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Determining Your Target Market: 6 Ways You’ve Probably Not Considered–Part 6
August 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment
This is the final installment in this series and is most relevant for those who sell business-to-business.
#6: The size of the company will determine your market.
You will always need to get in front of decision makers, and the size of the company, business or organization whom you approach determines who that is and thus who your market is. It’s well worth your time to think this through.
If you want to target a large company, your market is HR or perhaps a top executive–and most likely, they will not be your final audience. This awareness, then, tells you–as any target market will–how to craft your marketing communications. They will not be directed to the C-levels, managers or other employees with whom you will be directly interacting–everything will be constructed around “what’s in it for” the decision maker. [Read more…]
Determining Your Target Market: 6 Ways You’ve Probably Not Considered–Part 5
August 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment
# 5: Your 4 Business Roles
As a service-based business owner, there are 4 roles you will likely play in your career. But only one is where you want to spend most of your time. One is the best option given your mission. One is the best option given ethical behavior toward your clients. And it is very important to build your business so that you are utilizing the best role in your Signature Program—the program that is central to your entire business. Since your Signature Program will be populated by a certain target market, it stands to reason that you need to know which of these roles you’re playing in that program so you can determine who should be “in the room.” [Read more…]
Determining Your Target Market: 6 Ways You’ve Probably Not Considered–Part 4
August 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment
In this 6-part series, I’m offering tools to help you determine the market that is best for who you are, what you do, and that will actually buy you. I can’t possibly underestimate the importance of a niche-market or underestimate the difficulty in getting this right for most coaches, consultants, practitioners and speakers. This is Part 4 in the series. Be sure to read the previous posts for all of the tools, then blend them together for your Perfect Buyer mix.
#4. With Whom Do You Have the Most Credibility?
You must go where you are seen as valid and valuable. Many clients come to me and don’t consider this at all, let alone thoughtfully. Here are some questions to help you:
- Where do you have solid contacts? Do you have them from your previous career? From your PTA days? From your church? This is one of the very first questions I ask, in large part because you do not want to make business any harder than it needs to be! Go where you have contacts, but also, go there because where others know you, you have credibility.
- What have you experienced and conquered? Yesterday, my advice was, “be your market.” If you have gone through something that your market has gone through, as well, you have instant credibility. Downsizing; divorce; teen motherhood, etc. In determining your market, look for the experiences you’ve had because your success journey will be wanted by the market going through the same thing–and they will buy you because you are credible.
- Who would resonate most with your beliefs? Like-minds find each other credible. If you say something that causes others to fervently nod their head in agreement, you have credibility with them–even if you lack experience in what you do. Even if it is a market in which you have interest, but no contacts. If you believe in something they do, you are one of the tribe. I always delve deeply into my clients’ beliefs, and eventually have them include them in their marketing because inspirational marketing works for this very reason–you are powerfully credible with those who share your philosophies.
By now, you must be getting ideas. Who is a strong contender for your target market?
Determining Your Target Market: 6 Ways You’ve Probably Not Considered–Part 3
August 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Today, we’re moving to the 3rd post in a 6-part series designed to help you determine whom you should be leading. I expect this will be enlightening and helpful to even the most successful service entrepreneurs.
3. Who are YOU? BE your market.
Richard Branson was featured yet again in Entrepreneur Magazine, June 2012, and was quoted as saying, “All startups should be thinking, ‘What frustrates me [as a customer] and how can I make it better? It might be a small…or…a big thing, but…if they think like that, they’re likely to build a very successful business.”
The most relevant piece to our discussion is this: he spoke of the fact that he has always been his own customer. Everything he ever created, from Virgin Records to Virgin Airlines and everything in between and after, came from his own need. And he credits “being his own customer” to his success.
This has now become a topic of conversation between me and my clients who go through my 7-session private program, The Powerhouse Method, looking to build a highly-marketable, one-of-a-kind business. The first order of business is to determine whom they will be serving. To aid in this extremely (for most) challenging act, I tell them what Branson advises: You should be your market. But the converse is equally true: your market should be you. Either who you once were, or who you are now. Do not try marketing to a group you are not. Branson never did. Help those with the same needs you had once upon a time. If you’re frustrated now by how things are being done in your field–close the gap with an innovation and then sell it to others just like you with that need.
When you are your market, and your market is you, you secure one of the most important factors of success in business: credibility. They will listen to you because you are them and have an answer relevant to them. It means you will communicate (i.e. sell) to them like no one else because you speak their language and understand them at a deep level. It means you will design “urgently wanted” programs and products that nail their needs and desires because you know them so intimately.
I have always been my market, and as a result, every one of my programs through the years has knocked it out of the park. I have also always sold quite easily (once I overcame my issues with selling), because I created content *I* would have wanted and that my market (me, in an earlier time) wants and needs.
So, in trying to decide who your market is, look no further than your own mirror.
Determining Your Target Market: 6 Ways You’ve Probably Not Considered–Part 2
August 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment
This is the 2nd in a 6-part series on mastering who your sliver-population market is. I’ve said to my students and clients for years that your market *is* your business. Without a market, you have either an unwieldy, undefined business or you have no business at all.
