing strategy. If it is done correctly, you will find the exact customer you need to market to and your sales will explode.

Here are some target market analysis questions to guide you in finding your ideal customer base. By narrowing down your market you will know what target market advertising to use and who you are really talking to.

1. Is your ideal customer female or male?

2. What type of job profile does your perfect customer fit into? Are they an executive dealing with a number of employees or a stay-at-home mother raising children?

3. Where does the ideal customer shop for this product? Do they look for it on the Internet, off-line or both?

4. Is this product or service going to be used as a gift or for the customers themselves?

5. What is the income level of the customer that would like this product?

6. Is this product or service needed for a one-time use or is it needed repeatedly?

7. What would be the income level of the perfect customer?

8. Is this something that is needed, or something that is wanted?

9. What age range are you targeting?

When you go through this list of questions, you can see for yourself where this is heading. You can make a mental image of the customer you are addressing and be better able to start a marketing campaign based on what you see.

Target Market Analysis: Case # 1

Let’s take for example men’s electric shavers. You’re going to start a new website about men’s electric shavers and point your customers to Amazon or eBay to do some shopping. At this point you can narrow down your target audience very easily.

Quite obviously, in this case, you are going to be talking to men. They will be of any age range (except children), they can be from any income level and they can have any job profile. It is something that is needed to keep a man groomed, and it is only something that he will need to purchase once in a while.

Since it is something that can be used as a gift, you may want to look at targeting women during the Christmas season, since many of them will be purchasing these shavers for their husbands at this time of the year. When Father’s Day comes around, you can market to wives and older children.

It doesn’t matter what the product or service is that you are offering. You can define your market very easily by using this list, and you can also use it to help brainstorm marketing ideas. This list is pure gold when you use it to narrow down your customer base and look for ideas.

You can see that you have a wide audience for this shaver product, and as long as you remember that you are targeting men, most of the year, you should be able to find buyers.

Target Market Analysis: Case # 2

Now let’s take a not so obvious product and break it down further.

If you take the example of weight loss, and want to sell a new diet pill, then you may have to do some investigation to narrow down your target audience.

The first thing you should do is find out whether more women than men take diet pills, or vice versa, or whether they both seem to take them equally. If you find out that one gender takes them much more than the other then you have narrowed your market down to 50% of the population. This is good.

To find out most of this information, all you need to do is look at forums. For the weight loss pill, you need to find forums where this actual pill is discussed. It is then just a matter of looking at the details of the posters. Is it men or women engaging in this topic?

You will find out a lot at forums. You may think that a diet pill is something that people would just want to help them lose weight, yet find out from the forum that there are people that feel that they desperately need this diet pill. You may find posters there that believe that if they don’t get their hands on this pill, they will never lose weight.

You can find out who your target market is and what they are thinking by reading posts at a forum and really listening to what is being said. Sometimes you can even find out their age, education levels and job positions by looking at their profiles.

You can really make a marketing explosion if you know who you are talking to and what they really want. Take some time to do some digging and find out more about the types of people that are buying your products.

In your pursuit of doing target market analysis, you can even start investigating some market survey sites to see if there have been studies on your product that show what kinds of people are buying it. You’ll be surprised at what has been surveyed and at times very surprised by the results as well.

My opinion of classical economics and economists turned sour shortly after I enrolled in my first economics course as a college sophomore. I was not a wet behind the ears recent high school graduate, having recently been discharged from the army after service during the Korean War. People holding positions of authority had to earn my respect, for I had seen to many people from corporals to captains whose incompetence was deadly. So when my professor began to make claims that seemed wrong to me, I vocally questioned them and often posed counterexamples. His arguments were often ineffective, and I once told him that what he had said was “stupid.” The class roared, and he threatened to evict me from his class. He didn’t and I mellowed my questioning somewhat, but never ceased even though it became obvious that questioning was not encouraged. I Aed that course, not because I accepted what was presented but because the so-called objective examinations favored by professors in the social sciences were so simple minded that a braying jackass could have passed them. About a year later, I met this professor again at a party hosted by some graduate students I had become friendly with. He said, in reference to me, that he was glad to know that there still were students around who were willing to question their professors, and I answered him by saying that he didn’t feel that way when it was happening in his class. So much for professorial integrity.

