This post is all about targeted marketing and why YOUR marketing needs to be targeted, if you are serious about developing your business.
Here’s a great example of targeted marketing for you. I am around 99% certain that you are a business owner. In fact, I believe you either own a business, or are a consultant or a freelancer.
I was spot on or pretty close, wasn’t I?
How was I able to be so sure?
Targeted marketing
I have grown the readership of this site, via targeted marketing. Everything I have done in order to develop this blog, has been based around attracting the attention of intelligent, small business owners who want better sales results for their businesses. The content here is also targeted, with everything I have written, focused on the subject of marketing and business development.
As a direct result, I have a highly targeted readership of small business owners; the exact profile of people who use my marketing services.
Targeted marketing and time wasters
Just as targeted marketing delivers targeted results, the opposite is also true. Small business owners, who use a less focused approach to their marketing, tend to attract a little of everything. As a result, they typically get fewer business inquiries and many of the inquiries they do receive, are from the wrong kind of people.
For example, I spoke with a business owner recently, who told me how frustrated she was with all the time wasters who contacted her. I asked her what she meant by time wasters. Was she referring to people who were asking her for free advice? No. She said she was referring to the number of people who contact her looking for help in areas that she doesn’t cover. Similarly, I receive emails all the time, from people who complain that their prospective clients are too fee sensitive. With a little investigation, I often find that they are marketing a premium quality service, to people who buy bargain bucket services. That’s what happens when you fail to target your marketing correctly.
If you find that you are attracting the wrong kind of inquiries, or enquiries from the wrong end of the market, it’s entirely possible that the focus of your marketing needs to be improved. If you use social networks to randomly connect with people because they look interesting, that’s a GREAT strategy for socialising; however, it’s less effective if you are looking to build a targeted network of great business contacts and prospective clients. It’s like attending a networking event and randomly talking only to the first 10 people you see; rather than being a little wiser and connecting with the 10 most suitable people in the room.
Targeted marketing messages
When you write, do you write for as wide an audience as possible? Do you try to tell everyone who could possibly buy from you, every benefit of your services? If you do, you are making a mistake! Your marketing needs to be targeted to your prospective clients and their needs. That’s all. By trying to be vaguely relevant to everyone, your message becomes weakened. In order to compel or inspire people to call you, visit you, email you or click your links, your marketing needs to motivate them to take action. This means delivering targeted marketing messages to the right people!
If you want to be able to confidently predict who sees your marketing, and therefore contacts you, get specific. Don’t focus on the size of your network or the number of leads you generate, until you are attracting the right people.
Your feedback
How targeted is your approach to marketing? Do you write exclusively for your target market, or for everyone who could possibly buy from you? How confident are you, that 95% of your readership are the exact people you need to market to? Please take a moment to share your feedback.
Jim Connolly can help you grow your business and achieve the breakthrough marketing results your hard work deserves. To find out more, simply click here!
Excellent article Jim. I spent 4 years scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for web design clients before I decided to focus on 1 very tight niche market.
Thankfully it worked and I now have a thriving business, albeit in a very small market.
One thing you can do if you’re getting inquiries you can’t service – make a deal with a provider in that particular industry and swap leads. That way, you’re helping out the original visitor and also will receive leads in return.
Hey Jim, another great post.
I think the reason many businesses fail to focus on targeting their marketing efforts, is due to some twisted thinking that the more people they can speak to in one message, the more customers they will get… but we all know this “spray and pray” marketing approach rarely works.
Business owners would do a lot better if they stop trying to be everything, to everyone, and instead focus on being EXACTLY what their target customer wants.
Like oline marketing expert Eban Pagan says… when you have a headache, do you look for a bottle of aspirin or do you look for a great blue bottle that reads “medicine – cures everything”?
From the land of the small business owner, thanks for some great, practical advice. Clearly, you understand your target market needs implementable techniques (as well as but not limited to) philosophical strategies.
I’ll continue to read your work.
So true!It is very important to know first your target audience for your business!
You are so right – it so important to make sure that all of your marketing is properly targeted. Finding the perfect clients is easy if you have the correct approach, and that starts with having a clearly defined brand.
As always, an excellent post. I am one of your targeted small business owners. For many years, we have been sales focused and considered everyone in our market segment to be a potential customer. While all small businesses need orders at the end of the day, the lack of a targeted marketing message will cap potential. A targeted marketing message can create value for the customers and sustainability. Thanks for all the posts that provide me with specific action items.
[...] This is the opposite of the generic approach I mentioned a moment ago. Don’t offer a range of services, because it’s what the other guys offer. If you do, you will simply blend into the background and attract fee-sensitive prospective clients. These people use fees or prices as a way to differentiate the average providers, as they seem so similar. When a prospect meets or speaks with 3 potential providers, making the same promises, offering the same kind of services and the same kind of testimonials and the same guarantees etc, there’s little left other than fees, to base their decision on. All things being equal, the least expensive seems the best value. [...]
[...] you could hand-pick your next 100 clients. Who would they be? Get specific. Market to these targeted people. That’s where the gold dust is for your [...]