Yesterday we talked about assumptions in marketing and why they turn you into a lonely, impoverished failure. Today we’re going to talk about some ways to fix those assumptions.

In order to avoid wandering around freelancerville (or homebizville — we’re not discriminating here) not knowing what the fuck you’re doing, you need to know who you’re selling to and what they dig. You need to know your target demographic. How do you find out?

Market research.

The problem with traditional market research, though, is that it’s really, really, really expensive. Like, really expensive.

If you hire a classic marketing firm — which you can’t, because it’ll cost you five figures, but hear me out here — they will do $20,000 worth of surveys and trend analysis and competition reconnaissance to tell you what your people like, want, value, can afford and might buy. (If you don’t know who your people are, they’ll happily charge you another twenty grand to find that out, too.)

And this is if you and your buddy want to sell some software from your basement. If you and your buddy happen to own Coca Cola, you’re going to have to add another couple zeros and call it even at two mil.

Therefore:

Marketing Firm Pro: There’s an 80% chance their findings will be correct. There is a 60% chance they will give you good advice based on their findings.

Marketing Firm Con: It costs more than your car. And your wife’s car. And your kid’s college fund. Although college is so fucking bourgeois anyway.

Marketing Firm Pro: You’ll get to go to a really cool Keynote presentation. Someone half your age will tell you exactly how little you know about your own business. An intern half their age will make you espresso with a machine the size of the car you sold to pay for this whole palaver. At least you’ll be caffeinated on the bus ride home. (You’ll also get a really long report. Marketing firms seem to compete primarily on the size of the reports they generate.)

Marketing Firm Con: There’s a 20% chance their findings will be outright wrong. There’s a 40% chance they’ll give you crap advice. And there’s a 90% chance you won’t be able to afford what they suggest.

For small businesses, them being wrong equals you being bankrupt. Goodbye bus, hello long walk.

Independent marketing consultants make a lot of money because we’re willing to use the brains God gave us to research markets without spending twenty grand. You pay me — or someone like me — a few hundred bucks and you get advice that’s pretty much the same as the big agency, minus the espresso and the bus ride. Plus we’re unlikely to suggest you rent a blimp or buy ad space during the Superbowl.

Since many people can’t afford a few hundred bucks, let alone several thousand, you’re gonna have to figure this shit out on your own. And I’m going to tell you how.

Here’s the top secret market research strategy that will save you having to pay me or anybody else to figure out what your market wants and how to sell it to them. Are you ready? Because this is classified shit here, people. Get your notebooks out.

Read a magazine.

Or, preferably, several magazines. Figure out some really basic information about the people you’re trying to sell to — Young mothers? Executives? Fishermen? — and go to your local newsagent or big box bookstore. Find the magazines that are directed at those people. Then read them.

Five magazines and I promise you’ll know more about your buyers than any market research firm in the country.

(One thing to note here is that you do not have to read magazines that are ABOUT your target market. You have to write things that are DIRECTED at your target market. Executives read magazines about business, yes. But they also read magazines about fitness. And golf. And fishing.)

Here are some things to look for:

What advice is being given?

Are the problems being solved emotional or practical? Financial or personal? What kind of questions are they asking when they write in to the magazine? What sort of tips are the sidebar pieces giving?

What are their details?

When you read a makeover section, you’ll see how old the subject is, whether or not they are married, as well as how many children they have and their children’s ages. When they write to the editor, you’ll see where they live. When they do reader profiles, they’ll give you more information than you ever wanted to know.

What are they already buying?

Companies only advertise in magazines that make them money. Stands to reason, then, that they’re not advertising in magazines with readers who don’t buy their stuff. So if Clinique is advertising Turnaround Cream (essentially an anti-aging product) in Oprah magazine, Oprah’s readers are a.) buying it, and b.) old enough to want it.

This can also help you with relative price points and, by association, income levels. A Sandals vacation costs about $5,000 a couple. A Last Minute Club vacation goes for about $2,000. A Silversea Cruise runs around $15,000. So if you see ads for Last Minute Club, the readers are broke. Silversea? Rich. Sandals? Middle class.

What marketing are they already responding to?

This one’s a biggie. Let some other company drop tens of thousands of dollars for a 22-year-old to tell them how to sell their stuff. Then find a company that has a similar target demographic to yours, and copy them.

To come back to the Clinique example, they have a very distinct marketing technique. They never have a photograph of anything other than the product they’re selling in their ads. If they’re selling perfume, you see perfume on a white background. If they’re selling lipstick, you see lipstick on a white background. That’s it. No flowers, no skinny women, no ruggedly handsome men. They also don’t use a bunch of jargon. Lots of benefits, limited features, and no technical co-enzyme Q-something or other.

What does this mean to people trying to steal their research?

Their buyers are more educated than average. (They have a good enough job that they can afford to shop at Clinique, for one. Also, they’re in the market for beauty products, which means they’re not responding to the flashier ads directed at people too dumb to question the pretty pictures.)

Their market craves simplicity. (Tell me why I care and let me get on with my very busy day.)

Their market values cleanliness. (Silver on a white background? Over and over and over? That says hospital to most of us.)

They like directness and honesty. (Don’t show me Penelope Cruz and try to tell me that not only does she use your product, but it was your product that made her look that way.)

There’s a lot more, but that gets my point across.

Homework time!

Ooh. We haven’t done homework in a while. I forgot how much I liked assigning it. Today, go buy a magazine and read it like a marketer. (This works better when it’s a magazine that you wouldn’t normally read, and it’s best when it targets a group of people you know little about.)

What can you figure out about its readers?

(Speaking of homework and buying stuff, I’m teaching a Marketing 101 course in February and I think it’s going to be killer. I’m giving details next week but if there’s a chance you’d be interested, leave a hundred bucks or so on your Visa before you blow the lot on back issues of Popular Electronics.)