Who’s your target market?
What’s your strategy for getting your message in front of your target market?
Do you even have a strategy (or a target market?).
In business, being clear on who your target market is, having a description of your absolutely ideal client, is massively important.
Tempting as it might be to say you’ll “work with anyone”, particularly when you’re a small business or just starting up, it’s absolutely the worst thing you can do.
Having a clear target market allows you to:
- Get your message in front of the right people cost effectively
- Help people give you referrals
- Do the kind of work that you want to do
- Be valued for the work you do
- Charge the right price for your work
Identifying your target market
How do you work out who your ideal client is?
Well, if you already have a bunch of clients, do a quick audit. Work out which ones you like working with the most, and pick out the qualities that make them your favourite clients. In addition, work out which ones you dislike working with, and why.
If you’re just starting up, who is your product or service best suited to? What kinds of people do you like working with? What personality traits are important to you? Think of a business owner you know that you would like to work with and pick out the traits that you are drawn to.
This should give you a great list of attributes you do and don’t want in a client.
Once you know these attributes you can compile more lists:
- Where do they hang out – on and off-line?
- What kind of content do they like to consume?
- What features / benefits of your product / service are most important to them?
- What kind of approach do they like – analytical, friendly, direct?
Pulling this kind of information together is a great starting point to think about the type of marketing you’re going to do. If you want to talk to local, friendly, small business owners – a networking meeting is probably going to a great place to start. If your target is more detail oriented, perhaps an info pack in the post will be more up their street.
The possibilities are endless, but if you know who you want to talk to, and the most effective way of getting in front of them, you can be really focused in terms of where you spend your marketing budget. How much more cost effective could this approach make your marketing?
And just because you’re aiming at a specific niche, it doesn’t mean that you won’t get other people coming to you for help. And you can still work with them, they’re just an added bonus. Or, if you get that funny gut feel that they’re going to be trouble, you can let them down gently and signpost them to someone else who might be the right fit for them.
Just so you know, my target market client is a female business owner, either a solopreneur or with just a couple of employees. She’s 35+ and probably has to juggle quite a lot of personal and business stuff, so needs things to be easy to understand and get on with. She’ll be friendly and kind, and will be looking to work with people who can help her make her business a success. Working together will probably help her make her business more successful than she thought she could. Being able to ask the “stupid” questions, without being made to feel stupid, will be a big relief, as well as having the option to work together remotely, as well as face to face, because, you know, family commitments!
Proving my point, my first two enquiries came from male business owners with between 8 and 20 employees. I hadn’t spent budget marketing to them, though, they knew me through relationships we’d already built up. And I know them well enough to be confident that they’ll be great clients and value what I can do for them.
So, who have you identified as your target market customer, and how do you propose to get your message in front of them? Feel free to share what you’ve come up with, or book in a Focus Chat if you’re having any trouble with it.
Alternatively, book on to my free webinar that I’m running on Thursday 17th September at 4pm, where we’ll talk all about understanding who your target market is and using that knowledge to get the biggest bang for your marketing buck –