Continuing with my trial of the Book Yourself Solid system, today’s post is about figuring out why your customers are going to buy what you’re selling and why they’re going to buy it from you. Notice how the author is carefully leading us step-by-step through the marketing strategy process. Define your core competencies and skill-set, figure out who you’re going to sell to, then figuring out how you’re going to position yourself to your clients.

Figuring out your target market

When marketers talk about targeting, what they’re really saying is, “who are we trying to sell to?” You start with everybody and start breaking them down into smaller and smaller classifications. This is no trivial task. Books like The Long Tail, Duct Tape Marketing and various works by Seth Godin will all drive home one simple fact. Mass marketing is ineffective, especially for small business owners. You can’t please everybody or you’ll end up pleasing no one.

Think about it. If you need surgery to repair a disk in your spine, do you want a general practitioner or a specialized spinal surgeon?

Which do you think makes more money?

The author puts you through some exercises to help you ferret out different groups that you may want to target. Something that he fails to mention though is that you need to take into account the potential for different target markets in addition to where you have contacts or experience in. I may be in tight with the synchronized swimming astronomy buff crowd, but given that there’s a market of about 20 people (I’m guessing) in the whole country. Who cares? This is one of those things that need the “Goldilocks principle” applied…it has to be just right…not too big and not too small.

My target market

My target market are very small businesses (1-20 employees) that are established (2-3 years old) but are still stuck in “start-up” mode where the business owner is spending enormous amounts of time (16+ hour days) on running the business. I wont drag you through how I got there. Suffice it to say, go with what and who you know and make sure you are targeting:

• a very definable, (if you can’t tell your target from something else, then you can’t find it)
• reachable, (if there’s no way to single-out communications to them, how are you going to talk to just them?)
• specific (if your target is too big, you will fail)
• and profitable group of people. (if you sell inexpensive things to very few people, you’re business isn’t going anywhere)

Identify Needs

Next Port asks you to identify your target market’s urgent needs and compelling desires (what do they want to move away from and what are they trying to move towards?).

For my consulting practice, I answered my VSB’s urgent needs as: 

VSB owners will be putting in enormous hours to keep their enterprises going.  An alarming percentage of that time is spent on things that do not directly lead to growing the business. They urgently need to move away from spending all of their time on paperwork and transactional activities so that they can start to think and put into action ways to grow their business to the next level.

They’re trying to move towards…: they want to have more time with their families. They want to make more money. They want to grow their business.

Talk Benefits, not Features

Now you need to link your target market’s urgent needs and desires to your offering and explain how you’re going to fulfill those needs and desires with the benefits (not the features) of your offering(s).

For my marketing plan, I wrote:

Clients will be able to do more with less. They will be able to work more on growing their business rather than in the business. They can start to realize the promise of why they went into business in the first place. They can spend more time with their family. Grow the business without adding more people.

Welcome back again!