Our Best Tips To Define Your Target Market To Accelerate Revenue Growth

So many businesses struggle to define or hone in on their target market, and it frustrates me because it’s slowing down their business growth. So, today I’m going to share some of the best tips I have about target market to help remove this roadblock for you.

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Our Best Tips To Define Your Target Market To Accelerate Revenue Growth

So many business owners struggle to define and hone in on their target market. And it frustrates me because I know that it is slowing down their business growth. So today I'm going to share some of the best tips that I have that I have come across about target market to help you remove this roadblock. Okay?

Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe you must remove your revenue roadblocks if you want to accelerate revenue growth.

Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am super excited to dig into this with you, and I appreciate you taking the time to watch or listen however you're consuming this.

This is going to be a bit of a mashup of various tips and tricks. I've got seven that I want to share with you today. So you are bound to pick up one or two that I know you'll be able to use in your business right now. I'm going to try and keep this as actionable as possible and as simple to understand as possible. Here goes.

First one, target market versus ideal clients. What's the difference? I think a lot of people use these somewhat interchangeably, and I view them as they're tied together. They're complementary, but they are distinct. So with target market, target market is the larger audience that you intend to work with. Small business owners, entrepreneurs. Now, that's really broad. A lot of people hone in even more than that. Maybe professional service providers, chiropractors, veterinarians, whatever it may be, that's the overall target market, but not every business or every consumer in a given target market is going to be an ideal client for you. So when we look at ideal clients, we're actually starting to peel the layers of the onion back a bit to really hone in on, within that target market, who the ideal clients are for you, who do you want and intend to work with? Because every small business is not an ideal client for you. I think a lot of us have made that mistake, myself included. You get into business and if they've got money and a heartbeat and they're willing to work with you, you work with them. And we quickly realize that, man, there are times where we're working with people that are not a good fit for whatever reason. Could be they're not a good fit for us. The characteristics about them, their thoughts, their beliefs are not a good fit for us. And we just end up not getting good results for them. They're not happy, we're not happy. Right. Those are not ideal clients. So it's really important to understand the distinction between target market and ideal clients first and foremost.

Second tip. The three power questions. The easiest way that I have found to help businesses hone in on who their ideal clients are is to look at your existing and past clients. Don't reinvent the wheels. You're an existing business, you've been in business for a while, you've got experience working with clients, don't try to reinvent the wheel here. Ask yourself the three power questions to help you start to hone in on it. Who do you love to work with? Who are your most profitable clients? And who do you get great results for? When you ask yourself these three questions, you end up with a subgroup of current and past clients that you loved working with, that are profitable, that you get great results for. Let me ask you just one question here. If you could work with people like that, day in, day out, how much better do you think your business would be? I have never asked that question had somebody go, oh, it's going to be worse, it is going to be so much better off, you're going to be happier, your clients are going to be happier, you're going to be making more money. That's why you start with the three power questions and from there then you can dig deeper into the demographics within that subgroup, the numbers and the psychographics, which are really, really important. The psychographics are their thoughts, their beliefs, the results that they're looking for, their goals, those types of things. The psychographics help you start to get into their head so that you really, really understand them, because the demographics tell you a little bit about people, but not everything. It's very surface level. So ask yourself the three power questions as a place to start to hone in on who your ideal clients are.

Third thing, self gathering. If it is going to be easy for you to get in front of your ideal clients, and it should be otherwise they're probably not a good ideal client type, they need to self gather in interest groups of some kind. Social media groups, this could be organizations, associations, maybe there's events for those specific types of people they have to self gather. If they don't self gather, in most cases, it is going to be incredibly difficult to get in front of those exact people. And if it's incredibly difficult to get in front of the people you intend to attract, you're going to have a really hard time. You're going to be going uphill, right? You're going to be pushing a boulder uphill trying to get in front of these people. It's going to be really difficult. So keep that in mind as you start to think about your ideal clients. Do they self gather?

