Why do your “best clients” choose your small business?
Notice I’m focusing on the best clients, not necessarily every client.
The most dangerous part of marketing for any business owner or entrepreneur is trying to be everything to everybody.
Truth is no one company can effectively service everybody.
While having a target market is good, it still doesn’t allow you to build a business that narrowly serves your best clients.
An ideal client is a very specific segment of your target market. Understanding who makes an ideal client allows you to build your entire business, message, product, services, sales, and support around attracting and serving this specific segment.
Join me in spreading the word to focus on “ideal clients” over “target markets”!
Understanding what they find appealing about your company can help you find other prospects just like them and turn them into your next paying client.
While consulting with a business owner in the professional service space, we got around to talking about zeroing in on their target client.
It was a great reminder that the #1 thing that CEOs and business owners are getting wrong when target marketing is not identifying core behavior patterns.
From experience, there are not only demographics, (like the type of business) but there’s always behavior patterns that all of your best clients share.
For example, a consulting business may know that their ideal customer is not just a small business owner, but is also someone who participates in an industry association, joins committees, cares about their employees, brings their numbers to meetings or serves on the board of their chamber of commerce.
When you understand the behaviors that are most often exhibited by your clients, you can begin to identify your most promising places to advertise, what events you’re going to participate in, what trade shows you’re going to go to, and really focus on attracting more of that ideal client.
Don’t ignore this identifiable element of your ideal prospect when looking to grow your business.
