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Member You - Take Dead Aim At Your Target Market
Well actually no it’s not usually but it can be far better if you know what to expect and how to manage your new business.Every new business owner starts off, full of hope, excitement and enthusiasm. How do you make sure that you are not on of the 80% of small businesses that fails in the first few years?1. Remember you won’t get a regular wage to start with. It takes some time for a new business to become profitable. Don’t panic, make sure that you have enough money in the bank to make your bills for the first 6 months. How do you do that? Make sure that you build this cash flow requirement into your initial planning, loan requirements and cash flow.2. Your business takes a lot of planning. The 6 months before you start your business and the 6 months after the start really requires a great deal of organizing and planning. Plan what your business will look like, how it will operate, where your market is and what you should sell at what price. That should be in your business plan – you DO have a business plan right? As you start your business, revisit your plans and update them as necessary.3. Become disciplined. Plan out your work day and produce a regular “To Do” list that you keep updated. Make sure that your plans are reflected in your work schedule. Ensure that you put in regular hours and that your “office” is mann
- The response to your advertisements (if there even is any) won't be immediate and will be much more difficult to track. You'll therefore have a much harder time determining whether the advertisement is working for you or not. Anytime you can't tell if your money is well-spent, you're dicing with death.
- The investment required to effectively achieve top-of-mind awareness is usually enormous. There are cheaper ways to get good results.
- People are really good at ignoring advertising. When an advertisement does finally get their attention, it's frequently because the advertisement is selling something that will be of immediate benefit to them. In other words, good luck getting them to pay attention to your advertisements and remember your name when they aren't even interested in what you're selling yet.
To avoid these problems, do yourself a favor and take dead aim at a much smaller target by narrowing your niche.
In the above example, we went from advertising a wine to millions of Wine Spectator reader
The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart. --Benjamin FranklinHow often have you said something that you thought was perfectly clear, only to find out later that the receiver had taken it in exactly the wrong way? A boss’s ability to communicate well with direct reports depends on the capacity to transmit meaning between people through the use of words. These words give us the ability to represent the world through symbols, a skill that that allows us to make sense of our world and then to share that meaning with others. However, the very words that empower us to create meaning with one another also create barriers between us. Words give us the means for sharing ideas and expressing emotion, but they can also serve as a source of conflict. Intentionally or unintentionally, words can cause roadblocks to understanding.One of the reasons for these barriers is, even though meaning is not in words, we act as though it is. Just because a thought makes perfect sense in our heads doesn’t, in any way, imply that anyone else will understand that idea in exactly the same way that we do. There are no guarantees that communication will ever occur in the way we intend for it to, but there are some things bosses can do to try to control the direction a conversation goes:1. Use Specific LanguageFirst, use concrete rather
If you said "none of the above", then I have to agree with you. The most important factor in marketing is targeting.
You simply have to know what to sell, and to whom to sell it.
If you're selling something that doesn't appeal to the people you're speaking to, then you can forget about a good return. Regardless of how good your product is, regardless of how brilliant the advertisements are, and regardless of the price you're charging, if your targeting is off, then your whole marketing campaign will be missing the mark.
Moldy Grape Juice or Heavenly Elixir?
If I offered you a bottle of 1995 Domaine de la Roman?e Conti La T?che for $500, would you buy? For the non-oenophiles among us, the Domaine de la Roman?e Conti is a producer of wine in Burgundy in France. They make some of the finest and most highly coveted wines in the world, and La T?che is one of their finest. But at $500, would you buy?
Some people might, but many others wouldn't. And fair enough. Some would argue that no wine is worth that kind of price. Some people just don't like the taste of wine and wouldn't buy no matter how highly esteemed the wine was. And others, for whatever reason, just don't drink alcohol.
But if I make my offer to some serious wine-lovers, to people who have no problem dropping a hefty wad of cash on a great bottle, then however many bottles I have available will be gone soon. That's because a bottle of 1995 La T?che for $500 is a steal.
But it's only a steal to the people who are interested in that sort of thing. So if I want to sell my bottles, I have to do everything I can to make my offer to people who are interested.
Targeting: The Key to Effective Marketing
So how do I get my offer in front of people who are interested? That's where targeting comes in.
If I were to advertise the bottles of wine that I wanted to sell in Car and Driver magazine, I'm sure you'd agree that I'd be wasting a lot of my advertising dollars.
I'd have a better, more targeted audience if I were to advertise in a wine-oriented publication such as Wine Spectator. This magazine's readers are obviously interested wine, and many of them are probably even interested to the extent that a mere $500 for the wine I'm pitching would have them licking their lips and dusting off the Riedel glasses.
