Category Archives for "Marketing"

0 How to Make Safe Predictions about Market Preferences

Making predictions is never an exact science.  As you learn more about your market, you increase your understanding of market preferences.

Ask anyone from your market about a particular preference and you could get any answer from completely positive to completely negative.  In that sense, you cannot predict a person’s personal preferences.

However, there are advantages to knowing where on the spectrum of opinion most people in your market fall.  When you are marketing, you are setting out your stall.  You attract some people who are not in your market and possibly repel some who are.  The better you are at setting out your stall, the more likely you are to attract the right people.

Once you talk to a prospect, you can fine-tune your appeal and respond to their individual preferences.  This depends upon your sales technique.  You need to practice it and the only way to do that is to find prospects.

So, the aim of making safe predictions is to find preferences that attract the right people, reducing as far as you can false positives and negatives.

As you grow in understanding your market, you get better at this.  The first step is to know what to look for and the issues raised in this question are a starting place.  You will find some of what follows more or less relevant to your market.  The real challenge is finding issues not listed here that energise your market.  How?  Be present, spend time with your market with eyes and ears open.

Risk and Security

This is a big issue for financial advisors who have to ask about a saver’s attitude to risk.  I wonder how many people lose out because they don’t understand the question?  How many people ask to see high-risk opportunities?  How many who don’t, miss opportunities they would not otherwise encounter?  You see my point here?  This is not about finance necessarily.

The issue is the person who steps back from something they perceive as high risk might respond positively if they knew more.  So, your marketing challenge is to raise possibilities your market may not have considered, if it is risk averse.

Organisations are often risk averse.  Health and safety legislation, for example, aims to keep the organisation safe.  There is a lot to commend this approach until it becomes a reason not to act.  I’m not saying strategies should risk safety but safety costs need to be included in planning.  “It’s worth making these costly improvements because it will mean we can do so much more.”

Quality and Value

Let’s think of this in four quadrants:

Novelty or Proven

Some people like to be ahead of the crowd, pace setters who are always the first try new technologies or approaches.  Others will invest in something that has a proven track record.

This is why new businesses can find it difficult to get established.  The people who are willing to try something new are thin on the ground.  Breaking through to the bigger established market is hard work.

The technology adoption curve shows how this works in practice.  You will see, if you follow the link, moving from early adopters to early maturity is difficult.  This is the challenge if you are introducing something new to the market.

On the other hand, the challenge is different if you are marketing some established approach, such as life, personal or business coaching.  Here the issue is how to distinguish your business from others, without giving the impression it is something entirely new.

Individual or Mass-Market

Coaches and consultants offer an individual service. Most adopt an approach to coaching they choose so that the package they offer is a proven method.  But essentially the service is individual and this is why they are able to charge high fees.

They can offer workshops to groups of people for a lower fee.  They may offer the same content but with less personal service.

This distinction holds in any market.  Supermarkets get by with little individual service.  Most people know what they need and can find it without help.  Contrast that with a behind the counter service, where everything is individually found, measured and wrapped.

Mass-production cuts costs and increases choice.  Most coaches offer limited options at a high price.  If their offer is not right for a prospect, they will refer them on.  There are loads of books about coaching for those who do not favour the individual market.

Design or Functionality

This is of course a false dichotomy.  If something lacks functionality it lacks design.  You would think few people would buy something pretty that doesn’t work!

For example, website design.  Many people still think of websites as works of art.  They do not understand the functionality a website can offer them.  A site that looks good and does not convert is an ornament.

Some sites look dreadful but they convert.  Maybe they were slung together without any thought to design and for some reason worked.

On the other hand, think of something like Apple products where design and functionality work together.  If you can do that it’s a big advantage.  If not, make sure it does what it needs to do.

What other preferences do you find your market has?

0 How to Find Your Personal Brand

Your personal brand is an amalgam of many things: your story, skills and values.  Of these perhaps most problematic are your values.  Typically, business owners set out with clear values and lose track of them as they experience the pressures of being in business.  And values are crucial if they are to align with your market’s values.

Perhaps the most telling of these pressures is our attitude to money.  Not everyone in business is trying to make tons of money but everyone has, at worst, to break even.  Everyone in business has to make peace with making money.

If you can’t do that the most likely outcome is your business will fail.  Another possibility is you lose sight of your values, consumed by keeping your business going.

These difficulties are usually the result of “heart-centred” business owners lacking an adequate understanding of money.  Many are embarrassed asking for money or find making money becomes an end in itself.

This week I have written a lead magnet that offers a few pointers about how to make money that relflects your true worth.  The main thrust of my argument is business-owners underestimate their worth and so they undercharge.  I’ll post about this when it becomes available.

If your personal brand is value driven, you must sort out your relationship with money.

Station 5: Who?

Who are you?  This question is perhaps one of the most difficult to answer but you must, if you depend on a personal brand.  Your personal brand conveys your integrity as a business owner and you can’t convey integrity if you are not at peace with making money.

Here is what I said in my early draft of my keynote:

You need a degree of empathy?  Who is this you?  Because that is the last question: Who are you?  Now, look at me, do I look like a sales person?  Do I look like the Wolf of Wall Street?  (I haven’t seen the film, I haven’t a clue what the Wolf of Wall Street looks like.)   The important thing is we all need to be in alignment.  We need to be in alignment with our work.  We need to get into the flow.  Are we a champion?  Are we a superhero?  How do we communicate ourselves because very often we are marketing not just our offer but ourselves?

Are you becoming the person you first imagined when you started out?  You need to be self-aware, if you are in business.  You need to know how you come across, how you align.  I believe passionately that marketing is not about corporate business development.  It is about how we bring benefit to the people around us, how we benefit our immediate market, our customers or clients.  But also our neighbourhoods and communities.  And this means that we are profoundly educators.

So, I’m going to pause us here and take us into the next section of this talk, thank you.

Sharpening the Message

This follows on from last week’s section.  There are several pointers in the right direction but ultimately it does not highlight what is at stake.

I talk about alignment but it is not clear what is aligned.  As I mentioned last time, your values aligned along a sequence that embraces your offer, marketing, benefits and outcomes.  You should be able to see your values reflected in all these and especially the last two.

Your attitude to money is implicit.  If your values are solely about profit-making then you are likely to serve an atomised market.  But equally, without a positive relationship with making money you are likely to fail as a business or perhaps worse not see contradictions between your approach to money and your other values.

Business that addresses the vagaries of the human heart helps build a better world.  It creates the spaces where relationships form and ultimately genuine community.

“Heart-centred” business owners can’t afford to ignore money.  So, my new Wednesday sequence of posts, starting next week shall be about money and our attitudes to it.

How do you understand money?

0 More Target Market Demographics

Last time, I discussed market demographics and covered the first three characteristic demographics, primarily the involuntary ones: sex, age and location. Today here are four more characteristics, which might be described as voluntary.  Voluntary because they are to some degree choices made by your market.

Seven Demographics, 4 – 7

Common Interests

Common interests are interests shared by your clients.  Stamp collecting is an interest some people have.  It is unlikely to be relevant unless you are offering something directly interesting to stamp collectors.

There may be interests your target clients are likely to have in common.  For example, are sportspeople interested in diet?  If not, perhaps they should be and you may wish to use marketing to convince them of that.

So, a common interest is not something everyone in your target market necessarily knows about.  There may be value in raising awareness of an issue, like diet for sports people.

This may be the main value of common interests; identifying issues that should interest your target market.  This could be a move from level 0 to 1 on the awareness ladder.  But it could equally feature between levels 2 and 3, where sports people are seeking solutions to low energy and have not considered diet.

Sports people are likely to be aware of diet.  So, if your offer is diet related, sports people may share a common interest.  Running a Facebook advert, you could target it to people with a declared interest in sport.

Start with your offer and ask the question: what is likely to interest my potential clients?

Career

I’ve given this next section the heading career because it is worth considering not only the type of job your prospects do but how they perceive it relates to their career.  Some people may see their role as primary, they are managers with aspirations to more senior posts.  Alternatively, they may be specialists seeking opportunities to build on their experience.

Sometimes the issue for people in work is some problem they encounter and so need help.  A problem can be short-term and immediate or long-term and chronic.  If it is a common problem, you can offer to help solve or manage it.

Hopes and dreams are perhaps career orientated.  Many people come to a point in their working life, where they consider moving on to something else.  They may be seeking a new job or to freelance.  They may be a parent who has taken time out to care for small children and want to return to work.  Use these insights to narrow your market and focus on specific issues.

And of course, many people experience frustrations in their working life.  This may be general dissatisfaction with their working life to specific issues in the workplace they are unable to resolve unaided.  Some people wish to stay in their current position and overcome some frustration, others want to find a way out.