When I was a student, students and professors in Arts and Sciences did not hold the social sciences in high regard. Social science courses were thought of as crip, and they drew hoards of weak students looking for easy As. The sad fact is that those who went on to major in some social science were students who were drawn from these courses. Of course, not all those students were weak; there are always exceptions, but the social science departments abetted the attraction of these weak students by asking other academic departments to offer special, watered down courses for their majors. The mathematics department, for instance, had to offer a “statistics for social science majors” course. Required readings in these courses almost always were found in textbooks; readings from original sources were almost never required.

Someone will say, of course, that this is a mere anecdote, which is true. It has no probative value. But this anecdote is not all there is.

Adam Smith has had a vast, but not total, influence on Classical Economics. He was a professor of moral philosophy, and any serious student of philosophy who has read Smith’s philosophical works knows that he was not a first-rate thinker. In fact, philosophy curriculums almost totally ignore him. How such a mediocre thinker’s work should have become so influential is a mystery, unless those who thought him “brilliant” were themselves not very bright or because they found his theses useful in promoting their own economic beliefs for good or evil. Raising serious questions about the validity of most of his theses is easy. But there is more, lots more.

Read the daily postings on economistsview (http://economistsview.typepad.com/) and notice how much controversy exists among economists on almost every issue. Similar controversy doesn’t exist among mathematicians, chemists, physicists, and astronomers or the people in any of the true sciences. While reading these posts, count the number of times the words “believe” and “opinion” are used and how rarely the words “know” and “known” are used. These controversies indicate that not knowledge but ideology is at work. These economists are “true believers” who accept certain economic writings as holy writ, and all of this holy writ is summarized in the textbooks mentioned above. Greg Mankiw has even stated that the purpose of a textbook is to present “the consensus” of views even though a consensus is not only often wrong but can be altered by altering the list of the people asked. Given the controversy evident among economists on issues, only a fraud can claim to have found a consensus.

But the most probative evidence comes from an analysis of the theorems economists uncritically adopt. I have previously argued that comparative advantage is an entirely unworkable principle. It requires enormous amounts of data from many nations, all of which is always out of date. Even if the data shows that one country had a comparative advantage when the data was collected, there is no way of knowing that the comparative advantage still exists. After all, things change. Comparative advantage is also what mathematicians call a transitive function. If country A has a comparative advantage over country B, and country B has a comparative advantage over country C, then country A has a comparative advantage over country C. It would then be logically possible for one country to have a comparative advantage over every other country in the production of some product. But if every other country decided not to produce that product any longer and instead buy it from the country with the ultimate comparative advantage, the price of the product would increase so much that the comparative advantage would disappear. In other words, the principle reduces itself to a logical absurdity.

But given the current possible worldwide collapse of financial markets, consider Joseph Schumpeter’s principle of creative destruction. The Economist recently wrote that Schumpeter “argued that recessions are a process of creative destruction in which inefficient firms are weeded out. Only by allowing the ‘winds of creative destruction’ to blow freely could capital be released from dying firms to new industries.” Strange as it may be, I find no such argument in Schumperer.

He writes, the “kind of competition which counts [is] the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization. . . . It is hardly necessary to point out that competition of the kind we now have in mind acts not only when in being but also when it is merely an ever-present threat. . . .” And “This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.” (Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1975), pp. 82-85) Notice that the words “recession” and “depression” do not appear in this passage.

