Small Business Digital CoachGROW REVENUES BY 25 TO 100% OR MORE IN 90 DAYS OR LESS while reducing advertising cost and effort

Startup business marketing mistakes are easy to make and not necessarily world ending. However, some of them are so potentially catastrophic that they can result in a still-born business and destroy your entrepreneurial dream before it starts.

This weekend I consulted with an entrepreneur whose company creates floral arrangements for weddings. In our conversation, I discovered that this relatively sophisticated entrepreneur was making a seemingly small but potentially devastating startup business marketing mistake.

One of the most important strategic marketing decisions you make as an entrepreneur in the business start up stage is deciding your ideal target client.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that when you’re just starting out, there’s often a huge difference between your target market (the group of clients you want to serve and do business with), and your natural market (the group of potential clients who are most accessible to you).

Depending on your background you may approach this disparity in radically different ways…some of which may be quite harmful to your business in the long run.
Some people decide that they’re going to just take whatever business they can get, disregarding the danger that they may get locked in to a market they would rather not be dealing with. Others decide right from the start, that they will only work with prospects that are close to the range of their target client profile.

There’s no right or wrong answer that works for everyone all the time. Depending on your personality, you may not want to “compromise” by taking just any client. On the other hand, if you’re an easy going natural bootstrapper, you think it’s a no-brainer to just deal with any business you can get.

The entrepreneur I consulted for was actually overlooking tremendous lead generation opportunities because she didn’t want to deal with the some of the negatives of the people closest to her. She and her business partner also had not narrowly defined a target client profile, and as such they had no foundation for a client or customer conversion process that could qualify prospects, screen out the “dont wanters”, and magnetize the “must haves”.

Here’s how I helped her and her partner define a “middle ground” approach – Leveraging what they have (natural market/client) while moving steadily and strategically toward what they want (ideal target client/market). I shared 6 rules of engagement for marketing-centered business acceleration below:

6 rules of engagement:

1. Don’t Fence Out Prospects
2. Do Screen In Prospects
3. Find Your Uniqueness, Communicate it, Deliver it
4. Offer Clients Many Profitable Ways To Buy From You
5. Offer Clients Many Mutually Exciting Ways To Refer Others To You
6. Offer Clients Many Reasons To Keep Buying From You

If you think creatively about the rules above, you’ll discover that it doesn’t have to be a zero-sum proposition choosing between business in close proximity or business from the clients you most want to deal with.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and comments below. If you’d like to accelerate the growth of your business in a unique and measurable way, you may contact me today to inquire about my marketing consulting services.