Defining a target market is essential for any marketer as it is essentially the person you are trying to reach with your advertising and marketing efforts. There are many tools that marketing can use to help identify and define their target market in the use of developing a marketing plan.

The first tool that marketers can use is Google Trends. Google Trends works by adjusting search data to make comparisons between terms easier. Each data point is divided by the total searches of the geography and time rage it represents to form the terms popularity. This is very useful to marketers since it shows what terms are the most popular and the most searched. This will help the marketers know what terms to put in advertisements to properly target their audience and make sure their advertisement is getting in front of the consumer they are trying to target.

Second, Instagram Insights is a great tool for marketers to identify and define their target market. If an Instagram page is a business page, they will be able to see the pages insights which show what cities most of their followers and engagers come from, how many engagements are on each post, how many followers are male or female, and so much more. This is a great tool since it can show so many specifics of your followers since they are the ones that will most likely be receiving your advertisements if done on social media.

This information can be used in the development of a marketing plan since it is crucial to know your target market when creating the plan. By successfully identify your target market, you will better be able to advertise to them which will in turn produce more sales or traffic.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.