Although there is something true in Schumpeter’s insight, it is also highly misleading. If you look at a list of all inventions since 1800, there are not many that no longer survive in one form or another. The telegraph disappeared when the telephone was invented, but American Telegraph and Telephone still exists. The typewriter disappeared when the personal computer was invented, but many companies that previously made typewriters still exist, having switched their production to computers and computer peripherals. Brother is a good example. The invention of the vacuum cleaner did not eliminate the broom. The fluorescent light bulb has not eliminated the incandescent, and most of the companies that originally made only incandescent bulbs now also make fluorescent ones. The electric shaver has not eliminated the safety razor. The air conditioner has not eliminated the fan. Television has not eliminated either radio or motion pictures. The microwave oven has not eliminated the convection oven. In most of these cases, although a few companies succumbed, the others merely adapted, and there is no way to prove that those that succumbed wouldn’t have succumbed if the new technology hadn’t appeared.

What is more interesting, however, is whether what was created was in all respects better than what was lost. Consider the invention of the airplane and its adaptation to trans-oceanic passenger conveyance. The airliner certainly did away with the ocean liner. But one can argue over whether the change was a great benefit to humanity. For when the ocean liner succumbed to the airliner, the ambiance of trans oceanic travel was also destroyed. So was the craftsmanship that built the elegance found in ocean liners. The airliner took travelers out of an elegant, relaxed, social environment and stuffed them like small fish into a sardine can in the sky. Is that really a benefit? So even when Schumpeter is read properly, what is destroyed may have been better than what is created. So if creative destruction really is the essence of Capitalism, Capitalism may be worse than even anti-capitalists believe.

Economic downturns, recessions and depressions, are not part of Schumpeter’s principle of creative destruction. They are merely unnatural catastrophes, and like natural catastrophes, they are merely destructive. Sometimes the destruction gets rebuilt to its former greatness; sometimes not. Sometimes it never gets rebuilt at all. And although Schumpeter did say, “For capitalism, a depression is a good cold douche,” anyone who has spent time among good professors knows that they will often utter the most outrageous things to provoke their students into a response. So just because Schumpeter did make this statement doesn’t mean that he considered it to be part of the principle of creative destruction. To make that jump is simply a bad inference. But classical economists make those all the time. So although economists claim to be engaged in a rational enterprise, they themselves are not clearly rational.
©2008 John Kozy

Generally, men do not take especially good care of their skin. Mostly they shave their stubbles off in the morning, apply some aftershave and that’s just about it.

Some take it a step further and apply a moisturiser or toning gel after completing their shaving routine, but very few realise that taking good care of their skin is much more important than that.

You see, the integrity of the skin is vitally important to prevent harmful substances and micro-organisms from penetrating through the natural barrier of the skin. Few men realise that the integrity of the skin is compromised by shaving. Shaving removes the natural barrier function of the skin and allows potentially harmful ingredients and micro-organisms to pass through the skin, while nicks and cuts open the pathway into the blood stream.

Even when using an electric shaver, the skin is inflicted with microscopic nicks and cuts (they don’t have to bleed), which compromises the integrity of the skin. The process of shaving removes not only the protective acid mantel of the skin, but in addition, shaving removes several of the most superficial skin layers including some living skin cell layers and this renders the skin vulnerable.

This vulnerability is not just limited to attack from micro-organisms either. Once the natural barrier of the skin has been compromised, molecules that would otherwise have been excluded are now able to penetrate the skin and enter into the deeper layers of the skin and potentially the bloodstream.

Natural skin care products for men that only contain safe, effective and 100% natural ingredients such as essential oils and herbal extracts will reduce this risk. Essential oils are known to have very powerful antiseptic effects, which help to keep micro-organisms from penetrating through the compromised skin and thus prevent infection and inflammation of the skin. Together with herbal extracts, these types of ingredients soothe, nourish and protect the skin and prevent bacteria and other micro-organisms, etc., from entering the deeper layers of the skin.

