How To Find the Correct Target Market for your Craft Business

You’re in business to sell your products to people, right?

So it makes sense that you should know who those people are and make your products for them.

Who you make products for is your target market.

Your target market should be the first thing you define when starting a business.

Where most businesses go wrong

Most craft business owners work backward.

They make a product, and then go looking for people to buy it.

If that’s the process you followed, you likely know how difficult it is to make consistent sales.

Your target market is the foundation of your business. It’s who you:

make products for
build a brand around
write marketing messages to
based business decision on
etc.

So it’s important to choose the right one and mold your business around it.

What to avoid when choosing a target market

Most advice out there will encourage you to make a long list of details about the market you want to target; most of which are demographics and some of which is useless information (e.g. what kind of ice cream they eat).

As explained in this article: The #1 Mistake to Avoid when Choosing a Target Market , choosing a target market based on demographics won’t be very helpful when it comes to:

Finding your target market (to market and sell to)
Connecting with your target market (consumers must feel a connection with a business/brand/product to buy)
Creating products your target market loves (demographics don’t help you do that)

Demographic details are important (you need to know whether you’re marketing to a 12 year old boy or a 40 year old woman). But they’re not the most important details you need to uncover about your target market.

What makes a good target market

There are a few important factors to keep in mind when choosing a target market for your craft business.

1 – Based on a common interest

Choosing your target market based on a common interest the people within it share, and one your business/brand/products can appeal to, ensures you’re choosing a good target market you can find, connect with, and build the perfect business for.

To find a common interest you can explore psychographics.

Psychographics are the psychological characteristics of consumers, such as attitude, values, beliefs, lifestyle, interests, etc.

The specific psychographics that will help you find a good target market you can connect with and that will help you understand the key product features to focus on are:

Interests
Hobbies
Lifestyle

There are other factors I’ll cover in this article that might not be defined as a psychographic but will help you define what your target market’s interest, hobby, or lifestyle is.

2 – Influences your business

The information you base your target market on must be relevant to your business and products.

Your target market should heavily influence your business; not the other way around.

For example, if I’m selling jewelry and want to target cat owners, my jewelry must have some relation to cats (e.g. cat shaped pendants, pieces personalized with a customer’s cat’s name, a portion of profits are donated to a cat shelter, etc.).

If there isn’t an obvious connection between your target market and your products, then you must choose another target market or be willing to adjust your business/brand/products to make that connection.

3 – Already exists

When you start with your products and then define the key features of your target market, you tend to define a unicorn market that doesn’t actually exist.

You’re building a business and then asking consumers to conform to it (that doesn’t tend to work very well without a large marketing budget).

What’s better, is to find a group of people other businesses are targeting.

They’ve done the hard work of educating these people, getting them to adopt a label (e.g. eco-friendly, clean living, gardener, etc.) and form a community around that label, creating places they can congregate (e.g. events and online groups), etc.

For example, businesses like BeautyCounter, bloggers like Crunchy Betty, and magazines like Clean Beauty have already influenced people to care about the ingredients in their beauty products and buy into products with natural/organic/toxin-free ingredients.

If you target those same people, you don’t have to work as hard to:

educate them about your products
find places to market to them
convince them your clean skincare products are worth spending a little more money on

Don’t make up a group of people based on criteria you set; work with markets that are already out there.

How to Find a Good Target Market

Follow the steps below to find a target market for your craft business.

Step 1 – Choose one common interest

There may be many things that your target market has in common, but you should choose one common interest to focus on. In this step I’ll share several ways you can uncover that common interest.

Interest or hobby

Think about the different things you, or others, spend free time doing, collecting, learning about, etc. For example:

Decorating (ideally in a specific style of home decor such as “coastal”)
Fashion (ideally a specific style of fashion such as “bohemian”)
Reading
Crafting
Gardening
Cooking/BBQing
Baking
Politics
History
The environment
Clean living (e.g. toxin-free)
Sports (hockey, pickleball, golf, etc.)
Astrology
Animals
Music
Cars
Working out
Backpacking
Running
Fishing
Meditation
Spirituality
Etc.

Enthusiasts/enjoyment

You may also explore things that aren’t necessarily an interest but rather things people enjoy, are enthusiastic about, consider a guilty pleasure, etc.

Wine/beer/spirits/etc.
Coffee or tea
Pets
Gambling
Dressing up/cosplay
Car enthusiast
Retro enthusiast
Nature enthusiast

Lifestyle

A business can also connect with a target market based on the type of lifestyle they live. For example:

Sustainable lifestyle
Minimalistic lifestyle
Simple living
Zero waste living
Slow living
Off the grid living
Urban or rural living
Tiny home living
Van life
Dorm life
Cabin living
Spiritual living
Holistic lifestyle
Bachelor lifestyle

Nutrition/diet/health can also work into this area. For example:

Vegetarian
Carnivore-ism
Keto
Paleo
Alcohol-free
Smoker/non-smoker
Toxin-free living

Labels

You may also explore common labels people give themselves or that are given to them by others. These may not necessarily be based on an interest, but rather a defining feature that connects them with other people or businesses.

Parent / Mom / Dad
Student
Entrepreneur
Foodie
Fashionista or trendsetter
Beach bum
Party animal
Gamer
Yogi
Gym rat
Activist
Tree hugger
Cat lady
Wellness warrior
Bookworm
Sports fanatic
Etc.

It may even be a label given to them by the medical community, such as

ADHD
Autism
Autoimmune disorder
Rosacea
Etc.

Occassion or life event

There are also things that pique a consumer’s interest for a shorter period of time. For example, someone may be interested in all things wedding related when they’re planning their wedding. These types of temporary interests can also work for finding a target market.

Weddings
Engagement
Birthdays
Graduations
Retirement
Pregnancy / Births / Baby showers
Baptism
Farewells
Buying a new home
Etc.

Step 2 – Apply to your business

Once you’ve chosen a common interest, make sure there are multiple ways you can make your business, brand, and products align with that common interest.

Consider the different touchpoints of your business and how you can communicate the common interest you’re appealing to.

Explore:

Product features (materials, sizes, shapes, scents, etc.)
Product names & descriptions
Product photography
Product lines & collections
Shipping materials
Customer service
Business vision & mission
Branding (brand colors, fonts, language, logo, etc.)
Website design
Craft show display
Etc.

Step 3 – Ensure marketing and sales channels

The last step before deciding on a target market is to ensure you can easily find them, market to them, and sell to them.

Although you can still use more general marketing and sales platforms (e.g. Facebook and Etsy) to market and sell your products through, it’s important that you can find platforms and businesses that are targeting the same common interest as you, but in a different way.

For example, “working out” might be my target market’s common interest. If I’m selling fitness-related products I can:

Approach fitness blogs about advertising on their site or getting a feature in an article
Gift fitness influencers my product in hopes they’ll feature it in their Instagram feed
Send press releases to the Diet & Fitness editor/journalist of my local newspaper or to fitness magazines
Approach local gyms and fitness stores to see if they’d be interested in buying my product wholesale or selling it on consignment
Apply to be a vendor at wellness, health, and fitness trade shows

There are multiple places I can reach my exact target market, which will make it easier to market and sell my fitness-related products.

I hope this article helps you find a good target market for your craft business. Please let me know in the comment section if you have any questions.