Culture

Ethnicity may be relevant where businesses appeal to people of a particular culture; it is not necessarily a problem.  People will self-select.  I am aware of many shops close by where I live that serve particular ethnic groups.  It works for them.

Perhaps the main drawback for such businesses is they may limit their market unnecessarily.  A shop that sell fashions that appeal primarily to people of one particular ethnicity may have found a specialist market.

However, cafes and restaurants are another matter and an ethnic based appeal might cut both ways.  It can bring something new into the marketplace that would not be available otherwise but it can be effectively exclusive.  Some businesses find this is a problem and others seem happy for it to be so.

Language and Religion

Language is another way businesses can be exclusive.  Staff who speak languages spoken locally, are an obvious advantage.  Their role is little different from staff in any shop, who explain and educate their customers.

I have eaten in restaurants where there is no English spoken.  My main problem is explaining I’m vegetarian.  What actually appears on your plate can be something of a lottery.  The question for the business is, how can they survive with mostly customers who speak their language?

It is worth asking if your offer is likely to appeal to people with particular religious affiliations.  If so, you may need to be sensitive to their expectations.  Certainly, most shops, including the chains, sell halal food in a Muslim area.  They do this because it sells not just the halal food but everything else these customers buy.

Divisions between religious groups can be overemphasised.  Generally, religious people find common ground.  Many Muslim parents prefer Christian schools to state schools because Christians can be more sensitive to their requirements as fellow religious.

Education

Education is not about discriminating against people who are more or less educated.  It is about considering what people with specialist education may need.  If you sell to people with education, you don’t ask to see evidence of their ability, you set out your stall and see who turns up!

Similarly, your market may be people who have had an experience and so have a consequential interest in your offer.  People who buy need not all share the experience but if a significant proportion of your customers have had it, then this is another opportunity to target your market.

Habits are perhaps little understood.  I suppose cigarettes and alcohol are examples of bad habits.  They are obvious examples of sales opportunities to supply the habit or sell ways to overcome it.  However, not all habits are bad and some are simply routines.  I walk certain routes and I’m less likely to go out of my way to make a purchase.

Finally, life story may be a factor.  These would be people with some common thread to their life story, eg living as a carer, long-term illness or immigration.

Can you think of other factors to consider when you describe your market?

0 Knowing Your Market and Its Values

This is the fourth post of five about a keynote talk I am preparing for a major business event later this year.  Last time I wrote about your business niche and today the focus moves to your market and its values.

In conversation this week, someone suggested values were missing from my keynote.  It is important to align your marketing with your offer.  This implies alignment with values because what I have in mind was the role of a coach or consultant.

Most coaches and consultants have a strong set of values that informs their work and so should inform their marketing.  I have experimented, since the conversation, by explicitly referring to values and it seems to be favourably received.  Indeed, I think there is a need for alignment of at least five elements: your

The wider outcomes may be through your clients’ clients or the wider impact of your work on communities.  If you know these wider outcomes, you can use them in your marketing but ideally you should see your values reflected in them.

Station 4: Why?

Knowing your market is essential to defining your niche. It is important you understand your market and its values as well as their problem your offer solves.

Here is what I wrote a few weeks ago:

So, Why? Is the third station.  You could ask the question: Why am I doing it?  Because I have this fantastic passion for doing x y and z.  OK.  But actually, the why is to do with your market; it is the people that you provide this service for.

Do you really know them?  Do you know who they are?  How do you understand their problem, the problem that you solve?  And you need to understand it in at least two ways.  You need to understand their problem as it is because very often people come to you with a solution when actually they don’t know what their problem is.  Or else they have a superficial way of describing their problem and haven’t really understood what it’s about.

There’s also the problem as they see it.  So, you see these two interact with one another.  So you need a degree of empathy when you work with your clients.

Sharpening the Message

Perhaps the biggest issue I have with this station is I have not yet found a clear lesson to teach about it.  However, I believe adding values into the mix helps get some clarity.

Their problem is only a part of what you need to know about your market.  You can further narrow your niche by defining your market’s values.  Let’s say you are a business coach and you help women business leaders turn around their businesses.  You might have feminist values and so may find you are most effective coaching clients who share these same values.  It is possible, if you coach clients who have the problem but don’t share the values, you will be less effective.

This may be over-simplistic.  There are other values that may equally impact the coaching relationship.  The client’s work ethic may be more important, for example.  There are likely to be several value systems at play in any client-coach relationship and any particular set of values may be more or less important to the success of the relationship.

