It's a Match!

When we last spoke, or at least in the last newsletter, I wrote about knowing your niche and drilling down your offering to the smallest but most profitable group. I am still on that kick, but I want to expand that thinking a little bit and talk about your target audience.

In my almost 15 years of running my company, I am still amazed that in many of our BD discovery calls, we get a very unsure answer when asked about the customer target audience. This may be because they don't want to tell us at that point in the relationship, or they don't have that nailed. I didn't know that for myself until the pandemic rolled into our lives, and I had to take everything a little more seriously to stay alive.

Knowing your target makes everything easier. It helps to say no to projects that aren't a fit, it helps to build lists of brands for the sales team to target, and it helps with all outbound comms so you know you are creating copy that resonates with the people who will work with you. Yes, there will be outliers that you work with that are outside the target so you can grab some money or slowly widen your net but staying laser focused really helps break down confusion inside and outside your business.

Targets can be broad, like a geography or a huge industry, or locked in like independent newspaper delivery people. There is no right or wrong category to target as long as your product or service is a match, but it is key to not be everything for everyone cause there is no way to say that in Facebook Ads.

So at this point, you are probably saying, "Show me, don't tell me," and I will. By now I hope you know I run The Idea Integration Co. We are a non-traditional marketing and advertising agency specializing in word of mouth, branded content, branding, identity, strategy, and partnerships.

After looking at 14 years of clients and hundreds of projects, we saw that our sweet spot is brave brands and brands who want to be brave. They usually generate 5-50 million dollars of revenue, but we have worked with a lot of brands that make less. Usually in third to fifth place in their market, but are hungry and want to take chances to grow. We use the term brave brands instead of challenger brands because there is a huge difference. Brave brands and brands that want to be brave have an edge to them, whereas challenger brands may not.

So who is your target customer? Do you even know?

...and in case you were curious who some of our dream clients are, feel free to introduce us to KICKS CREW , GOOD ART HLYWD, INC , MoonPie , SSENSE , GOOD AMERICAN , Grace Loves Lace , Mitchell & Ness Nostalgia Co. , HUF WORLDWIDE, Inc. , Eton Shirts , Toronto Raptors Basketball Club Inc. and about 100 others.