Identifying targeted prospects and customers is deceptively easy.

All you need to do is find the people you want to appeal to, and design your website and marketing campaign to appeal to these people.

The problem here is that there is a LOT of people in the world – and they are about as diverse as the grains of sand on a beach.

This is why you need to break them down into clusters that share the same basic characteristics. Here are a few of the more basic clusters you can use to group your target population into easy chunks:

1. Age and Gender

This is the most basic of all basic clusters you have to take into consideration when it comes to identifying your target population.

Women are very different from men, even when it comes to things like color and design patterns.

However, a middle-aged working woman sees things differently from a peppy teenager fresh out of grade school. This is why age and gender come packaged together in one cluster.

2. Socio-economic Status

Money and social standing are two factors that can hardly be separated from each other, which is why they come bundled together in one cluster.

The lifestyle of a plumber is different from the lifestyle of a stock broker, which in turn is different from that of a soldier.

Even the social standings of these three are strikingly different, as soldiers, stock brokers and plumbers are treated differently by the people around them. This is why you have to take both income and social standing into consideration when looking for traffic on your website.

3. Education and Profession

One’s job and educational degree are highly correlated to socio-economic status, but they are unique enough to deserve their own cluster. For example, a plumber would most likely be interested in hardware that will make his job a lot easier.

However, he may not be educated enough to appreciate a lengthy discourse on the pros and cons of a new mechanized screwdriver. On the flipside, a lawyer may be interested in a new filing cabinet.

The problem is that the sales page is too ‘salesy’ for the lawyer, who immediately becomes suspicious of the product in question. This is why you have to appeal to the educational and professional calibre of your target population.

4. Cultural-Ethnological Background

The big R word comes into the picture here, and it is something you have to approach very carefully and tactfully. People from all over the world have their own unique blend of rules and norms, which is important for you to understand on the global venue that is the Internet.

Appealing to one particular culture helps increase the chances of gaining traffic and converts in your website, especially if what you are offering is a culture-specific item or service.

5. Other Specific Needs and Wants

Keep the four aforementioned clusters in mind and squeeze them out for all they’re worth. This is where your knowledge of your own customers will come in.

Once you have a general idea of your target’s defining attributes, you can start digging deeper into their minds – pinpointing what they want and need as you go along. You will then be able to narrow down your target population even better, pinpointing who you want to sell to with greater accuracy.