All this stands to reason. You're obviously going to get a better response advertising high-end fine wine to an audience that is at least predisposed towards wine. But can we do better?
While Wine Spectator caters to wine-lovers, not all of them will be sufficiently loaded to seriously contemplate dropping that kind of moolah on a single bottle of wine. In other words, I'll be paying for the privilege of advertising to Wine Spectator's millions of readers, when all I really want to do is advertise to the five percent or so who are likely to be interested in my offer.
With Car and Driver I was way off-target. Wine Spectator is on-target, but I'm using a shotgun. To get the most bang for my buck, I want to find a way to put my offer only in front of people likely to be interested. I want to use a rifle to hit my target and nothing but my target.
There are several ways I could do this. Obviously if there were a publication geared more specifically to wine-collectors, that would be a good place to advertise.
Another excellent alternative would be to send a mailing to my existing customers. I could search through my customer database and select only those customers whose buying-history indicated an interest in the wines on sale, and send the mailing to them. If I didn't have a large customer list, I could find additional prospects by arranging for access to a related business' customer list. In this case, a company specializing in wine cellar installation might be a good choice.
As you can see, the mailing would be going out to a very select group of people. By zeroing in on my target market, I can get the results I need much more cost-effectively than if I either failed to target altogether, or took the shotgun approach.
And that's really all there is to it. The more you can target your offer, the better your response will be.
How to Target Your Marketing
As you can see, the concept of targeting is pretty simple. Take your product or service and offer it to people who are likely to be interested. But there are a few things you'll want to keep in mind.
Narrow Your Niche
I don't care what you sell; your market is smaller than you think. A large percentage of the population owns a car, but a much smaller percentage is in the market for a new car this month. Many people use an accountant, but far fewer are looking to switch accountants.
If you blast away with the shotgun approach and try to hit everyone, you won't like the results.
You might argue that even if people aren't in the market yet, you should still try to expose them to your advertisements so that when they are, your company's name will be at the top of their minds. This is a really dangerous approach for a small business to take for several reasons.
- The response to your advertisements (if there even is any) won't be immediate and will be much more difficult to track. You'll therefore have a much harder time determining whether the advertisement is working for you or not. Anytime you can't tell if your money is well-spent, you're dicing with death.
- The investment required to effectively achieve top-of-mind awareness is usually enormous. There are cheaper ways to get good results.
- People are really good at ignoring advertising. When an advertisement does finally get their attention, it's frequently because the advertisement is selling something that will be of immediate benefit to them. In other words, good luck getting them to pay attention to your advertisements and remember your name when they aren't even interested in what you're selling yet.
To avoid these problems, do yourself a favor and take dead aim at a much smaller target by narrowing your niche.
In the above example, we went from advertising a wine to millions of Wine Spectator readers
If you think ahead and plan, many nightmare panic and chaos situations can be overcome. By ensuring that you have a great group of people around you, there will be more to fall back on when the going gets tough - because that, as they say, when the tough really do get going. Big challenges can be very difficult to face - and they can be fascinating and exhilarating. So here's some thoughts on how to make the best of these times, by getting ready in advance and making it work. Plan AheadLook out for what you might need in the future and plan to make business life far, far easier for yourself. Decide what your business will be when it's the best it can be and focus on getting to there. think then about whether the resources are within or outside your business, which will depend on the size of it. Size Doesn't MatterEven if you are small, tiny even, don't think you can't afford a specialist - it will often make sense, both in relieving stress and financially. I mean you didn't get into your business to always do your books did you? (And if you did, maybe you want to try bookkeeping as a business!). Chris Barrow aka The Million Dollar Coach always reckons the first thing any self-respecting entrepreneur
But if I make my offer to some serious wine-lovers, to people who have no problem dropping a hefty wad of cash on a great bottle, then however many bottles I have available will be gone soon. That's because a bottle of 1995 La T?che for $500 is a steal.
But it's only a steal to the people who are interested in that sort of thing. So if I want to sell my bottles, I have to do everything I can to make my offer to people who are interested.
Targeting: The Key to Effective Marketing
So how do I get my offer in front of people who are interested? That's where targeting comes in.
If I were to advertise the bottles of wine that I wanted to sell in Car and Driver magazine, I'm sure you'd agree that I'd be wasting a lot of my advertising dollars.
I'd have a better, more targeted audience if I were to advertise in a wine-oriented publication such as Wine Spectator. This magazine's readers are obviously interested wine, and many of them are probably even interested to the extent that a mere $500 for the wine I'm pitching would have them licking their lips and dusting off the Riedel glasses.
