Today’s post is all about attracting more, high quality enquiries from eager prospective clients.

There are 2 important questions, which very few business owners ask of themselves. However, they contain the seeds of a massively valuable marketing insight. And by asking and answering them, you’ll avoid an extremely common and damaging mistake.

Here are the questions.

1. What does my ideal client (or customer) look like?
2. What am I doing, to make sure my marketing is exclusively, directly relevant to this super-valuable niche?

Here’s why these questions, and your answers, are so important.

Something for everyone?

One of the most common marketing mistakes, especially with small and medium-sized businesses, is to try and appeal to the widest possible range of people.

On one level, it seems to make sense. The thinking looks like this: The more people you try and appeal to, the more prospective clients you’ll have.

However, that’s not how it works. Not even close. In reality, using that approach guarantees you will actually attract far fewer clients or sales. And there’s a very good reason why.

It’s simply this. To motivate someone to switch brands or switch providers, your marketing needs to motivate them to take action. And in order to motivate them, it has to be directly relevant to them. It has to talk to their wants. Their needs. Their values.

Narrow and deep

Every time you decide to widen the appeal of your marketing, beyond your ideal client, you weaken its effectiveness. Your marketing shifts from being:

• Directly relevant (powerful and compelling).
• To vaguely relevant (feeble and weak).

If you haven’t already, I recommend you get intentional about exactly who you want to do business with. Then focus all your marketing, so that it speaks exclusively to that high value group.

Go narrow and deep. Not wide and shallow.

Get it right my friend, and it’s a game changer.

Today’s post offers you a wide-open opportunity for your business to thrive in the months ahead.

Yes, you read that correctly.

No, it’s not a play on words.

Allow me to explain

As we all know, these are very uncertain times. Yet there are some really important things we can have a high degree of certainty about. Here are just a few of them.

• We’re looking at a period of months (or longer), before the world population can safely return to a pre pandemic way of life.
• It will take years for world economies to recover.
• Previous periods of long-term economic crisis have simultaneously seen some businesses thrive, whilst others vanish.

By focusing on the things we can be almost certain of, we give ourselves a much steadier foundation from which to make our decisions. Acknowledging the long-term nature of the situation also helps us avoid going broke, as we can see it isn’t viable to wait for things to return to normal again.

Your wide-open opportunity

Back in March and April I offered a ‘Thrive” service, exclusively to help my former clients not just survive the pandemic, but thrive. I mentioned it at the time 1, 2 and 3. In every case, by focusing on the things they can be almost certain of, my clients were able to do spectacularly well.

We found that they had almost no competition. That’s because the vast majority of their competitors were scared stiff. Frozen with fear. Waiting for things to return to normal. Doing zero or minimal marketing. I found that my former clients had uncontested access to the marketplace, which made our marketing more effective than ever. And they have even less competition now, than they did back then, as their competitors now have even fewer financial resources and are even more scared. The competition have left the doors wide-open for my clients.

As I write this, that same wide-open opportunity to thrive is available to you.

That’s to say, your competition will largely be operating from a mindset of fear and doing the absolute minimum. To thrive you’ll need to be willing to do what your competitors won’t do. This includes things like focusing on what you want rather than what you fear. It means adapting your business to the new needs of your marketplace. It also means looking for opportunities to grow and having a commitment to being agile.

With 24/7 news coverage pumping fear and uncertainty at us, it’s way too easy to focus on the confusion and fear, which uncertainty brings. That’s a wholly ineffective mindset for any business owner.

Focus on the things that are under your control. Shift from a survive mindset to a thrive mindset. Do everything you can, with everything you have.

It beats the alternative and allows you to be justifiably excited about your future.

Today’s post is about two service providers. In the same industry. In the same country. Serving a very similar marketplace. With all the same coronavirus / economic hurdles as each other.

I was prompted to write this, after an email I received from a reader. He thanked me for the post I’d just written, then explained how tough things were for his business.

He said he was going to “keep his head down” and wait for the coronavirus to pass and the economy to pick up. He went on to explain that you can’t make money in his industry right now, “because no one is spending”.

Here’s why his email stood out

I’m currently working with someone in the same country as him, in the same industry as him. My client’s business is flourishing. And this is largely because her focus is 180 degrees different to his.

For example.

• She’s focused on growing. While he’s focused on surviving.
• She’s focused on moving. While he’s focused on waiting.
• She’s focused on opportunities. While he’s focused on losses.

Interestingly, she started off just as worried about the future as he is. What made all the difference is how she responds when she’s worried.

I remember vividly how fearful she was on our initial session, in March. She told me that her strategy for dealing with fear is to use it, to motivate her to look for answers. In this case, she found my service when looking for a way to navigate the changing economy caused by coronavirus.

She told me that taking positive action gives her a sense of control and keeps her focused on what she wants, rather than what she fears. This fills her with energy and justified confidence for the future.

Move forward with justified confidence

By choosing to focus on thriving, you drastically improve the scenario.

You get to spend your days working on successfully growing your business. Your shift of focus also enables you to see opportunities, which fear-focused business owners will miss. You transition from a feeling of apprehension, to one of excitement.

And it improves literally everything for you and your business.