Who is my customer?
Know where the money comes from
Looking once more at the Golden Cycle of making money let us this time consider the audience. In our diagram most of the people are looking away from the product. This is no accident they are shown like that on purpose.
No one care much about you and they care even less about your product. It is not that they hate you it is just that they are indifferent to your product. To make money from selling them your product you must attract their attention.
There are a lot of people in the world and only a relativity small fraction are ever going to buy your product. So it is vital to know who your customer is. Your target market can be described as a single person with known characteristics.
Take for example an imaginary product "Super Shine Kitchen Cleaner". Who is the customer? Your customer is a house proud housewife with a medium sized kitchen a moderate budget and a kitchen shine problem.
Take for example the imaginary product "Male Member Enlarger". Who is your customer? He is a male with a disposable income of at least $700 aged between 20 and 30 with self confidence issues. He is probably (but not necessarily) white, middle to working class with a full-time job.
If those sound like stereotypes to you then maybe they are but now you have a handle on your target audience. Say you want to advertise your product where might you do it?
Well for starters the "Super Shine Kitchen Cleaner" is best sold through publications like "Super Housewife Weekly" and "The Zany-Cool Housewife Blog" where as the second product is best sold through men's publications, sexual health portals.
If you try selling the kitchen cleaner in a sexual health portal you might sell one or two but your return on investment is going to be minimal. This is because your customer does not visit such sites (and if they do they are not going to be looking for cleaning product) but is more likely to read sites about keeping house, looking good at home and other sites related to their primary interests.
When you know who your customer is then you know where to find them and how to get their attention. This makes the attention drawing process a lot more efficient. It's why there is a research and refinement cycle.