About Demographics

Demographics is a description of a subset of the population. For instance: Men, older than 60, that own their own home. If this is the demographic of your market, then this is who you want to seek in order to sell your product. Not that you will sell your product to all men older than 60 who own their own home, but that you will have an advantage with this group of people to where you will sell more to them as a percentage than the general population.

This is how you change the odds more in your favor. You define the kind of person who would want to buy your product and then you find people like that to sell your product to. Rather than selling 1 in 100 people, you may sell 1 in 10 (as an example). Plus your product will captivate the interest of your target market more than the general population so your feedback will not be so negative.

How do you define the demographic for your product? Let’s take an easier example, say you sell toys. Who is your target market? It could be children that are the right age to want the toy. Probably either a boy or girl. Let’s think about this a bit more though - do children this age have the money to buy toys? If not, perhaps you are looking for their parents. So you demographic may be parents of boys between 8 and 12. You can do the same with virtually any product.

So then how do you find your target market? There are many ways that are only limited by your imagination. Remember that starting out we want to try to avoid spending money as much as possible. So perhaps we can make a list of everyone we know and call them one by one (cold calling your warm market), which sucks but stay with me a second. Rather than asking them if you can make a sales presentation to them or talking about business, maybe you just ask them if they know anybody who has children around 10. Make a list of these people then contact them. Again, rather than specifically selling these people, let them know who you were referred by and ask them if they know anybody else who has children around 10 that are shopping for toys for Christmas (or something similar). Often they will refer more people or talk to you about your product. The idea is not to hard sell but to make contacts, get them information, and get referrals. Sales come from warm leads (people who show a strong interest in your product) not from pressuring people to buy stuff they don’t want or need.

The important thing in finding your market is to ask for what you want.

How do you sponsor then using these techniques? You must first define the marketing for your business opportunity. Perhaps they will be women in their 30’s that want to make a little extra money. Or they may be your best product customers who want to save a little by buying from themselves. Or they could be people who have expressed an interest in being a business person. Use your imagination, there are many possibilities. You may also be able to refine your market once you begin working your business.

From there we find members of our market, get them information if they are interested, and get referrals.

Please note that calling people and getting referrals is only one method of finding members of your market. You can use your imagination and find other free ways to make contact with people within your market demographic. For instance, I used to post coupons on the bulletin board at the grocery store. You can also advertise for free on line using classifieds. Make sure to ask for what you want.

I will write more about how to advertise effectively with and without spending money in future posts.