All this stands to reason. You're obviously going to get a better response advertising high-end fine wine to an audience that is at least predisposed towards wine. But can we do better?
While Wine Spectator caters to wine-lovers, not all of them will be sufficiently loaded to seriously contemplate dropping that kind of moolah on a single bottle of wine. In other words, I'll be paying for the privilege of advertising to Wine Spectator's millions of readers, when all I really want to do is advertise to the five percent or so who are likely to be interested in my offer.
With Car and Driver I was way off-target. Wine Spectator is on-target, but I'm using a shotgun. To get the most bang for my buck, I want to find a way to put my offer only in front of people likely to be interested. I want to use a rifle to hit my target and nothing but my target.
There are several ways I could do this. Obviously if there were a publication geared more specifically to wine-collectors, that would be a good place to advertise.
Another excellent alternative would be to send a mailing to my existing customers. I could search through my customer database and select only those customers whose buying-history indicated an interest in the wines on sale, and send the mailing to them. If I didn't have a large customer list, I could find additional prospects by arranging for access to a related business' customer list. In this case, a company specializing in wine cellar installation might be a good choice.
As you can see, the mailing would be going out to a very select group of people. By zeroing in on my target market, I can get the results I need much more cost-effectively than if I either failed to target altogether, or took the shotgun approach.
And that's really all there is to it. The more you can target your offer, the better your response will be.
How to Target Your Marketing
As you can see, the concept of targeting is pretty simple. Take your product or service and offer it to people who are likely to be interested. But there are a few things you'll want to keep in mind.
Narrow Your Niche
I don't care what you sell; your market is smaller than you think. A large percentage of the population owns a car, but a much smaller percentage is in the market for a new car this month. Many people use an accountant, but far fewer are looking to switch accountants.
If you blast away with the shotgun approach and try to hit everyone, you won't like the results.
You might argue that even if people aren't in the market yet, you should still try to expose them to your advertisements so that when they are, your company's name will be at the top of their minds. This is a really dangerous approach for a small business to take for several reasons.
- The response to your advertisements (if there even is any) won't be immediate and will be much more difficult to track. You'll therefore have a much harder time determining whether the advertisement is working for you or not. Anytime you can't tell if your money is well-spent, you're dicing with death.
- The investment required to effectively achieve top-of-mind awareness is usually enormous. There are cheaper ways to get good results.
- People are really good at ignoring advertising. When an advertisement does finally get their attention, it's frequently because the advertisement is selling something that will be of immediate benefit to them. In other words, good luck getting them to pay attention to your advertisements and remember your name when they aren't even interested in what you're selling yet.
To avoid these problems, do yourself a favor and take dead aim at a much smaller target by narrowing your niche.
In the above example, we went from advertising a wine to millions of Wine Spectator reader
Embroidered designs are seen on everything from T-shirts to bath towels. There’s plenty of need for embroidered products; you just have to find your niche within the market. People like the personalized designs of embroidery to show off on themselves or their pets. You could target your services to pet stores, sporting goods stores, or maybe even your local golf courses. Another option might be to target local businesses to see if they want a variety of items to use as promotional products.What skills and tools are needed to start a Home Embroidery Business?To get started, you need a good embroidery machine. There are low end machines intended for personal use but you’ll probably be disappointed in them in the long run. It is worth the extra expense to go for a professional model. You can choose between a single head and multi head units. Many home based embroiders find a way to lease the equipment (at least initially) to reduce front end costs (or to limit the size of start-up loans).Don’t worry too much about knowing how to use the machines. Most companies that sell these machines provide you with the training and are just a phone call away in case you have questions or problems.Some selling experience would be helpful in this business. You may wish to sell your items at local craft shows to start getting your business known in your community.obviously going to get a better response advertising high-end fine wine to an audience that is at least predisposed towards wine. But can we do better?
While Wine Spectator caters to wine-lovers, not all of them will be sufficiently loaded to seriously contemplate dropping that kind of moolah on a single bottle of wine. In other words, I'll be paying for the privilege of advertising to Wine Spectator's millions of readers, when all I really want to do is advertise to the five percent or so who are likely to be interested in my offer.
With Car and Driver I was way off-target. Wine Spectator is on-target, but I'm using a shotgun. To get the most bang for my buck, I want to find a way to put my offer only in front of people likely to be interested. I want to use a rifle to hit my target and nothing but my target.
There are several ways I could do this. Obviously if there were a publication geared more specifically to wine-collectors, that would be a good place to advertise.
Another excellent alternative would be to send a mailing to my existing customers. I could search through my customer database and select only those customers whose buying-history indicated an interest in the wines on sale, and send the mailing to them. If I didn't have a large customer list, I could find additional prospects by arranging for access to a related business' customer list. In this case, a company specializing in wine cellar installation might be a good choice.
