Are you aimed at the right target?

Recently, I was asking a potential client who he thought his target was and he said, "anyone who wants to buy my product."

No, he wasn't being facetious. He was just coming at it from a little different perspective than I normally do. So I asked him who he had in mind when he created his product. He went into great detail about a woman in her mid 30s who had two children, worked, loved to cook, read cookbooks for fun, and whose ideal vacation was a trip to a city like New York, Chicago or San Francisco to try a lot of different restaurants.

That's the difference between a sales target and a marketing target. And knowing this is at the foundation of building a great brand. Sure, you'll sell to anyone who wants to buy, but having a well defined marketing target helps you develop products, craft messages and select media in a way that allows you to differentiate your products from your competition. You have to be aimed at the right target before you can hit the bull's-eye.