It is your market that will determine how you sell to them–the communication that will actually work.
Your market that will determine the free and paid programs you offer.
Your market who will create your expert-status.
Your market who will make you money.
And your market who will determine your destiny. If you are here to change the world, it is only a very segmented population that will help you do it.
There are many things I ask my private clients that enable them to take the vital step of shaping their all-important market, and recently, I’ve been directing them with these 6 tools. Today, I’m giving you the 2nd one.
2. The 4 Criteria
I have found these 4 questions quickly answer whether or not a market is a smart decision. You need to have a sense of a market in order for this to help, but once you have an idea of one or even two markets, measure your options (independently) against these 4 criteria:
On a 1-10 scale (0=not at all; 10=extremely), how would you rate your TM option on the following:
1. How “on the surface” is their awareness of their pain?
2. How credible are you to them? (They would believe you; respect you; resonate with you.)
3. How passionate do you feel when you think of working with them?
4. How able are they to pay for you?
Every single one of these is important.
And you want to be answering at an 8 (lowest), and preferably a 9 or 10.
If a market is a 9 or 10 in awareness of their pain, this is very good. It means they have an urgent need, and your business *must* be “urgently wanted”–or you will simply sit on the shelf as a one-day possibility (if you’re lucky.) Sound familiar?
You are credible to a market if you have been through what they are going through; if you have overcome what they’re in the midst of; if you express beliefs that immediately align with theirs. If you are an 8-10 in credibility, there is a high likelihood that they will buy you.
You must be at a 9 or 10 in passion for your market. If you are a follower of mine, you are here to effect change in the world and must want that change for a particular segment far more than for any other segment. You must be passionate about what you see is possible for them; what you think they’re here for–after all, you’ll be helping them get it. I am off-the-charts passionate about visionary entrepreneurs, those who are here to inspire change. I could do what I do for corporations, but I believe the world should be run by entrepreneurs, so I have no interest in helping executives. I used to work with any type of coach and consultant, but then decided that I only had interest in working with those who want to have a powerful impact in the world. I believe they have a purpose on the planet at this time and am extremely passionate about that and them. So, they are now the only type of service provider I work with.
And finally, needless to say, you want your market to be able to pay you at an 8, 9 or 10 level. If you answer anything lower than an 8, you will pay for it.
So, what are your answers when you take yourself through all 4 criteria?
How to Determine Your Target Market: 6 Ways You’ve Probably Not Considered
August 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment
It is a constant trouble-spot for my market of authors, speakers, consultants, coaches: Determining their market. I have a free ebook to help the process, but there are so many fine hairs to split, that it’s not really enough.
The Target Market question is the biggest boulder in the way of success for an entrepreneur; the hidden answer to their struggle; and the place that gets nearly every one of them—to use a term favored by a dear friend—“wonky.”
Tussling with who it is they will serve reveals commitment issues (I have to work only with them? For years??). Trust issues. (What if this market is a mistake and everything I build for them doesn’t work?) Ego and pride. (The big successes don’t target their market; I’m going to follow them.) When these issues become so obvious that they need to be pointed out lest we spend precious time extracting bullets from their feet, I provide these incisive insight–then end the nurturing with, “Get over all of it. Just pick.”
The other day, I was working with a client on his market and heard myself moving him through six ways to grab hold of a possible market for him. I am going to share them all with you in this diagram today and comment on the first, and then write content for the other five over the next week.
So, you can, and must, evaluate your market on at least the following conditions:
- What Market “Urgently Wants” What You Have?
Even this is not a cut-and-dried question, and is hair that can be split dozens of ways, but it must be answered! The biggest problem I see for service-based entrepreneurs is that they do not ensure that they are delivering something to the market that the market would “climb over chairs to get.” They’re putting out what they want to put out.
But even if they work on this some, they’re still not reasoning it through enough. They really believe “everyone” could be served by what they offer. But this is not true. Some age-group (the fastest way to get at this if it’s a consumer market) or some company desperately wants what they have more than another. So, what is that age group? And then, what is the situation they’re in that heightens their urgent want? Did they just get divorced? Just graduate college? Did the corporation just merge? Who is in urgent pain and therefore urgently wants what you have?
You *must strike* where there is pain, or you will gather dust very quickly. And there are times in life when the pain out there that you can heal is more acute than at other times. Yes, you provide outstanding marketing services–but at what stage does a business recognize that it REALLY WANTS marketing help? Probably after about two years of failure. Yes, you’re a great parent coach, but what situations would cause a parent to come seeking your services? There are only a few times when pain is acute: during pregnancy; toddler years; teen-age years.
Look for stages of life and situations that will cause an upsurge of interest in your solution. You are not wanted all of the time. AND you are not wanted by everyone. You are wanted at a specific moment in time, by a very specific type of person/company.
So, what are the crackling synapses in your brain telling you right now?
Stay tuned for the next installment…