Business Advice: Creating Your Target Market is as easy as ABC

When I ask business owners who their target market is, the common answer I get is “everyone can buy my product or service”.  Most businesses use this shot gun approach to target marketing.  Target marketing is more about being laser beam focused instead of using a shot gun approach.  

When you use the shot gun approach you’re hitting areas that are not ideal and you end up with a lot of waste.  For some business that waste could be the difference of thriving, surviving or going out of business.

We forget that everybody buys from us for a different reason, so how do you expect to appeal to all of your potential customers at the same time?  The answer is simply, you can’t unless you have an unlimited marketing budget.  Our marketing must be laser focused for it to be effective and efficient. When we focus on our target market instead of just everyone, our marketing has a better opportunity to be successful.  One way to determine your target market is to first analyze your current customer base.  

I’m sure if you are like most businesses you have some awesome clients.  They buy from you most often, they are a pleasure to deal with, and never fuss over price.  Then you have your basic “bread & butter” accounts.  They buy from you most of the time but not necessarily consistently.  Next, you have the clients that are the ones that are hard to satisfy, don’t spend that much, and are always complaining about something, and just suck up all of your time.  

I call this your client ABC’s.   A = Awesome | B = Basic | C = Can’t deal with

It doesn’t take too much common sense to know that we would want more “A” accounts than “B” & “C” accounts.  Now when you think about it, our clients that we spend the most amount of time with, is our “C” accounts.  When in actuality we should be investing our time nurturing our “B” accounts to become an “A” account, and over servicing our “A” accounts so they never want to go anywhere else.  Since most of our time is being sucked up by our “C” accounts, we have never taken the time to identify what makes a Grade “A” client. 

Isn’t that interesting?  We don’t spend that much time with our ideal accounts because they are easy and we take them for granted. 

How much do they spend?  How often do they spend? Do they refer business? What are the demographics, locations, occupation, hobbies, income, & family status?  It might not be a bad idea to send them a survey and ask them why they buy from you.  This can also help you to you to identify your USP.

Knowing who your target customers are will allow you to aim at the right places to reach them. Often you can have more than one target market or kind of customer.  If this is the case, it’s far better to segment them and target them with different messages. Start with one target and drill deep, then move on to a second later.

Is your company’s marketing awesome or lame? Take our quick marketing test to see how effective your current marketing efforts are.  CLICK HERE to take the FREE marketing test

Are You the Market Expert in Your Industry?

In today’s tough competitive market place there are a lot of businesses seeking out business help to change the perception of  their business of being a commodity to a business that is unique and provides something of value to the market place.  

One way of standing out and providing value to your industry and your local market is by positioning yourself as the local market expert.  You are the one everyone goes to for information on your industry.

Here are 3 tips to help turn you into the market expert

1. Tell your Story – We all have a story to tell.  What’s your story?  Why did your choose the industry you are in?  What challenges did you face while creating your business?  How does your story (your past experience) help you to be a problem solver for your clients?  Using stories to help clients relate to your vision & mission of being in business will help you to begin to create trust with your prospects and your market at large.
   
2. Create a personal identity brand – What do you stand for?  If you stand for something that means that you must stand against something.  What is it that makes books and movies interesting to read and watch?  Conflict!  Without conflict, we say that book was boring and predictable.  There was nothing to hold your attention.  The same is true for your own personal brand.  By standing for something or against something in your industry or market place will make you an interesting person for people to follow or write about.  In other words be an advocate for your clients and prospects.  Be the person that is really looking out for their best interests and don’t be afraid to ruffle some feathers.
   
3. Brand your process – In creating your USP (unique selling proposition) you need to not only differentiate yourself from your competition but you need to be able to communicate in a way that your prospects and clients understand how it will help them.  Identify the steps in how you serve your clients, then explain each step and develop a “brand name” for the process.  Try to develop your own proprietary phraseology to explain your process.

Becoming the market expert won’t happen over night.  You need to think thru your story, your personal identity and your process and develop your plan to introduce that into the marketplace.  Remember, nothing happens until you take action!

As an ActionCOACH, I advise business owners on how to increase profits and cash flow, work less hours, and develop their team to they get their business working so they don’t have to.  We coach you to create a commercial profitable enterprise that works without you.  For some business owners that might be hard to believe.  To help them understand the process we have developed ActionCOACH’s “6 Steps to a More Profitable & Valuable Business”.  Breaking our coaching process down in to six-steps makes it easier to understand and believe how it works.

If you're curious to benchmark your company on growth potential and the other seven factors that drive your company’s value, take 13 minutes and get your Sellability Score here: