If You Do No Other Preparation...

By Kevin P. Dervin
Posted Thursday, January 27, 2005

Far too often we see small businesses rush into doing things without planning and preparing. Unfortunately, marketing is a great case in point. Many small businesses set up shop and then hurry to get a brochure made up, develop a web site, and get out and start networking without much planning or preparation. And then they wonder why their results are so poor.

Maybe it’s for lack of knowing where to start. I’m not sure. But, if you do nothing else from a preparation standpoint for your marketing, I suggest you spend some time thinking about your best clients. Your best clients aren’t simply the ones who pay the most money, but also the ones you enjoy working with the most. Spend some time to create a profile.

1. Define Your Target. How do you describe your target market in terms of demographics and psychographics? Demographics are the basic facts like the kind of industry they’re in, size of company, revenues, geographic location, etc. If your target is individuals, then it means income levels, age, gender, education, etc. Psychographics deal more with things like the style, philosophy, and characteristics of your targets.

2. What’s The Problem? What are the problems, issues, challenges, or predicaments you’re trying to help your target customers and prospects with? Every product or service is designed to address some sort of issue or challenge for your client. What is your target market dealing with and what’s the potential impact of not being able to address those problems?

3. What Do They Get From Working With You? What are the solutions you provide? What benefits do you offer? What results do you produce? Note that this isn’t “what you do” or a list of services you provide, but what your clients actually get from you.

4. What’s It Like Working With Them? What is it about working with your best clients that makes them your best clients? What is the relationship like? How do things work? What is it that you’re able to uniquely do for them that makes it a great working relationship?

You’ll be amazed at what it can mean for your business when you spend some time preparing a profile of who your best clients (and potential clients) are. If you know exactly who your potential clients are, then you can more effectively focus on them in your marketing efforts. But just as importantly, by clearly identifying who you work with, your potential clients will be able to identify themselves (and reveal themselves to you). Now that you’ve defined your best clients, do your current marketing efforts really reach these folks and others like them?

About the Author:
Kevin Dervin is the owner of KPD Marketing and creator of the ABCD Growth System. If you find these tips useful, you’d probably enjoy Kevin’s FREE monthly eZine called ABCD Grow. To subscribe, just go to (http://www.ABCDgrowth.com) and follow one of the links to the FREE Stuff page!