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Perhaps the most important part of marketing is ensuring the message you wish to send reaches the right group of people. The most effective marketing campaigns tread the line between reach and focus; targeting an effective demographic for the product in question.

You can't target everyone - at least not without an infinite marketing budget - so the most effective campaigns target a specific demographic. To understand how to do this you must first understand how you can separate and designate your target audience.

Geographic Focus

Geographic focus is the simplest scale - it goes from a global scale all the way to the individual, and groups people broadly by their location. You can target people in one town, an entire county or nation - or even pan-culturally: with the internet it's now possibly to target entire swathes of the world easily and effectively. Targeting only English-speaking countries (i.e. US, Canada and the UK) could be one application of this pan-cultural focus.

National campaigns are more traditional, covering one nation at a time for a more unified culture and single currency. New products may be introduced into an even smaller area, so targeting a specific region is also frequently done. In many countries there can be cultural differences across regions - even counties - so campaigns may be targeted to sub-national cultures too.

Regional focus is where things get very specific - usually local-interest campaigns will be for smaller markets - if your product is only applicable to a small group (local publication or services, for instance), there's no sense in advertising outside the local area.

Industry Focus

If you're targeting organisations or institutions, you'll find a similar scale in these markets - a larger number of less-profitable smaller companies, and fewer but larger and more lucrative corporations and govermental organisations.

For the individual, marketing to the larger organisations can be much trickier, but if successful will pay much better. Working as a freelancer, it's wise to bear this in mind - although individuals and small businesses are much easier to find work from, you will seldom get rich from this.

Whether you're part of a large business or an individual yourself, targeting the right type of organisation for your product is essential - leave the specialist, high-intensity items to the high-pay-off clients, and fit the easier to produce, more scalable service to the mass market.

Other Means of Focus

Of course, you can define your key demographic in any way you please - by interest, by income or by gender or ethnicity. Whichever way you choose, the more specific your target the smaller the potential customer pool will be.

A larger group is more difficult to target effectively, but if done right will yield more customers - but mass-market products or services tend to be less profitable overall than some more specialist ones may be. Consider your strategy based on the product you're selling - the right market segment will pay dividends.

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