While mass marketing sounds like a great strategy to find more potential customers, target marketing is a better choice for small businesses struggling with funding.

Even though it has a smaller reach, focusing on your target group ensures that every dollar you allocate for marketing is well-spent.

And because you can tailor your advertising campaigns around the specific needs and preferences of your customers, target marketing leads to more sales conversions.

Mass vs. Target Marketing: Key Differences

Mass marketing involves advertising products or brands to a wide variety of audiences. The goal is to reach as many people as possible, regardless of whether they are interested or not. Popular examples are TV and radio advertising.

In contrast, target marketing is a strategy geared towards more specific audiences. Here, you focus all your marketing efforts on the audience or segments that are more likely to respond.

There’s no doubt that target marketing requires more work. You need to do extensive research to understand your target audience. But the best part is that you can promote your product or service to the right audience at the right time, which leads to more conversions.

Benefits of Target Marketing to Small Businesses

There are many ways target marketing can help your small business grow. Here are a few.

Promotes effective advertising

The best thing about target marketing is that it is data-driven. Basically, you look at your customers’ purchasing behavior, their demographics, and their preferences to create a marketing strategy that appeals to them.

A cost-effective approach

While it means you will be targeting a much smaller group, you will also be excluding people who are less likely to become your customers. We’re talking about the consumers who don’t need the products or services you are offering. This gives you more value for your buck because you know that every dollar you spend targets the right people.

Lets you create personalized content

Personalization is the future of B2C marketing. The only way for businesses to engage their customers is to create intelligent, personalized content. Using cloud-based systems enables marketers to deliver targeted campaigns to their subscribers.

For example, you can send marketing emails to select subscribers who are celebrating their birthdays, have just signed up to your mailing list, or choose to receive product updates from you.

Helps you build relationships with your customers

Target marketing is effective at building long-term relationships with customers. Intrepid Travel, for example, engaged customers by creating a content hub called "The Journal" where travelers shared their stories and experiences with others.

Spotify, on the other hand, launched #2018Wrapped wherein they gathered insights about their customers’ music habits, minutes spent listening, favorite artists and genres, and so much more. This enabled Spotify to create custom playlists for users -- something users appreciated very much. Being able to create marketing content that caters to the specific needs or tastes of your customers is the key to keeping them engaged in your brand.

Results are measurable

Marketing teams have different goals or priorities and their campaigns should match the results they want.

You could be marketing to raise brand awareness, generate more leads, promote a new product, or thank your loyal customers. With your target group in mind, you can align your marketing efforts to your audience in the most efficient way possible.

Audience targeting is especially helpful for companies using online marketing where simply measuring click rates doesn’t provide accurate insights into the campaign’s effectiveness.

How to Implement Target Marketing

Your target marketing plan should start with market research to identify your primary audience. For example, if you’re an interior designer who works with homeowners aged between 30 and 65, you can further refine your audience by adding more specific criteria, such as homeowners who only need bathroom and kitchen design or those who are after contemporary styles.

Choosing specific demographics is also important. Aside from location, age, and gender, other factors to consider are your market’s educational level, income level, marital or family status, occupation, and ethnic background.

It’s also worth looking at who your competitors are targeting. Who are their customers? But you don’t have to go after the same market. You can find a market that they haven’t explored yet.

With a much clearer target, you can easily determine where and how to market your services.

Even if you have limited funding, you can still compete with large companies by targeting a niche market. By identifying exactly who is likely to buy your product or service, you’ll be better able to attract them.

Targeting a specific market does not mean you are excluding potential customers. Rather, you are focusing your time, money, and energy on the market segments that are most likely to engage and buy.

You can see that target marketing is a much more affordable and effective way to promote your business and increase sales than mass marketing is.

Mike Austin is a marketing and creative content specialist at Adrack.com and has been working in the digital marketing industry since 2009. As a conversion-driven marketer, he is passionate about helping businesses expand their online visibility and reach their goals.