Do you ever notice how thrilled business owners are when they talk about their product or service? It’s as if they are talking about their own child, their pride and joy. And that’s great. But then we move on to whom they are selling it to and sometimes I get feeling that they want to ’sell everything to everyone’. You know what I mean?
It’s very common. But also ineffective.
Unless you plan to compete against Wal-Mart or Amazon, you want to narrow in on who your target audience really is. Ask yourself:
What type of person specifically would buy this product or service?
Is it an honest to goodness benefit that this type of person really wants?
Are you sure or are you just guessing (i.e. have you tested this hypothesis)?
You can also break it down further to decide on more specifics like age group, ethnicity, social status, gender, location, hobbies, etc.
Why am I such a stickler about this? Because it drives your entire business. Here are a few things it will affect:
- identity (logo, website and marketing material style and colors)
- pricing models
- marketing tools
- location and setup of your business
- product look and packaging
- who you hire
… and the list goes on.
Until you are firm on who exactly you are selling to, you’ll be stuck in the ’sell everything to everyone’ syndrome and that could definitely put you in a rut, wasting tons of money.
Filed under: Effective Marketing
