Who do you love to work with?

One of the most common mistakes we see small businesses make when they get set up is a head long rush to implement some marketing tools. It seems like a good use of time to get into action straight away. Most of us are “doers” and getting going on activity feels good!

However it is often the route to frustration and wasted money. Why? Well, activity is all very well but without clear focus it is often a wasted effort. If you are not talking to the appropriate audience, such activity is likely to be ignored. The frustration this causes can lead to frequent changes of tactics, more money spent in unrelated activity. This is what we call “episodic marketing” and commonly includes activity such as: brochure, website, direct mail, widely dispersed networking activity, joining of groups etc.

The starting point

It sounds easy, in practice it is harder. However you really need to define, specifically and in a targeted way, who you preferred clients are. Not necessarily the ones who pay best (although that may be part of it) but those you have a passion to help. Those that make your day, that you look forward to speaking with. You may be able to find them in your client base now (hopefully you have at least one!) but if you are new in business then it is those that you envisaged helping when you started out.

Spending some time on this will help you avoid the excesses of episodic marketing. When you know who you want to help you can define their problems, how your services make that better, where these people hang out, what they read, what they want and so on.

Sounds easy but it takes work! Spend some time defining who these people are and you won’t regret that time!