A Dilemma?

Clarity about key values may be more important in marketing than it is in the coaching relationship.  This opens up something of a dilemma for the coach.  Does the coach market their business, referring to their feminist values upfront?  This may turn away valuable clients, who would be perfectly happy with this value system, even if they don’t fully share it.  However, if feminist values are important to the coach and they want to specialise in particular approaches to business that embody these values, then it may be helpful to market using them.

Your values may be non-negotiable and so use them to narrow your market because this can be a good thing.  Your prospects are looking for a coach who shares their values and so will be very enthusiastic.  Alternatively, you may choose not to insist on these values in your market and so do not use them to narrow your niche.

Do you use values to narrow your niche?  Have you consciously chosen not to insist on certain shared values?  Whatever your choice, how is it working out for you?

1 Your Target Market Demographics

Any business-owner must find and get to know their target market.  In the last two posts, I explained how to assess your target market’s awareness of their problem and how to move them to consider solutions.  In a future post, I shall discuss their worldview.  This time my topic is your market demographics; mostly uncontroversial facts about your target market.

Awareness, worldview and demographics are three dimensions you can use to describe your market.  Later in this sequence, I shall discuss how to create an Avatar you can use to target your marketing copy.  This is not something you make public but use it to inform your writing or speaking, so it feels warmer to those you wish to contact.

What Are Demographics?

Selecting which characteristics to measure is a judgement.  Your measurements may be accurate but you have still decided to measure that particular thing.

The circuit questionnaire goes beyond the usual list of sex, age and race.  Perhaps some are not strictly demographics.  They are all characteristics your market would declare to be true about themselves.  You can find them and tailor your marketing to them.

Your copy will always be for people with particular characteristics.  Being able to describe them in these terms helps make them more real to you.  These are the people you help, so you need to know and understand them.  A personalised message done well, means your copy may appeal to people outside your target market.  If they are potential customers, this is not a problem.

Do be careful about what you publish.  You may be aiming to work with a particular group but this should inform your copy, not rule out those who, attracted by your copy, do not fall within your ideal.  Remember there are laws about discrimination and so it is important your copy is inclusive.

If your offer is for one sex or one ethnic group, for example, make sure you can justify it and that you conform to the law.  Get legal advice if you are in doubt.

Seven Demographics, 1 to 3

Remember, your answers to the questions in the Circuit Questionnaire will inform your thinking about your market.  Think carefully before you publish your answers to these questions.  An explicit statement may alienate some of your market.

Gender

Some products and services are designed for one sex and so it can be legitimate to target that sex.  Usually, however, your offer is attractive to both sexes and it is not in your interests to discriminate.

Consider your prejudices, in the sense that if you expect your clients to be one sex, you may unconsciously discriminate against the other.  Your avatar could be made to be like the sex you think least likely to be interested.

Your aim is to build an avatar you can address with warmth and so appeals to anyone reading or hearing your copy.  You could write copy, as if to a real person, beginning “Dear Jane …”.  If you remove these words from the beginning, the copy would not necessarily give away its written with a woman in mind and so could appeal to men too.

Finally, you may need to be aware that we no longer live in a world with a binary split between men and women.  You may need to consider sexuality and transsexuality as well as people who live to some degree between the two traditional sexes.

For most businesses this is not important because an avatar of either sex can produce copy that appeals to everyone.  It is important if your product appeals to one of these specialised groups.

Localised or Global

Many businesses that market locally, may have a global market if they operate online.  Similarly, some global businesses find there is a local dimension to their market.

For coaches and consultants, it’s usually worth targeting your local market from the start.  If you have no reputation, you may find your first clients are local because they can meet you and so decide they trust you.

Mostly, though coaches find they are working with a mix of local and online clients.

There are businesses that draw most or all their customers from a particular locality.  Shop-front businesses find this, even if they have a specialist dimension to their work, that draws interest from outside  their area, they are likely to draw most customers from their local neighbourhood.

Age Range

Age can make a big difference to the way you think about your market.  Older people have more experience and perhaps more wisdom.  On the other hand the generation that grew up before the Internet is perhaps less able to compete online.

Younger people may have more energy, work harder and are perhaps more idealistic.

Some of these may be prejudices and my message is be aware of your prejudices and don’t assume they are wrong!  Even 10 years can make a massive difference.

I’ll cover the rest of these characteristics next time.

How do you find the characteristics I’ve covered so far help define your marketing?

