Target Marketing: Who's Your Audience?

This is a problem that I see a lot in the online world as well as the offline. Some people think that the best way to market is to just have as many people as possible see your advertisement. While it is good to get exposure the problem with this is that some people simply don't want your product. If you think everyone can benefit from your product then that is just narrow minded. The key is to maximize the amount of time and money spent on advertisement that you know is going to convert. For example: A toy manufacturer advertises on Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon rather than on CNN because they know that the kids that watch Cartoon Network are going to very likely to like toys while the adults that watch CNN are probable not going to have any use for toys. Even though a small percentage of those adults may see a toy that there kid may want and be nice enough to buy it for them the likelihood of a kid seeing a toy and bugging the crap out of the parents until they submit is much higher. Now this might all seem very basic but there are a lot of people that cannot specifically say who would want there product. My advice: write a small description of who is going to want your product somewhere that you can see it every day and live by it. You will save a ton in advertising dollars if you can remember that.