by Jerry Mooney
The hardest part of breaking through that barrier and achieving success as a business is finding the target demographic for your company in the first place. It might sound simple on the surface, as you know what kind of person you want your client or customer to be… Don’t you?
The question of where to begin when finding potential clients for your clients can be answered by looking internally. Here are some pieces of advice that just make help your business make a real breakthrough and finally unlock a huge chunk of the target market for which you’ve been searching.
Ask yourself what issue the company is solving.
This seems like a simple place to begin, but you’d be surprised by how many companies do not address an existing issue through their proposed new good or service. You must ask yourself whether your business is addressing an existing issue within your industry, and how you propose to fix it.
Think about what the customers in your market are missing. Think about what competitors might offer, but how they might fall short of the mark in ways that you don’t. If you truly want your brand to stand out from the mass amounts of imitators, then you have to actually stand out. There are gaps in the market which infuriate customers, and if you want to draw out your target audience from the crowds, then you have to appeal to what they’re missing, rather than what you, as the company, are missing. Take the upper hand.
Find leads through lists.
Of course, there are other ways to acquire the potential clients for which you’ve been searching. Sometimes, it can help to find a ready-made group of leads within the market you’re targeting. There will be an email list for sale somewhere with your name on it. You’ve just got to get out there and find it, because your business could be saving time and money by ditching the costly, poorly-targeted ad campaign and instead opting for a list of the specific potential customers you need. You could directly acquiring this list of people without having to search tirelessly, and often unsuccessfully, for your company’s target demographic in a sea of uninterested consumers.
Find your niche and narrow your market.
People like specific goods and services, rather than general help. A business which offers something general might suit their needs today, but you’re more likely to become replaceable in their eyes, given that a dozen other companies in your local area probably already offer “similar” things, at the very least.
The best way to beat your competitors is to, in a sense, not compete with them. That may sound strange on the surface of it, but, by finding a niche and offering a very specific service, you’re essentially offering something within your industry that no other company can quite offer to the same standard or extent. Narrowing your business’ offerings might seem counter-intuitive, but your client-base, now narrower and more focused on what you’re offering, will be much more likely to stick with you, rather than go for a business which offers a much more general, lower-quality version of the product or service you offer.
Jerry Mooney is co-founder and managing editor of Zenruption and the author of History Yoghurt and the Moon. He studied at the University of Munich and Lewis and Clark College where he received his BA in International Affairs and West European Studies. He has recently taught Language and Communications at a small, private college and owned various businesses, including an investment company. Jerry is committed to zenrupting the forces that block social, political and economic justice. He can also be found on Twitter.