0 What is Your Business Niche?

Last Friday, I posted the second in this sequence, following the development of a keynote I am preparing for the end of March.  I asked the question: Where is your business location?  This led me to think about the idea of a business niche.

The idea of the niche comes from ecology.  An animal or plant will create a niche in the environment where it can thrive.  Contrary to popular belief, competition is not the main influence on evolution.  A niche is some part of the environment species adapt to, usually working with other species to create an environment where every species thrives.

Note the species work together to create their environment, it is not a pre-determined space.  The same applies to businesses.  It may be possible to find a niche but usually, businesses need to create their own niche through collaboration.  A competitive minded business is likely to fail because it will miss opportunities to create a niche with other businesses.  This is why location or context is so important.

Station 2: What?

The big mistake many business-owners make is to believe their offer is the same as their niche. It is a part of their niche but without considering the other 4 stations, they will be at an adaptive disadvantage.

This is what I said in my earlier draft:

The second question is: what?  What are you doing?  Now, you may find this the easiest question of the four to answer.  You have an offer and you know your offer.  You know it backwards, inside out.  You are an expert in what you provide.  But my question to you is: what makes it irresistible?

What makes an irresistible offer?  Clearly the thing itself is important.  If you deliver something that your clients or customers value, in time they will pass on the message to others.

But it’s also important to remember how you package what you offer; how you describe it because people outside don’t know the detail of what it’s like on the inside.  You need to find some way of describing it.  And that is the packaging of it, you don’t necessarily need to put it in a literal packet with writing on it but you need some way of describing it.

And the third layer in this is your marketing.  Once you have an offer and it’s packaged, how do you get it out there in front of people?  And this takes me to the middle point here.

Sharpening the Message

So, you’re a life coach and agonise over your competition?  Of course you have competition!  If you don’t have competition, you have no market.  You can’t compete head to head with more experienced life coaches but you can specialise in a niche.  Your business location is a part of that niche and we’ll look at other aspects over the next two weeks.

There is more you can do to make your offer distinctive at this station.  Think about your packaging.  Location: Sheffield’s Only life coach is probably not true but can you refine it further?  Sheffield’s only life coach who works with people aged 80 or over, with people who have experienced an industrial accident and so on.  We’ll explore this in more detail next time.

You have your offer and you have your packaging.  The next question is how to market your offer.

Station 3: How?

This will be the focus of the second part of my talk, of which more in a few weeks time.  It appears at this stage in the 5 questions sequence.

I mention this now because it’s part of the sequence.  Marketing is important.  For me it is the keystone; it is in the roof of the business, of the building that we are building here.  We’re dealing with the four foundations now, so I’m going to move swiftly onto the others and I will come back and talk at much greater length about this later on.

Marketing drives any business, hence its central position but there are two more foundation stones, then we’ll return to this topic in much more depth.  Your marketing is where you consciously design your offer using the four foundation stones.

How do you package your offer?

0 The Scale of Your Prospects’ Shift in Thinking

Once you know your target market’s level of awareness, the next question is: how do you move them up the awareness ladder?  What is the scale of your prospect’s shift in thinking?

This question suggests a point I’ve made several times before.  Marketing is primarily education!  If you are going to move prospects up the awareness ladder, you must offer them information.  At early stages, you may explain the problem and its various solutions.  At later levels, the focus will be on your own offer.

In general, the lower you are on the awareness ladder, the more work you must do to move people to the next level.  So, if people are aware of solutions (level 2) they are more likely to listen to your solution than someone at level 1, who is not actively seeking a solution.

However, higher levels can be more difficult.  For example, it may be harder to get to level 3 if a competitor at level 2 dominates the market.

So, let’s look at two costs associated with moving prospects: information and time.

Information Needs

The more explanation you need to offer, the greater the costs of your marketing and you will have more difficulty retaining your prospects’ attention. You will need different amounts of information and different approaches at each level.

It is possible to use one approach throughout.  For example, a sales funnel on a website moves prospects from their current level to level 5.  You must bring them in at the right level; too low you will lose their attention and too high you will confuse them.  Sometimes you can do it on a single page, while some funnels put each level on a different page.

