In my work helping training consultants with marketing/selling content and activities, their target markets are an essential element for efficient use of their resources, for high return on their invested time and money. When they do not know whom they are talking to, what their ideal client looks like, their marketing messages are more vague, their delivery channels more diffuse, and their results much less satisfying.
So I probe about target markets a lot. And I always get a bit antsy when their responses include a bad word, repeated again and again:
"AND"
"AND" = Fear
We'll talk about one fairly narrowly defined type of client for a while, and then the consultant will say, "And I think we could also appeal to Y, as well as X." Keep the conversation going another fifteen minutes, and somehow Z will be pulled into the target market as well.
Now, I'm not saying you can't have more than one target market. But each target market should be fairly narrowly defined, rather than being a collection of this and this and that.
When my consulting clients pull out that big "AND," they are not defining an additional target market, based on insightful understanding of what they can offer a particular type of business.
They are simply hedging their bets. They are saying they are afraid that they will not be successful with a tightly defined target market, so they are making a bigger target, in the hopes that they will at least be able to hit it someplace, maybe nowhere near the bull's eye, but somewhere.
As they muddy the waters by throwing one client description after another into the pool, they soon reach the point where the only response of prospects to their marketing message is:
"Are you talking to me?"
My advice?
- Face your fear. If you don't understand that it is fear of failure that drives you to keep expanding your target market, you'll never be able to push back against the temptation to add one more client description to the list.
- Multiple small markets beat one large one, for most training consultants. If you really have a couple of target markets, that's fine. But define each one as tightly as possible, rather than merging them into one unmanageable mess.
- Lots of NOTS, few ANDS. One of the best ways to define a clear target market is to start with that broad, expansive, cowardly list of every possible client you can imagine, and then start saying, "Not this one, not that one, not ..." Work to whittle away the mediocre clients, the ones that take a lot of work to extract profits from, and relentlessly chip your way to the core definition of the perfect client for you and your business.
Defining, and sticking to, a target market is one of the toughest things you do as you think about your business. It takes guts. It pays off.
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