Marketing Focus: If You Do No Other Preparation…
Way too many small business owners rush into doing things without adequately planning and preparing. And marketing is a great case in point.
You set up shop and then hurry to get the word out about your business and services. You rush to get a brochure made up, develop a web site, and get out and start networking without much planning or preparation. And then you wonder why your results are so poor.
If you do nothing else from a marketing preparation standpoint, I suggest you spend some time thinking about your best clients. Your best clients aren’t simply the ones who pay the most money, but also the ones you enjoy working with the most. Spend some time to create a profile.
- Define Your Target. How do you describe your ideal target market demographically and characteristically? Demographics are the basic facts like the kind of industry they’re in, size of company, revenues, geographic location, etc. If your target is individuals, then it means income levels, age, gender, education, etc. Characteristics deal more with things like the style, philosophy, and approach to business of your targets.
- What’s The Problem? What are the problems, issues, challenges, or predicaments you’re trying to help your target customers and prospects with? Every product or service is designed to address some sort of issue or challenge for your client. What is your target market dealing with and what’s the potential impact of not being able to address those problems?
- What Do They Get From Working With You? What are the solutions you provide? What benefits do you offer? What results do you produce? Note that this isn’t “what you do” or a list of services you provide, but what your clients actually get from you.
- What’s It Like Working With Them? What is it about working with your best clients that makes them your best clients? What is the relationship like? How do things work? What is it that you’re able to uniquely do for them that makes it a great working relationship?
You’ll be amazed at what it can mean for your business when you spend some time preparing a profile of your best clients (and potential clients). If you know exactly who your potential clients are, then you can more effectively focus on them in your marketing efforts.
So now that you’ve defined your best clients, do your current marketing efforts really reach these folks and others like them?
Tags: Marketing Focus, marketing preparation, niche marketing, target marketing
May 12th, 2008 at 8:09 am
Planning is not something that many of us want to spend time doing - it is often more “fun” to actually go out and try and win business, design the brochure etc. In my experience it can be surprisingly difficult to define “who is your ideal client?” It may seem obvious but often it takes considerable thought. However it is time hugely well spent!
May 12th, 2008 at 8:44 am
It’s unfortunate that small business folks don’t spend a little more time planning. Too many mistake “activity” for forward progress.
In my experience, a little time spent planning will payoff tenfold beyond rushing out to get into activity. And that doesn’t have to be an arduous task either.
Nobody said a definition of your “ideal client” has to be perfect. You do your best with what you know and move forward… understanding that you can always adjust. But, not spending the time to plan and define leaves most small business owners frustrated with results.
The Get More Clients Fast Path program was designed to take someone step-by-step through this process. It’s not all planning. It’s planning and then doing so you can start to see results faster.