Fourth tip is your ideal audience. When I mention this to people, most people think about their ideal clients. But when you think about your ideal clients, your ideal audience, it's not just your ideal clients that your business should be keeping an eye on and working on getting in front of. So who else is in your ideal audience besides your ideal clients? This could be other decision makers within the companies that you intend to work with, right? If my buyer is the CEO or owner of the business, there still might be other decision makers within the business that can help push what I'm trying to sell or how I'm trying to help somebody. There might be other influencers within the company, right? So there are the decision makers, there are the influencers within the company. There might be referral partners. Are there other businesses that are working with your ideal clients already? There could be very strong referral partners. Those are people that you need to get in front of. Thought leaders in your space. Do you need to get in front of them and get their attention to start building relationships with them. And then the last one that a lot of people completely overlook is job candidates and recruiting. Your marketing has a huge impact on your ability to recruit and bring in new job candidates. Significantly overlooked group within your ideal audience. So as you think about your target market and your ideal clients, don't neglect your overall ideal audience.

I've got three more for you. Number five. Interviewing ideal clients. Honestly, if I had to tell you one thing to do from this episode, it would be interview your ideal clients. The information that you will gather and glean from doing this is absolutely invaluable because as business owners, it is so hard for us to see the forest through the trees. We are too close to the fire when it comes to our business. And oftentimes it's really difficult for us to think objectively about our business. Our ideal clients can say in their own language, their own words, which is really important for us to hear what it's like to work with us, what the benefits are, why they started to work with us in the beginning. All of that information is so important. These interviews don't have to be long 10-15 minutes conversations and you will gather so much helpful information that you can use to help improve your business. Interviewing clients is not something that should be a one and done deal. I honestly think it's something that you should do on a regular basis. Whether that doesn't mean you need to do it every three months, but I think at least every six to twelve months is a pretty good cadence and it will help you stay on top of things. Right? Because the market's evolving, our businesses are evolving and our clients businesses are evolving too. So if we do this as a regular practice, it will help us stay on top of things to identify shifts in the market as they happen.

Number six. Start small. When starting out, when really looking at who your ideal clients are, don't be afraid to go with the smallest audience possible. Most of our businesses do not need hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of customers or clients to be successful. A lot of the people that we serve in the B2B space, especially in professional services don't need that many new clients to absolutely transform their business. So focusing in on the smallest audience possible makes things so much easier because it becomes a lot simpler to identify the places that you need to be with your marketing message to get in front of those exact people. It gives you focus and clarity. You can always expand out once you nail that initial narrow market, but don't be afraid to go narrow first and foremost. A lot of people ask at this point, well, how do I know it's going to be big enough? The easiest question to ask yourself to determine whether it's big enough is, is there a conference around that group? This kind of goes back to my third point in self gathering. If there's self gathering, if there's an event that's catered to these types of people, it's big enough. Nobody's going to set up an event that's that small. So if there's an event, if there's associations, social media groups that cater to that specific audience, it is small. It's big enough for you to hone in on.

And the last tip. Number seven in helping you really hone in on your target market and your ideal clients is what I call the Golden Rule. I cannot remember where I heard this. I wish I remembered. But businesses that accelerate revenue growth, that succeed have customers or clients, however you refer to them, that they just know better, that they know better than everyone else, than their competition. They know those people inside and out. That's the reality. When you look at businesses that are really successful, they're doing a lot of things right, but one of the things that is always present is they understand their customers or their clients better than anybody else. Super, super important.

So those are the tips. I hope you have found those helpful. Give me a shout out. Reach out to me. Let me know which ones really resonated with you. If you're struggling with this and you need additional outside eyes, two resources for you. One, you can always head on over to our website at rialtomarketing.com and book a GPS call. On that call, we'll talk about your goals, plans, strategies, and help give you some guidance on the direction you should head based on where you are and where you want to go. The other tool I've got for you is over at revenueroadblockscorecard.com. I was focused in today on target market, which is one of the nine revenue roadblocks we help clients remove so they can accelerate revenue growth. At revenueroadblockscorecard.com, you'll be able to discover and assess which of the nine roadblocks are slowing down your business growth. Takes less than five minutes. Head on over there. Revenueroadblockscorecard.com.

Thank you so much for tuning in today. Until next time, take care.

About the author,?Tim Fitzpatrick

Do you know you have an opportunity for revenue growth and are unsure how to make it happen? Do you lack someone with the time, skill set, and desire to take ownership of marketing to drive results?

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At Rialto Marketing, we work with B2B professional service firms that want to accelerate revenue growth and attract more ideal clients.

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