As you can see, the mailing would be going out to a very select group of people. By zeroing in on my target market, I can get the results I need much more cost-effectively than if I either failed to target altogether, or took the shotgun approach.
And that's really all there is to it. The more you can target your offer, the better your response will be.
How to Target Your Marketing
As you can see, the concept of targeting is pretty simple. Take your product or service and offer it to people who are likely to be interested. But there are a few things you'll want to keep in mind.
Narrow Your Niche
I don't care what you sell; your market is smaller than you think. A large percentage of the population owns a car, but a much smaller percentage is in the market for a new car this month. Many people use an accountant, but far fewer are looking to switch accountants.
If you blast away with the shotgun approach and try to hit everyone, you won't like the results.
You might argue that even if people aren't in the market yet, you should still try to expose them to your advertisements so that when they are, your company's name will be at the top of their minds. This is a really dangerous approach for a small business to take for several reasons.
- The response to your advertisements (if there even is any) won't be immediate and will be much more difficult to track. You'll therefore have a much harder time determining whether the advertisement is working for you or not. Anytime you can't tell if your money is well-spent, you're dicing with death.
- The investment required to effectively achieve top-of-mind awareness is usually enormous. There are cheaper ways to get good results.
- People are really good at ignoring advertising. When an advertisement does finally get their attention, it's frequently because the advertisement is selling something that will be of immediate benefit to them. In other words, good luck getting them to pay attention to your advertisements and remember your name when they aren't even interested in what you're selling yet.
To avoid these problems, do yourself a favor and take dead aim at a much smaller target by narrowing your niche.
In the above example, we went from advertising a wine to millions of Wine Spectator reader
A human resource handbook serves as a manual guide of all the rules, processes and policies applicable to your employee at the workplace. If your staff needs to know leave and time policies, it should be found in the human resource handbook.If your staff needs to know information about the bottom line of the company, it should be present in the human resource handbook. If you need the medical staff's number at their fingertips, it should also be listed in the human resource handbook.Moreover, a human resource handbook should contain detailed information about the benefits that the company provides to its employees. Since most companies have different leave policies, the information must be reflected in the human resource handbook.Other issues such as the company's stand on paternal leave for fathers, maternity leave for pregnant women, nursing leave for moms, casual leaves that may constitutes to emergency leave should be listed in the human resource handbook.To ensure that your employees will not look at the human resource handbook as a manual for privileges, you should also list out on the handbook all the duties and responsibilities of your staff.You can also include on the handbook about tricks and tips on how to become a successful employee. In addition, you can also add issues about sexual harassment, handling conflicts at work, work etiqu
As you can see, the mailing would be going out to a very select group of people. By zeroing in on my target market, I can get the results I need much more cost-effectively than if I either failed to target altogether, or took the shotgun approach.
And that's really all there is to it. The more you can target your offer, the better your response will be.
How to Target Your Marketing
As you can see, the concept of targeting is pretty simple. Take your product or service and offer it to people who are likely to be interested. But there are a few things you'll want to keep in mind.
Narrow Your Niche
I don't care what you sell; your market is smaller than you think. A large percentage of the population owns a car, but a much smaller percentage is in the market for a new car this month. Many people use an accountant, but far fewer are looking to switch accountants.
If you blast away with the shotgun approach and try to hit everyone, you won't like the results.
You might argue that even if people aren't in the market yet, you should still try to expose them to your advertisements so that when they are, your company's name will be at the top of their minds. This is a really dangerous approach for a small business to take for several reasons.
- The response to your advertisements (if there even is any) won't be immediate and will be much more difficult to track. You'll therefore have a much harder time determining whether the advertisement is working for you or not. Anytime you can't tell if your money is well-spent, you're dicing with death.
- The investment required to effectively achieve top-of-mind awareness is usually enormous. There are cheaper ways to get good results.
- People are really good at ignoring advertising. When an advertisement does finally get their attention, it's frequently because the advertisement is selling something that will be of immediate benefit to them. In other words, good luck getting them to pay attention to your advertisements and remember your name when they aren't even interested in what you're selling yet.
To avoid these problems, do yourself a favor and take dead aim at a much smaller target by narrowing your niche.
