Tag Archives: Target Market

What Are You Doing for Q4? Don’t Know? Do These 3 Steps

10.1.14Welcome to the last business quarter of the year!  This quarter is commonly known as Q4 in business terms.  Are you greeting it with glee and joy?  Probably not.

This is a very dangerous time of the year for you because all the best holidays are coming up: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve.  It is our human tendency to figuratively, take off our “Spanx” and relax into the holidays.  However, if you do so without taking some steps to insure that your business continues to grow, you may be setting yourself up for more work in marketing your business and creating sales occurring for next year and this final quarter.

Do these steps before the holidays begin and you can set up a plan that will take you forward to next year.

1. Look at what worked for you this year.  Please list each item that worked and why it worked.  We are doing an analysis here.  This is a paper and pen analysis.  Not a mental analysis.  What caused the most profit in your business?  What segment of your target market responded to your marketing?  Was it your marketing plan?  Your new offers?  Your outreach to your target market?  These are just a few examples of looking at what worked.  Each business is unique and you will have unique answers to what worked.

2. Look at what didn’t work for you this year.  Perhaps, writing down what didn’t work will be harder for you.  We do like to look where we succeed not at where we fail.  It is so important to list the failures too.  Without looking at them purely from an analytic point of view, we cannot see what we should stop doing or change.  Both steps are important.  You will have your unique responses to this step.  Note to Self: This is not a step that you use to beat yourself up with.  No, it’s an approach to having your business thrive.

3. Keep your marketing going during Q4.  Our tendency to stop causing business through effective marketing also damages sales for the next year.  If you are “out of sight” during the Q4, you are setting yourself up for business disappointment in the next year.  Keep your business marketing present and valuable to your clients and potential clients.

By doing these simple steps, you will be far ahead of most businesses.  And of course, it will be much easier to enjoy the holidays with business success standing there glittering away.

I look forward to hearing your comments.  Please tell me what you will do as you go forward to Q4.

 

If Profit Isn’t the Purpose, What Is Its Cause?

mapProfit isn’t a purpose, it’s a result.  To have purpose means the things we do are of real value to others.

-Simon Sinek

The passing of Labor Day has signaled the end to summer and perhaps, for most, the end of summer holidays, leisurely passing time in the vacation mode.  It is time to ease our way back into the business of our business.  September allows us to transition to a more focused back to work mode.  It is a time to consider what it is that we have accomplished so far this year in our work and what it is that we still want to or will accomplish before the end of the year.

It is the perfect opportunity to reflect on the quote from Simon Sinek about purpose and the place profit has in examining our purpose.  For some entrepreneurs, profit is the all-encompassing measurement of our entrepreneurial success.  For some it is as if profit is synonymous with purpose.  However, as Sinek points out: “Profit isn’t purpose, it’s a result.”

If what Sinek says is true then it is best to look at what your purpose is in business.  Is it, as he says, to provide “real value” to others?  If so, what is real value?  Only our specific target market can speak to what they see as valuable.  That is why it is very important to get to know your target market to the point where you see that market not as a group but as a person, who, at least to you, has a name, gender, marital status, a specific income, certain worries, concerns, and lives in a specific place.  If you pass over this step in doing your target market research, and developing the target market profile, your intention to be of service or to provide real value will be diminished.  And mostly likely, since profit is a result not a purpose, your profit will also be smaller than you had hoped.

Fortunately, we have the time now in early September to make changes in our business that can impact our bottom line for the year.  If you find that your target market isn’t defined enough, now is the time to do that.  There is plenty of information about doing so on the internet.

What is your response to the Sinek quote?  And what exactly is he pointing to, from your point of view?  I look forward to reading your comments about this topic.

What Would Happen If You’d Know Shirley

Target Market7.16.14“Shirley” is the code word for one of my client’s target market.  He knows his “Shirley” so well that he decides his marketing strategy with asking the question: “Would this work for Shirley?”  When we are brainstorming new marketing ideas, often he decisively says, “Shirley would like that,” or, “Nope. Shirley would never go for that.”

And what about you?  Do you know your target market so well that it has a name?  Or an age?  Or . . . well, you get the picture.

Most entrepreneurs don’t take the time to properly research or define their target markets.  And then they spend lots of money on marketing schemes that don’t work out.  Why don’t they work out?  They don’t know—specifically and painfully in full detail—their target markets.  They have some general ideas about their target markets, but there is no real definition.

However, when you look at the businesses that nail it in the market place, they have designed their marketing approaches to fit with and appeal to their specific target markets in a way that speaks directly to this market.

Most entrepreneurs don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on defining their target market but neither does my client who knows Shirley so well.  Here is what he did that works for him.

He asked some simple and yet powerful questions to who he is selling to right now.  He used his already satisfied clients as an advisory group who agreed to allow him to find out what their concerns are, what would satisfy their concerns in the future, and how he had helped them.  He also noticed, from a demographic point of view, how old his satisfied clients are, where they live, and the specific sex of who made the majority of decisions.

In summary, this client used his relationship with satisfied clients to breathe life into Shirley.  He did tell them what he was doing and why he was doing it.  His clients were happy to help him.  They were generous with their time and input.  They still check in with him to see how he doing on his project.

Granted this isn’t a very scientific approach to developing a target market but it works.  It will help you as an entrepreneur to get to know your Shirley.

Please feel free to comment below on this simple process. I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Photo courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net