I've often said that the best way to hit a business target is to firstly determine what your end result or outcome is, so that you can then work back from there and create a plan of attack.

The same thing can be said for determining who your target market or ideal customer would be.

If you don't know who your main target market is then how are you going to put in place a strategy to get their business.

One of my target markets is people who from age 30 to 55 who are either working and looking for a life change and want to be in business. Or people who might have been made redundant from their position and are looking to get into their own business.

I call them empty nesters where the kids have left home or are at college and they want to get back into business usually a home based business.

How did I determine what my target market was?

There are two free simple ways to check if there is even a market for your product or service.

The first one is your local news stand or magazine outlet. Quite often I'll check to see what magazines are out that could be remotely relative to what I am looking at and what type of people buy them.

If there are no magazines relative to what you are looking at then there is the possibility that there may not be a market for it.

Another way I check is by doing a keyword check to see what words people are typing in on the main search engines like Google or Overture.

You can use a free tool on many websites offering this service where you can check how many people typed in the particular keywords you want to use in your online marketing. You can also other variations of those words too.

One great tool you can use which cost's money is www.keywordlocator.com

I'm not an affiliate I just use the program and think its well worth the money if your serious about researching a new market.

Do the research and you could save yourself thousands!