In the above example, we went from advertising a wine to millions of Wine Spectator reader
If you're looking for that promotion or pay rise then you'll need to be noticed by your employer, so here's a few tips to stand out from the crowd:Have a Friendly & Positive attitude towards Everyone you come into contactProvide Service and treat Everyone as your customerBe Professional at all timesAlways look for extra work, especially when others are ducking for cover to avoid itWatch what your colleagues are doing, copy from the ones who are receiving praise for their efforts but learn to do it better than them, while avoiding doing what your "lazier or negative" colleagues are doingBe a Thinker and offer suggestion on how to do things better and more efficientlyPlan and follow your planDon't Procrastinate, do what needs to be done NOW!!Think ahead, when ask to do A & B, do C as wellAnticipate the next question and provide the answer before you're askedDress and Act as if you were already in the position you want to reachGo to lunch with successful people and learn from themDon't be afraid to ask questions and ask for helpAvoid Office PoliticsBe an Individual while being a team playerLearn everything about your company and productsFollow these tips and you won't need to ask for a promotion or extra money, it will happen automatically.
- The response to your advertisements (if there even is any) won't be immediate and will be much more difficult to track. You'll therefore have a much harder time determining whether the advertisement is working for you or not. Anytime you can't tell if your money is well-spent, you're dicing with death.
- The investment required to effectively achieve top-of-mind awareness is usually enormous. There are cheaper ways to get good results.
- People are really good at ignoring advertising. When an advertisement does finally get their attention, it's frequently because the advertisement is selling something that will be of immediate benefit to them. In other words, good luck getting them to pay attention to your advertisements and remember your name when they aren't even interested in what you're selling yet.
To avoid these problems, do yourself a favor and take dead aim at a much smaller target by narrowing your niche.
In the above example, we went from advertising a wine to millions of Wine Spectator readers, to sending out a mailing to only those people whose buying-history demonstrated an interest in the specific wine we were pitching. We went from everyone interested in wine to only those interested in high-end red Burgundy. That's a much smaller niche!
The accountant mentioned above might market to people who are unhappy with their current accountant for one specific reason. Alternatively, she might narrow her niche by marketing directly to one specific type of customer, such as dentists.
Narrowing your niche doesn't mean that you won't also do business with customers outside that niche, it just means that a given marketing campaign or an individual advertisement might not be aimed directly at them. Instead, your marketing takes dead aim at a much more specific target that is a whole lot easier to hit.
Determine Your Ideal Customer
One of the best ways to get your marketing aimed at a smaller target is to identify your ideal customer and market only to prospects that fit that profile.
This is actually one of the healthiest things you can do for your business. We all end up doing business with customers who are not ideal. In many cases we do business with customers who are far from ideal. These customers are often difficult to deal with, unprofitable, and extremely hard to please.
Now imagine an influx of your ideal customers. More angels who always pay their bills on time, who revere the work you do for them, and who provide word-of-mouth recommendations frequently. Wouldn't that help your business?
If you don't know what your ideal customer looks like, think about which of your current customers are most profitable. With whom do you most enjoy doing business? Who can benefit most from your product or service? It shouldn't take long to form a picture of your perfect client.
Putting It into Practice
Start taking dead aim with your marketing today. Here are some suggestions:
Targeting Your Website
- Review the content on your website. Are you addressing everyone or are you zeroed in on your target market?
- Make some changes to your pay-per-click advertising. Don't just use the same advertisement for everyone. Instead, create different advertisements for the different types of prospect you're targeting.
- Experiment with different landing pages. Landing pages are the pages that people who click on your advertisements are taken to. You should create targeted landing pages for each type of prospect in your target market.
Targeting Your Print Advertising
- Don't run the same advertisement everywhere. If you're targeting different types of customer, create an advertisement that addresses each customer type directly and then do everything you can to get the advertisement in front of the prospect it's targeted on.
- If your advertisements reference your website, you might consider setting up different landing pages for the different versions of your advertisements. Doing so would enable your prospects to continue experiencing highly-targeted communication.
- Experiment with different publications. One publication might have a smaller circulation, but it could be much more targeted for your advertising.
Targeting Your Direct Mail
- Break your mailing list into segments based on demographics such as the type and size of business or the income level of the household. Any actual buying-history data should also be factored in. You can then target your mailings based on these factors. If your offer is likely to appeal to customers who have purchased a specific product before, you can extract those names from the list and send the offer only to them.
- Establish relationships with non-competing, but related businesses and get permission to market to their clients. In the wine example above, I suggested building a mailing list by gaining access to the customer database of a wine cellar installation firm. If you can arrange for a letter from the other company introducing you (and recommending you) your response will soar. Just be sure you've agreed details such as a commission on any sales and what happens to the list after the campaign is over. Typically you'll get to keep any customers who respond to your mailing, but the master list stays with the other business.
- If you direct people to the website for more information, don't let the targeting stop with your letter. Create mailing-specific landing pages so that prospects continue to experience highly targeted communication.
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