Right on Target

Within a year of launching my web development business, way back in 1998, I was introduced to a new type of service professional, the Life Coach.

My relationship with this profession began when I developed a web site for a newly minted coach. While I had done other websites before, this was the first time I had thoroughly enjoyed the process. Here was an individual who was bright, intelligent who possessed some serious self awareness. I was engaged and really got into the whole project. My enthusiasm showed in the work I did. My client told her coaching colleagues about me and my enthusiasm. As a result, they came to me and I developed MORE coaching web sites. Before you knew it, I had stumbled into a niche market

As I developed these web sites for these coaching professionals, I began to learn what works and what doesn’t work for coaching web sites. I became adept at creating interactive quizzes and assessments, shopping carts and digital delivery of documents via the web. I didn’t realize how DEEPLY ingrained I had gotten until one of my coaching clients referred his accountant to me for web site development. Suddenly, I was spending a LOT of time researching what a CPA needs for his web site. (Surprisingly, most CPAs don’t use the clean sweep inventory. Go figure!)

While coaches and CPA’s are both service professionals, they each have different hurdles to overcome in promoting their business. Thus the IMPORTANCE of tightly targeting your target audience. By tightly targeting and focusing on a WELL DEFINED market, you have the opportunity to become an "expert" on what those clients need from you. So while it’s tempting to define your target market as "solo entrepreneurs" that title is too broad. There are hundreds of tiny segments that come together under the "solo entrepreneurs" heading:

1. Realtors
2. CPAs
3. Life Coaches
4. Family Therapists
5. Chiropractors
6. Physicians
7. Hair Stylists
8. Manicurists
9. House Cleaning professionals
10. Landscape professionals

I’m sure you could double, even triple this list with very little effort. The point is, the woman who has launched her house cleaning service has VERY different needs than the chiropractor who is opening his practice. They’re both solo entrepreneurs, but they both have very different needs. What ever your product, it’s essential that you tightly target the focus of your marketing message.

These days, I’ve migrated my business from HTML web sites to developing blogs for independent service professionals.  Even though the elements of the blog are the same for any of the above listed professions, it’s still important that I SEGMENT my marketing messages to these various groups of professionals.  Because in the end, the attorney really isn’t interested in picking up a product used by realtors.