There is a danger of treating networking as marketing and marketing as networking, which whilst they are related they are not the same.
Marketing should be targeted to your market, because you are seeking to attract and sell, through your marketing, to that target market.
Networking is about reaching your target market through your network, therefore you should network with people who themselves are connected to your target market. You aren’t seeking to sell to your network, but sell through the network.
You can’t tell in advance who is connected to your target market without connecting, once connected you can create the environment for those who are connected to your target market to network with you.
I think those who seek to target who they network with (for sales) miss the opportunities from all the people who are not in their target market but are connected to it.
So, target your networking after randomly connecting. Connecting isn’t networking, but it’s an essential step in getting to your market. It’s about reach
