How to Reach Your Target Customer
Last week we went through an exercise to drill down and find your perfect target customer. If you missed that post, you should click here to get caught up. Now that we’re armed with the knowledge of our target customer profile, we can move on to the next step: beginning the conversation with your target customer.
50 Ways to Reach Your Target Customer
Before we go in-depth on this subject, I want to pause for a moment to talk about an important point. Sales and marketing are all about providing more value than your receive. It’s as simple as that. Half the battle is having a product or service that is providing more value to your customer than the money in their pocket. When you have this, you have the foundation for a happy, healthy and thriving business.
The value you provide can be saving time or money, making more money, making life easier, increasing their happiness, etc. Always keep this thought in the back of your mind, “what can you do for your customers”? Instead of “what can I get from my customers”?
There are hundreds of different ways for you to reach your target customer. In this post, we are going to focus on a few examples to get your brain moving and thinking in the right direction. Ultimately, you are going to know your target customer and product or service better than I. The goal here is to get you to think like a salesperson and marketer. Think of these strategies as principles or a guide book for how you can reach your target customer.
Like last week, we’ll be using Maria and her home staging business as our case study. Let’s get started.
How to Reach Your Target Customer
We’re going to go through some ways of reaching your target customer, but first, let me say that it’s important to go into this with an open mind. Don’t immediately dismiss something and say, “well, that’ll never work for me” or “easy for you to say.” Instead, try them out. Test them. Tweak them. See if they will work for your business before writing them off. Now, without further ado, let’s dive in.
Conventional Marketing:
Examples:
- Direct mail
- Word of mouth
- Yellow Page ads
- Billboards and bus benches
- Newspaper
These are the old school, tried and true methods to getting the word out about your business. In our current times, the ROI of these methods has significantly decreased, but it’s definitely not zero. Depending on your business and target customer you can still get plenty of business utilizing these tactics. For example, in my main business (real estate investing) nearly all of my deals have come through direct mail. The best news about these forms of advertising is that they are relatively cheap as most people are going towards digital marketing platforms versus old school ones. Yours could be one that benefits from a more traditional approach. More than likely, I would not recommend that you start with these tactics — especially if time is of the essence — but they can help fill out and well-rounded marketing campaign.
Online or Digital Marketing:
Examples:
- Google AdWords
- Facebook/Instagram ads
- Banner advertising
- Email newsletters/marketing
In most instances, this can get quickly overwhelming — especially if you aren’t savvy with Google’s algorithms, how to target on Facebook, etc. The good news is there are a lot of free resources available online where you can learn how to be better and more efficient on these platforms. However, my recommendation would be to hire or contract out some of the advertising and implementation procedures in this realm. When it came time to set up Google AdWords for my real estate business, I opted to hire an outside expert as he knew 100x more than I did about the AdWords platform, how to correctly set it up, how to run reports and how to analyze that data. There’s no doubt that I could have figured it out and got it set up, but I probably would have spent more money paying Google for misplaced ads than what he charged. If you feel outside your comfort zone here, don’t hesitate to hire a 3rd party to facilitate a shorter learning curve and faster results.
Content Marketing
Examples:
- Video content including interviews, vlogs, documentaries
- Podcasts
- Blog Posts
- Pictures including posts on Instagram and Facebook
If you are unfamiliar with the term, content marketing means creating content that provides value and is relevant to your target customer. The goal is to create great content that will hopefully encourage your audience to share the content with their friends and family before eventually becoming customers.
The great part about content marketing is it allows you to establish your authority. For example, you can create a podcast where you answer common questions or interview industry experts. Maybe you want to film a documentary for your social cause that will encourage people to share it with others and to donate to your charity. Or maybe you can write blog posts that resonate on an emotional level with your audience. The format doesn’t matter, what does matter is that you are your true, authentic self. Content marketing is all about being real and vulnerable. Before creating the content, stop and think to yourself, “What does my target customer care about here? What interests them and how can I tap into that to show them what I’m up to?”
One-on-One Marketing
Examples:
- Cold calling
- Cold emails
- Door knocking
- Setting up a booth at a fair, store or market
One-on-one marketing is about as old-fashioned as it gets. This is what Gary Vaynerchuk calls “hand-to-hand combat.” It means reaching out on an individual basis to speak directly to your target audience.
Obviously, this is going to a take a lot of time and effort to reach your audience, but the interactions and connections you make can be invaluable as there is nothing quite like the human touch. While time-consuming, it can also lead to a tremendous advantage as people shun human interactions and opt for a mass market digital approach.
Maria’s Plan
Now that we’ve gone over some different tactics let’s dig deep and specifically come up with an outreach plan for Maria and her staging business.
- Conventional — Maria is going to reach out to every real estate brokerage in town to let them know about her services. This includes going into a Realtor’s office and giving a presentation on why staging matters when selling a home. She’ll want to provide brochures, fliers and business cards for her presentations. Also, she can let the agents know that she will pay a referral bonus which will hopefully increase the word-of-mouth of her service.
- Online — Maria will want to create an email newsletter that she can send out to agents and other people that enter her lead funnel. This can and should be a quick and dirty email that keeps her top-of-mind with her target audience. She can showcase previous home she has staged, testimonials and other success stories. She should also create Facebook ads that target people with elderly parents letting them know about her business. (It’s crazy the amount of information that Facebook knows about their users and the granularity you can use to reach your target customer).
- Content — Maria would immediately benefit from reaching out to people that regularly create audio and video content that have already built an audience. It can be a win-win as these creators need content for their productions and she needs exposure. Exchanging her time and expertise for exposure should be a no-brainer! In addition to appearing on other people’s channels, she should start creating her own content. This can range from a blog that talks about all things staging — including frequently asked questions — to having a Facebook/Instagram page that showcases before and after photos. The more content that she produces that is engaging and shareable, the better.
- One-on-One Marketing — This can be a little tricky for Maria as she doesn’t want to be perceived as an ambulance chaser. For her, she is going to focus on cold calling and cold emailing brokers and agents in her area. Much like she did in the conventional marketing section, she’ll want to introduce herself and see if she can provide value to these busy professionals. Also, she should scour the area for any estate planning, real estate or related conventions, open houses, and seminars. Having a booth and getting face-time with people interested in this topic creates an immediate relationship that can provide immediate benefits while also creating a long-term sales funnel.
Now you can see that Maria knows her target market inside and out and she’s backing that up with a detailed, action-oriented plan for introducing herself, her business and her service to the masses. Specific, concrete plans and details here are much more valuable to her than general plans or ideas.
You Need a Chair, Not a Pole
Before we wrap up, I’d like to introduce a metaphor for building a well-rounded marketing plan. And that is to think of your marketing plan like a chair. Much like a chair, you cannot sit down if there is only one leg. If you have two legs, you might be able to sit, but it’s going to take a lot of balance and coordination which will distract you from being productive. Three legs are better than one or two, but you are still required to spend time balancing and keeping everything in check. If you have four or more legs, then you’re free to focus your time and energy on reaching out and making connections with your audience. Much like a chair needs four or more legs for stability, so does your marketing plan. Focus on creating as many different channels as possible to gain your audience’s attention!
We almost have a fully functional plan for how to get revenue in the door. We’ve gone over how to drill down and find your perfect target customer. Now, we have figured out how to create a detailed marketing plan for reaching our audience. Next week, we’ll focus on how to ask for the sale via delivering a proposal or a pitch to a prospect.
As always, if you have any comments or questions after reading this, please don’t hesitate to comment below or to reach out directly.