In addition, using only safe and natural ingredients insures that potentially toxic ingredients, commonly found in men’s skin care products, are not a threat – simply because they’re contained in the products.

One also has to be mindful of the fact that no matter what type of razor is used, a range of bacteria and other micro-organisms will always be present on the blade, even a brand new blade. It is therefore very easy to introduce these organisms into the bloodstream. In most cases, the body’s immune system will handle this quickly and effectively, but by adding dangerous chemicals, contained in most commercially available skincare and shaving products, into the equation the skin can be adversely affected.

We are seeing an increase in skin sensitivities being reported by men that on closer examination frequently turn out to be allergic reactions to ingredients in the skin care products they are using. We have seen that once they start using 100% natural skin care products and follow a systematic skin care approach, these sensitivities tend to become less and their skin generally becomes healthier.

Specifically formulated natural skin care products for men are not jet commonly available, however, it is worth the effort to identify such products in order to avoid causing unnecessary skin problems and potentially dangerous skin infections.

Jan

08.

Global Warming Means We Need To Be More Eco-friendly

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Category: about electric shaver

A global campaign is in progress to get individuals and organizations to rein in their emissions by ten percent by 2010. What can you do to scale back your emission foot-print? Here are seven tips you can use to make our surroundings more ecologically friendly.
1. Did you know the laptop on your disk is consuming electricity although it is turned off? From the instant we wake up until we go to sleep, our modern life is pretty much dependent upon electronics and electrical gadgets.
Almost all of the time these devices are plugged in for 24 hours in the electric outlet. DVD players, music boxes, electrical shavers, PCs, televisions, game players, are just to name a few electronics that we keep plugged in during the day.

You need to unplug these energy consuming gadgets. A good idea is to plug your electronics into an energy-efficient power strip, so that at the end of the day, all you have got to do is flip one switch.
2. They use forty to 60 percent less power and last ten times longer than the average bulb.

3. Be aware of your water consumption. Water crisis is approaching in the horizon. Some experts believe in the upcoming water war. It is a scanty resource and we waste most of it.
If you’re upgrading your plumbing system or improving your bath room, install low flow taps, valves, and washers. Shut off faucets when not in use.
Neutralize your carbon footprint. This leads to the earth’s temperature to rise.

You can neutralize your contribution of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by planting trees in your garden or putting leafy shrubs on your balcony. Plants absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and neutralizes carbon dioxide generated by your industrial activity. Cut back your paper waste. Going from plastic bag to paper bag is good for reducing non-biodegradable plastic from our landfills.
Though the majority of the grocery bags are made of recycled paper, their transport consumes more energy than transporting the same number of plastic bags. You goal for an eco-friendly life style should be to reduce paper usage as much as you can.

6. Talk about recycling with your family and friends. Recycling is an extra chore that many folk simply want to avoid.

Seven. Use car pooling or public transportation. For daily commute to your work place, you can vehicle pool with work mates or take a public transport, if available.
I recently read a Home Made Energy review which was about a product that details the way to build your own alternative energy system. This product covers both solar electricity generation as well as wind turbine technology. This PDF is practical in its discussion of when and where you can and should employ solar or wind energy. Let’s accept it, the bigger your house, the more energy you consume, and the more solar panels or turbines you’ll need to power your whole house.
Another option you’ll not have considered is magnetic energy generators. Magnetic energy is generated by the polarity of the polls attracting and repelling each other. Using this attraction and repulsion, infinite motion can be created and this motion can be modified into energy and electricity. Magnetic energy is proving to be one of the leading sources of alternative green energy! A recent Magniwork review indicated that the system sells very well. It is the easiest and most low budget electrical generator system I’ve used.

Andrew Markerston is an author, poet and blogger who has a strong interest in the environment and renewable energy sources. His number one recommendation is the review of Magniwork. You too can help make the world a better place.

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Tags: Ecofriendly, Global, Means, More, Need, Warming