Client Magnets Official Blog

Knowing, in general, who your target market is can be a lot like knowing, in theory, what it’s like to ride a roller coaster. You may have read a lot about that amusement ride but, until you’ve actually ridden one, your knowledge is incomplete. In the same way, until you have an in-depth understanding of your target audience, it’s impossible to know what they need and how to provide it.

This may seem very elementary to you, if you’ve been in business for awhile. But it’s really the most important step toward building a stronger business. If you aren’t sure who needs your products and how that audience lives, works and thinks, how is it possible to market to them effectively? The great thing is that, once you’ve learned those things, your marketing efforts are much more successful.

Think of it this way: once you’ve clearly identified the group of people most likely to need your products, your marketing changes from “How to reach lots of people” to “Will this help reach my target audience?” That sort of focusing in is so much more effective in the long run.

So, what are some questions to ask when defining your target audience? Here are the important ones:

• What age, gender and occupation are the people who need my services?
• What are their hobbies and interests?
• What’s their lifestyle—where do they go on holiday and what do they buy when they shop?
• Are they married or single? Do they have children?
• Where do they live, and what things do they like to have around them?
• What is most important to them?

These questions are obviously targeting individuals. If you usually work with businesses, consider these factors, as well:

• What industries are my target clients in?
• Where are those companies located geographically?
• How many employees do they have?
• What position in those companies do my targeted contacts hold?

As you can see, answering each of these questions gives you a more in-depth knowledge of your target audience. Not being able to answer them simply says that you need to focus more on who is most in need of your services.

The more specific your answers to these questions, the more targeted your marketing becomes. The opposite approach to building business is to attempt to please everyone. The danger to that approach is that when your marketing is generic, it may not capture anyone’s attention.

Having clarity about a target audience and focusing on what they need is the strongest possible foundation for your marketing. If you feel reluctance about narrowing down your audience, is it because you fear losing opportunities?

The opposite is actually true. Trusting that you’ve found your perfect audience allows you to relax and simply meet their needs. You don’t have to fret about competition, because you’re the perfect person to serve them.

Specialising your services to meet the needs of your target audience can be scary, if you don’t yet feel that trust. Here’s an example that might motivate you toward identifying your niche:

Suppose you offer telephone etiquette training. Your current marketing generically offers to train employees to sound more professional on the telephone. What if, rather than offering general telephone skills training, you narrowed your approach down to teaching sales people to cold call more effectively?

Do you see how that narrowed focus might make your services more interesting? Cold calling is something most salespeople resist. By teaching those same salespeople to make more appointments with fewer calls, you’re providing a valuable service to sales-based organizations. That automatically makes your marketing more effective. You begin to attract business naturally from the companies that most need that service.

There’s no need to worry that you’ll miss opportunities by specialising because you focus your marketing on people much more likely to respond. Trust that your business will grow as you define your audience and target your services to their needs.

Take the time to identify your target audience more clearly, if you’re struggling to build your business. Identify who that audience is and what it needs, and you’ll see much greater returns from your marketing dollars.

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