Now, this isn’t a blog about being truthful in your marketing and sticking to your word, as I know the thought of not doing that won’t have even crossed your mind! I’m assuming 'Not making stuff up' is Rule No.1 of your Marketing plan (although let’s be honest, we’ve all seen examples of that happening...)
What I wanted to remind you to do is always focus your messages, your marketing and any communications you have about your Thing squarely aimed at your ideal clients. It may be you have a clearly defined niche market–one that is spelt out in demographics or location–and you want to stick to that. Perhaps you have more of what I call a ‘trigger niche’ where you focus on a particular problem or ‘action’ that happens (which is the trigger) that you then market your ‘solution’ to. I have a trigger niche, by the way–if you’re thinking "Right that’s it, I MUST find my Thing" then that’s the trigger I’m talking to.
There is, of course, the **PANIC** that if you only focus on ideal clients you’re missing out on ‘all those other people’. But here’s the thing about ‘all those other people’: they don’t want your Thing, they don’t get the value of your Thing, and they won’t even notice you’re trying to talk to them about your Thing. You will literally be doing the Marketing equivalent of talking to someone and they have their hands over their ears, their eyes shut, they are not even looking at you... they have NO INTEREST in what you are saying or doing. Yes, that’s a bit blunt I know, but it’s how it is.
Think about this: do you think people who live in apartments (flats, if you’re English like me) want to hear about the latest lawnmower when all they have as outside space is a balcony? Of course not. Do you think that people without children want to know about the latest kids book/Lego set/iPad App/TV show, etc. aimed at children aged 6 (or whatever)? No, of course they don’t (although I do know Lego might be the exception there!). They really are not interested as this is not ‘on their radar’ as something they need or want. And yes, those are exaggerated examples, but you might be doing something similar with your marketing if you’re even trying to include ‘everyone’ and not focusing 100% on ‘talking to’ your ideal clients.
You will always pick up people ‘on the periphery’ and also people who aspire and want to be just like your ideal clients, so your reach is actually wider than you think. But you mustn’t adjust your message or change your media to try and ‘catch’ these other people. You get your blinkers on and you talk only to your ideal clients. And when you do this, something very clever happens... you start to get response and enquiries only from ideal clients... **funny that**
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