This is probably the biggest mistake in definition that I see many business owners make. They believe that when we start talking marketing, they think we are talking about advertising.
I believe that marketing is all about attracting clients to your business, not just ‘putting your business out there’, telling people what you do. Advertising is of course a part of marketing, but that is not what defines marketing.
Marketing is an area that many business owners struggle in and the first thought many business owners have to the questions ‘What do you need to do to have more profit in your business?’. The answer to this question is not ‘get more clients’.
Before we talk marketing, sometimes to grow your business, the best thing to do is NOT do more marketing! Crazy I know! Remember in your first week of Business . . . Simplified, we did the numbers of business. Remember that I suggested you work on your conversion rate and the average customer spend amount? Remember the impact that had on the numbers we were using as an example. By working on these two things, we actually would need to do LESS marketing, not more to get the same amount of profit.
The first thing about marketing is to stop stressing about it. So many business owners are stressed and worried – how will I find customers? They are coming from a place of fear and scarcity. When I first started coaching, my coach said to me ‘Hey you are only looking for 10. How many business owners are there in Brisbane?’ Brisbane is a city of over a million people, so let’s just say, there was definitely more than 10 potential clients in the whole city!
Before you think about HOW you are going to market your business, there are some more important questions to ask…..
The first question to ask BEFORE doing any sort of marketing is ‘Who is my ideal customer?’ Think about it and describe them as much as you can. In a practical sense, realise that if you wanted to market your business to a 20 year old female, do you think you would use different words, different images, even different types of marketing than if you were trying to attract a 60 year old male? Of course you would.
We use different types of marketing for different types of prospective customers. If you don’t know who you are trying to attract, then how would you attract them to your business. If you have customers that you don’t like (as in personality or what they want from you or how much they spend with you) then I’d definitely say we need to look at what you are putting out to market because you are not getting in front of the right sort of people or you are giving the wrong message in your marketing!
The more you can describe who your ideal customer is, the easier it is to market to them. List all you can about them – age, sex, married/single/engaged, where do they work, kids, hobbies, interests, where do they live/work, what do they read/watch…. Everything.
Now as a note of caution, if you say, I don’t really care or it can be any of these things, then you are not going to attract anyone! Look for anyone and you will get no one!
Of course you can have more than one type of ideal client! Write out a few different ones, but just remember, to market to a female compared to a male, it might be the same marketing strategy, but the image is simply different. I once did this with Facebook ads. I did a campaign where I had the same target market for the ads, I just separated them into females and males – everything else was the same, just that one ad went to females (using a female on the image) and one went to males (with a male on the image) and I got a better result!
You MUST know who you are trying to attract for your marketing to be more successful.
Once you know WHO you would like to be your customer, put yourself in their shoes and ask ‘What would I want from your type of business or the types of products you sell?’ This is a good ‘check’ for a start because sometimes your ideal customer is not necessarily someone that you can even service so you either have to pick up your game or realise they are not actually an ideal customer for you.
Too often business owners put out marketing saying ‘Hey we have got this and look how great it is’ instead of going to a customer and in effect saying ‘Hey I know you have this problem or need and look we can solve that or deliver what you want to you’. What does your customer want? What are their needs? What is important to them?
I once was buying a car and the guy selling to me decided the first thing to show me was what colours the car came in! I was slightly offended, but I also walked away without buying a car from him. He assumed that was important to me, but what was actually important to me was the fuel economy of the car because I do a lot of driving. Actually, did it have cup holders was more important to me than the colour of the car!! (LOL … yes, cup holders! I’m a little weird….)
So you now have worked out WHO an ideal customer is for you and WHAT they would want, now we have to ask, WHY you? What is it about you and your business that would want to make them decide to buy from you?
It could be as simple as that you are local. Could be that you are the best at solving a very specific issue. Maybe you offer on time service.
I find a lot of business owners are trying to find some ‘magical/extraordinary’ reason WHY them, but sometimes it can be just the simple things.
One of my clients is in the trade services industry. For them to stand out from the crowd, to be considered extraordinary, all they need to do is turn up on time, clean and tidy, don’t swear and give a timely invoice! All the things that a normal human being would expect, but because of the industry they don’t get! They have even had customers say to them ‘Thank you so much for calling me back”! Not hard to stand out in the crowd when competitors can’t even do the standard things that are good business practice.
When thinking of WHY you, remember to come up with things that will build trust with your customers. Outlandish claims don’t bring trust with a prospect, they bring ‘Really? I think that is a bit too good to be true?’ sorts of statements from prospective customers.
Your next question is WHERE? Where do I find these customers, preferably in their greatest concentration?
This is why you really want to understand WHO they are, because this will help you to find where they are. If you are looking for business owners, you would find a lot of them at a business networking event, right? You would find lots of them all in one place. If you are looking for a café owner, then you will probably find them in their café, not in a big group of them together. If you are looking for newly engaged women, then you could find them on Facebook! I just love that you can target people on Facebook through their ads, because what do most women do once they are engaged? Put a post on Facebook and then change their relationship status to ‘Engaged’ which means you now know WHERE to find them.
The final question is HOW? How do I get in front of these ideal clients? What are the different ways? So looking at the where question above, I actually gave you some how’s right there – networking event and Facebook. For the café owners, it might be a direct mail letter, it might be walking into their cafe.
How is not the first question you ask when marketing, it is actually the last question you ask!
There is never one best way to market – even to a specific ideal customer – there could be several different ways. How do you work out what works best for you? You test and measure! Test small portions of your ideal customer with different marketing ideas and then measure the results. You might find say for the café owner above that you get a far better result by walking in to their business and speaking to them than you do by sending a letter to them, so now you know which marketing you should be doing to attract that type of ideal client. Maybe they both work equally as well in terms of results, but the letters take you less time, so you go with that strategy. Or .. you do both!
Marketing is not a spur of the moment activity. It is an activity that you should stop, think and plan in your business. Sometimes the simplest marketing is actually the most direct marketing. Don’t over complicate your marketing. Once you know who your ideal customer is, what they want, why they’d use you, where you can find them, the how becomes far easier.
Think before acting when marketing!
Action step:
Simple one this week…..
Start with one ideal customer and go through the process of asking what they would want, why they’d use you, where you would find them and then how to get in front of them best. The power is in pen to paper, so write this down, don’t just think it!
Then, you can do this for another different types of ideal customers. I wouldn’t do it for more than 5 ideal customers to begin with – that should give you plenty of ‘fodder’ to work with.
Once you work out the different kinds of marketing strategies you could be doing to attract these ideal customers, get to work on starting to test (just a small portion to begin with) and measure the results to find what does or doesn’t work for you. When you find strategies that do work for you, do more of them! It’s that simple J