Positioning vs. target market - which comes first?

                                                    Scale

A prospective client asked me which market should she first target for her nonfiction book. 

This is a good question, but in my opinion it is NOT the first question to be asked before planning an online marketing program.

The first question I believe is: What is the optimum positioning of the book?

In other words, what is the most effective way of positioning your product or service?

You may have a product that can be presented as an answer to problem A or an answer to problem B. In this case, which positioning is the most likely to appeal to the largest target market?

(Why not an answer to both? Because we are narrowly in on the most important positioning in order to come up with the single best target market to first go after. Answering both will probably include two separate target markets.)

To answer this question you will probably have to consider several elements of your product or service, including whether you are positioning the product or service in a positive or negative light.

For this imaginary scenario let’s go with an answer to problem A because we think that is the strongest positioning for this product.

Now that we have decided to position our product as an answer to problem A, which target market need that answer most? This target market might break down by gender or age or geographic location or any number of other subsets.

We now pick the largest target market that we believe will be interested in our answer to problem A. This, then, would be the first market we go after in an online marketing campaign – promoting our product or service as the answer to problem A for a very specific target market.

By focusing first on what we have to offer we can then identify the largest target market that most needs this benefit. Do you agree with this logic?

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© 2009 Miller Mosaic, LLC