Every business needs to define their target market, without a defined group to target your marketing message to, all of the associated costs will be lost and your message will be sent out to a majority of people who are not interested.
One of the worst steps you can take in business is attracting and accepting the wrong type of customers. This situation takes me back to one of my previous businesses.
I was really excited about my new business, I had researched everything I needed to, made my plan and set out full steam ahead. In my marketing plan I had set a goal to get the ball rolling quickly. The idea behind it was to attract and take on any work I could get for a limited time on a quest to hit the ground running with almost instant income. To attract this type of customer meant that my pricing had to reflect what this type of customer was after which was the best price they could find in the local area.
Attracting the ‘any customer’ was not only a quest to get the ball rolling in my business quickly, but also to build up a great portfolio of work to show off to my potential customers (my real target market), and to show off that I had a long list of customers who like my work.
Of course I had in my plan that I wasn’t going to attract the ‘any customer’ forever as that would not be profitable. So my plan stated that once ‘the ball was rolling’ and I had plenty of work for my portfolio and a history to reflect on, I would change my target customer and my pricing and packages to match the new target market, and as such – become more profitable. It felt like I had it all worked out, it was a master plan hoohoohahahaaaaa, excellent.
My plan as you’ve heard so far might sound like a reasonable one, and to some – a good plan of attack to start out in business – as it was for me at the time. But now, I can’t believe I planned it that way and there’s no way I’d fall for it again, here’s why…
- The products and services offered became more and more aligned with the low-priced ‘any customer’, and therefore not in line with my real target market.
- The output or finished results of my services were not of a high enough quality to be attractive to those higher-priced clients (my real target market). That’s not because my work wasn’t up to scratch, it was because my existing customers were not willing to pay anything more than the bare essentials.
- My pricing had attracted the type of customer who only wants the cheapest, and that type of customer will always shop around and get it elsewhere if it’s cheaper. I’m not saying that the higher-priced customers are very loyal, that’s a big enough topic for an entire article, I’m saying that the lower-priced customers are more likely to go elsewhere instead of making a repeat purchase.
- The type of customer was always expecting me to do more work and produce more samples for no cost. Because these were the only customers I had at the time I didn’t want to lose them and so I would often give in to doing samples and extra product differentiations at little or no cost.
With all that extra work and less pay I had turned my business into an unprofitable work-horse for low-priced demanding customers. It was all based around a simple plan to attract any work to get things moving, and then change to attract my real target market with a great portfolio of existing work to back me up.
It’s that change that didn’t happen, I was so stuck in the moment that it was too difficult to change things around. There was not enough money to fend off new work from the low priced customers and not enough time to change the offerings, prices and structure in order to attract my real target customers.
More to the point, when you want the higher-priced clients you really need to seek them out one-by-one unless you have a multi-million dollar advertising budget. Finding the clients calls for other, more time consuming methods, methods of which I had no time for.
I’ve learned from my mistake of attracting the ‘any customer’ instead of going only for my real target market from day one. Don’t make the same mistake, define you target market, make sure it’s a good one that will bring you plenty of profits, and stick to it. Do not under any circumstances do any work for people outside of your target market with one exception – if you find a client that’s a step up from your target market, you might want to consider it, but beware that there could be some business killing problem that arises from taking on that work.
If it’s confidence you lack in getting those higher-priced clients, do something about it there’s plenty of self help media available. Lacking the confidence is no excuse, most people have at least a small confidence issue and plenty of people have big confidence issues, but they can get over it and plough through it, and you can too.
As for fear of inferior products or services, more research will help you with that, keep researching from multiple sources until you find the answers you seek and take it from there.
Wow, what a negative story, sorry about that but when I have information that could help my readers avoid costly mistakes I feel it’s my duty to let it out.
Do you have a similar story or anything to add? Please comment below…
Tags: advertising, business, competitor, customers, marketing, marketing plan, target customers, target market
