Do You Know Who Your Ideal Customers Are?
If you’re like many business owners, you started your business with a rather loose idea of what your target market is. After all, in the beginning, any paying customer looks an awful lot like your target market.
Now that you’ve been at it a while, you should have started to notice some trends in the types of customers who work with you best. But if your sales are not where you think they should be, you may not be targeting the right group of customers.
Why targeting is critical
First, let’s look at what we mean by a target market. Essentially, your target market consists of the people or companies that are most likely to use your product and be a good fit for your services. Understanding your target market is critical to a successful marketing and sales strategy because it helps you:
- Focus your efforts.
- Fine-tune your message.
- Drive sales.
[sidebar]In our Traction blog series, we’re exploring how to create a clear vision for your business. Inspired and guided by the concepts in the book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman, these blogs will walk you through essential steps that will enable you to get traction, grow, and thrive.[/sidebar]Yes, this effort will narrow down your prospect list. But that doesn’t mean you’re limiting your sales opportunities; rather, you’re increasing the chances that your sales efforts will succeed. You won’t waste time chasing every customer, but will be focused on the right customers — those who are already receptive to solutions you provide.
3 filters for a target market
There are many ways to categorize your target market, but you can create a solid definition by filtering your potential customers in three ways:
- Geographic — Where are your ideal customers? Are they U.S.-based or global? Are they in certain states or regions?
- Demographic — If your business is B2B, what are your customers’ industries, sizes, numbers of employees, and annual revenues? If your business is B2C, what are their ages, genders, incomes, homeownership statuses, education levels, and marital statuses?
- Psychographic — What drives your ideal customers to make choices? What are their attitudes and values? Do they have hobbies? What are their pains?
Creating the profiles of your ideal customers will take some time and should include input from your leadership, marketing, and sales teams.
Create your perfect prospect list
With your geographic, demographic, and psychographic details and written profiles of your ideal customers in hand, your next step is to compile a list of your perfect prospects. You’ll invest significant time at this step because it involves a lot of detailed, manual work.
- First, review your current customer and prospect lists, weeding out those who are not a good fit, and ensure your contact information is clean.
- Second, create a database that is managed by your sales and marketing teams. Make sure it’s something your teams can manage, update, search, and filter.
- Third, build your existing list by getting referrals, collecting contact information at trade shows and events, inviting visitors to your website to subscribe to information about your company — and even by purchasing lists. (Be selective about the lists you do purchase, though; use only reputable providers and keep your criteria very narrow.)
Over time, you will grow your list, adding only prime, desirable prospects that are already predisposed to speaking with you about your company, products, and services.
When you are talking to the right people from the very start, you’ll soon find that your sales process becomes significantly easier. Now, you can gain traction!
[cta]Get help: Contact Financial Gravity at (469) 342-9100, by email, or through our contact page.[/cta]
