Knowing Your Target: First Steps of Marketing Online

Vashon Island Marketing. 98070 Media

On Vashon, we have some unique challenges when marketing our product or service. Vashon Island marketing is made MUCH more difficult because of a little body of water called the Puget Sound which separates us from potential customers, thus dividing our customer base into two distinct groups.

First group of people to market too is Vashonites, our regulars.The first group we probably already know, it’s Vashonites. Folks who live on the island, play on the island and spend on the island, without these fine people, our businesses would never make it through the winter. These are our “regulars”, our “bread and butter” our base. These folks have habits that we can count on. We see them up and IGA every Tuesday. They’re filling up at Mom’s in the morning. We are creatures of habit and that’s VERY evident with islanders. We do certain things over and over again.

The second group, which is much harder to reach and understand are the folks from town or abroad. These are visitors or tourists to the island. These people are hard to find because we don’t really know when they are coming if they are coming and why they are coming to the island. Fortunately, we have some people working to identify and reach out to this crowd, folks like Explore Vashon, The Lodges on Vason and The Vashon Island Chamber, which assist with island tourism.

Now that we understand those two groups, now let’s look at your business. Let’s ask yourself, “Who is my ideal customer?”. I said IDEAL. I want you to think about the perfect customer you would want for your business. We need to identify who those folks are, in detail. We need to profile them before we can target them with our marketing. So, to end this first post on marketing on Vashon Island, do me a favor, fill out the questions below and profile your ideal customer.

  1. Sex
  2. Age
  3. Race
  4. Financial status
  5. Marital status
  6. Lifestyle activity (are they active)
  7. What do they like to do in their free time?
  8. Dependent status. Do they have pets? Do they have children?

In the next blog post, I will show you how to USE the data you have collected in this marketing profile exercise.

#supportlocalbusinesses #vashonislandmarketing