When your business is small, you must develop a laser focus on your customers. Who they are and most importantly, why they buy from you. It doesn’t matter if your B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer) the key to marketing success is to be extremely specific in describing what you do for your customers.
This practice is frequently referred to as “Niche Marketing“.
Many small business owners worry about excluding potential customers by tightly targeting a niche market. They worry that if they speak specifically to one customer, they may alienate other customers. Most small business owners err on the side of being so general that their potential prospects have no idea why they should do business with that business.
Anita Campbell provides a GREAT illustration in how frustrating it is when a business doesn’t define their niche in her post Does Your Business Have a Niche or Specialty?
Think about this: have you ever had the frustrating experience of visiting a website or talking with someone for a half hour only to end up afterwards with no idea whether their company would be a good fit as a vendor or provider. You come away knowing they are software developers. But you have no idea what kind of software or whether it’s in your price range. Or you discover that they are marketers. But you can’t tell whether they serve Fortune 500 companies or a 2-person business.
It’s been my experience that the confused mind says no. As a potential customer, you may SPEAK with a provider at a conference for 30 minutes without knowing whether or not that business might be a candidate to provide a solution… but only because you’re physically present anyway. When it comes to the web… and a potential customer visits a web page that does not offer a tightly targeted solution written with that visitor in mind… well, that visitor will appear in the log files as someone who stays on a page only SLIGHTLY longer than a search engine robot.
Mike Stevens writes in “Get Rich- with a Niche”
The bottom line: Hook a customer with what you do best, and then, once they’re a customer, hit on them for projects that are beyond your sweet spot but will help you expand your offerings. It works, and it’s the most efficient way to build your business.
In my book, Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results, I take you step by step through the process of defining your target audience. While marketing experts agree that targeting a niche market is a key to marketing success, few take you through the process of defining that niche market.
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