Stop Wasting Your Small Business Resources
Posted on May 07, 2014 by Sean McCarthy, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
Learn how to find a target market of potential customers, & stop wasting resources on bad marketing. Discover the secret formula for acquiring clients
Most small business owners I talk to can’t explain to me who their target market is. They believe everybody is their target market, so they waste thousands of dollars on expensive marketing tactics to see very little return on their investment.
I recently spoke to a financial planner that told me anybody with money is their target market. I asked if they were approaching their marketing with that belief? They said “of course!” Yet they shared that their biggest struggle was finding new clients.
Target marketing allows you to focus your business marketing dollars, brand message and effort on a specific market segment that is more likely to buy from you than other markets. This saves the small business owner money, and is a more efficient, and effective way to reach potential customers & clients and generate business. It results in a much higher ROI.
In this article you’re going to learn how to find a target market of potential customers for your small business, so you aren’t wasting precious resources on blitz marketing or one-off marketing tactics.
So, the questions you have to ask yourself are:
• What do people really want to buy from me? What do I REALLY offer?
• What related products are they already buying?
Once you figure this out you will know who is more predisposed to purchase your products/services. Then, you find other businesses with the same customer base who you can “customer share” with. Come up with an incentive and great arrangement to encourage both of your current customer base to shop at both of your stores.
The basic concept is this:
You want to find existing businesses who have the customer profile that you are looking for to market your products/services to.
Then strike up a relationship with those business owners to work out an incentive for customers to purchase from both businesses. As a result, you have an audience to market to and they generate an added value from their current base.
You’ve experienced this before. You buy something in a mall store and with your receipt, they offer a discount to one of their partnering stores, also located in the mall. It usually expires in a week or so.
There is a great formula from Jay Abraham you can follow with great success to figure this out.
LV = (P x F) x N – MC
Where
LV is the life time value of a customer P is the average profit margin from each sale F is the number of times a customer buys each year N is the number of years customers stay with you MC is the marketing cost per customer (total costs/number of customers) Once you know how much you need to spend to attract a new customer, you will know how much of an incentive you can offer to a business to help attract new customers.This is vitally important information for any small business. You must know what it costs you to acquire a new customer! That is used to establish costs and to calculate an accurate operating budget.*******
What are your next steps? How do you apply this information right now?
Here’s your step-by-step process:
Step #1. Find companies who already have the customer base you are looking for.
Step #2. Negotiate an incentive for them to share that customer base with you.
Step #3. Focus your marketing resources to this group of predisposed customers.
Step #4. Get more Customers!
If you need help working through this process, check out our FREE test drive for the most comprehensive system of marketing tools and resources. businessbreakthroughstrategy.com
