If you want to position yourself as The Expert, you must Define Your Market.
Dan Kennedy, marketing expert to small business owners, says you always need to begin with this premise:
Who are they demographically? What is their corporate makeup? Are they a near retirement couple, someone who has recently moved to town, a middle aged person with an aging parent in need of care?
Who is it that you want to attract? Write out as much as you can about your who and do all of your marketing specifically targeted to them.
You want to become a big fish in a very small pond. You don't want to go after everybody. When you define your market, you want to draw a circle around the people that you're going after and then focus your energy on attracting them. Exclude everybody else and invest all of your time, all of your energy, all of your money on going after your who, your specific target market.
You want to be everywhere they are, what we call omnipresence. If they're listening to certain podcasts you want to be there. If they're on certain forums you want to be there. If they're on LinkedIn groups, you want to be there. If they read certain magazines you want to be there. You want to be where your who is.
When they see you over and over and over and over again, guess what happens? You start climbing the rungs on their ladder and they start seeing you as the expert. You have to consider who will be most receptive to your offer. Where do they spend their time? Who already owns your who? Learn as much as you can about your who and be where they are.
Not only do you want to target them, but you also want to-over time-eliminate the bottom 20% of your clientele who typically eat up 80% of your time and cause 80% of your problems. You don't have to serve everyone. By eliminating the bottom 20%, you will be able to charge higher fees and will grow your business more steadily.
This is all part of positioning yourself as the expert in your market. Just remember, one of the phrases that we've learned and that we teach is:
Dan Kennedy, marketing expert to small business owners, says you always need to begin with this premise:
Meaning, you need to think about WHO you want to attract as a client.
"I will start with the who."
Who are they demographically? What is their corporate makeup? Are they a near retirement couple, someone who has recently moved to town, a middle aged person with an aging parent in need of care?
Who is it that you want to attract? Write out as much as you can about your who and do all of your marketing specifically targeted to them.
You want to become a big fish in a very small pond. You don't want to go after everybody. When you define your market, you want to draw a circle around the people that you're going after and then focus your energy on attracting them. Exclude everybody else and invest all of your time, all of your energy, all of your money on going after your who, your specific target market.
You want to be everywhere they are, what we call omnipresence. If they're listening to certain podcasts you want to be there. If they're on certain forums you want to be there. If they're on LinkedIn groups, you want to be there. If they read certain magazines you want to be there. You want to be where your who is.
When they see you over and over and over and over again, guess what happens? You start climbing the rungs on their ladder and they start seeing you as the expert. You have to consider who will be most receptive to your offer. Where do they spend their time? Who already owns your who? Learn as much as you can about your who and be where they are.
Not only do you want to target them, but you also want to-over time-eliminate the bottom 20% of your clientele who typically eat up 80% of your time and cause 80% of your problems. You don't have to serve everyone. By eliminating the bottom 20%, you will be able to charge higher fees and will grow your business more steadily.
This is all part of positioning yourself as the expert in your market. Just remember, one of the phrases that we've learned and that we teach is:
Really what that means is this: the more you target your market and the more narrowly you define your market, the more wealth you can create from that market. There are strategies that we teach our clients to help them do just that. It does take time. It requires some serious thinking, and it involves a lot of focused attention, but the results are very much worth it.
There are riches in niches.
