The Importance of Understanding Your Target Market

Do you know your target market? Many mortgage professionals are unable to identify their ideal client when asked of who your target market is. Understanding of who your target is may include such factors as age, gender, geographic location, income level, professional and/or educational background, affiliations, personal interests, first time home buyers, investors, people seeking refinancing and any number of other demographics. 

The danger of not understanding who it is that you want to do business with -and who exactly your business serves - is that you are likely relying on ineffective methods for positioning and marketing.

Many mortgage professionals make the mistake of adopting the non targeted shotgun approach to advertising and branding. This often yields less than optimal results.

 But one of the keys to accelerating your success and better serving the clientele that you want to work with is to realize that you cannot and should not be “all things to all people”.

This is why you should develop target customer/client profile.

Creating a profile (also known as an avatar) of who this person is will greatly enhance the effectiveness of your marketing efforts in every aspect of your operation for the better.

Tips for creating an avatar. First consider the value of knowing your audience, begin by asking yourself what is your ideal clients primary desired benefit? What positive benefits do they need or desire? What frustrations do they need to alleviate.

Promoting and positioning your mortgage business is all about effectively communicating how your services can help your client achieve their desired outcome and/or remove their frustrations.

It's important not to make assumptions but rather to do some research that can help you better understand how to meet their needs and understand how they think.

Some tips include: sending out surveys, reading trade and interest journals, looking at where they congregate – social and professional events as well as online social places such as Facebook groups, blogs and other pertinent websites.

In other words you must be able to look at your mortgage business not as you see it, but as your potential (and current) clients see it, based on their challenges and desires.

This will allow you to “See through their eyes” and in turn serve them better while making your agency stronger and more successful in the process.