Others find they need something more complex.  Here’s an example:

1. A workshop open to a range of likely prospects, where you describe the problem and explain common solutions. Perhaps a taster of how you approach solving the problem.  (Levels 0-2)
2. A brochure (printed or online) that describes your method and provides more information. Includes an invitation to book a 1 to 1.  (Levels 2-4)
3. A 1 to 1 meeting where you aim to close the deal (levels 4-5)

Altogether, you may have passed on an immense amount of information over these 3 stages.  It is likely, if you set something up like this, only a small proportion of your clients will experience all of it.  Some will hop on board at higher levels and you need to be aware of when and how that happens.

Time Needs

You can see an elaborate approach, like the one above, is likely to take a lot of time.  This is one of the issues coaches have to face.  They usually find they must offer an introductory coaching session.  Maybe coaches with a good reputation can charge for these sessions but most coaches don’t and can underestimate the amount of time it takes.

People selling products may find they need less 1 to 1 time but may still find moving prospects from levels 3 – 5 takes a big chunk out of their working day.

So, the issue for any business is how to schedule their marketing efforts.  A coach might, for example, set aside 1 – 2 days per week for marketing and the rest for coaching.  Note this limits your coaching service’s capacity but without marketing, the coach has lots of time when they are not earning!

This brings us back to knowing your target market.  If you do, your marketing will be better targeted and you will get more in return for your effort.

How do you manage your marketing time?

0 Where is Your Business Location?

Last Friday, I published the first part of my new keynote address, on the theme: What is a Coach?  Refer back to this post to find out more about the aim of this sequence.  Today, the focus moves to business location.

Before I do that, some more thoughts about last week’s introduction to the keynote. It seeks to engage a varied audience in appreciating the educational or coaching credentials of a range of businesses.  Since last week, I have given more thought to it.

Why Run a Business?

Many business people enjoy running their business.  They aim to generate income for themselves and their families.  Their business offers freedom and an opportunity to live their dream.

For others, their primary aim is to share some skill or insight with the rest of the world.  They enjoy their coaching or whatever service they offer.  Running a business is secondary albeit essential to the success of their enterprise.

I’ve commented on this from time to time.  Mostly I think these two approaches tend to converge.  Business is more successful where it takes pleasure offering a service and a service-oriented enterprise must be supported by excellent marketing.

For some purposes, it is possible to help businesses choose their best approach to marketing, choose some short cuts and help the business owner carry out their chosen approach.  It’s even better if the business can align its marketing and its offer.  I shall pick this up in the next draft of my keynote.

Station 1: Where?

So, here is the next section of my keynote:

So, I’m going to begin in perhaps a very unexpected place, by asking the question: where?  Are you aware of the neighbourhood in which you are based?  Whether you work from the front room in your own home or from rented office space or workshop space, whatever it is: are you aware of your neighbourhood?  Are you able to access the support of people who live and work nearby?  Do you know where your nearest accountant is?  Not necessarily the same as the one that you use.

Focusing on the neighbourhood is a great way to build your business.  It may be that there are a number of people that you can work very closely with in your area on a number of things, because some of you are good at some things and some at others.

But also don’t forget that if you simply focus on the immediate neighbourhood you may miss other opportunities, for example Sheffield is situated on the border of the Peak District.  How many of you use the Peak District in your business?  It might be part of your offer, it might be part of your marketing.  Whatever it is how many of you use that?  (I know there’s at least one!)  This is about paying attention.

Sharpening the Message

There are four stations in this part of the keynote talk and I’ll cover the others in future weeks.  The aim is to point to good value ideas for each station.  All four in this early version of the talk need to be sharpened.

I’m thinking for each station I should point to something a business can do to improve their performance, as well as show how the business owner’s state of being can help or hinder their development.

Perhaps the most useful thing any business owner can do is be aware of the assets of their chosen place.  I have touched on Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) in some depth elsewhere (follow the link and scroll down to “Community Assets”).

I suspect many businesses end up in some location because the premises there are most economic.  Pre-eminent among these will be those who work from home.  Are they actually in the best place for their business?

Perhaps more important though, are local assets and the extent to which businesses make use of them.  To see an opportunity and take advantage of it is one crucial role for business people.

So, paying attention is an essential disposition for the business owner.  This is crucial when they are choosing a business location and then over the years, as they take advantage and build networks of collaboration in the neighbourhood.

Businesses need not always support a particular neighbourhood; after all, the benefits of business activity may be felt across a city or even further afield.  The point is though, your business has to be somewhere and serendipity should never be ruled out.

How has your location influenced your business development?

0 Your Target Market’s Level of Awareness

This is my first post about the fifth and final element in the Circuit Questionnaire: your market or markets.  This element starts by asking about your target market’s level of awareness.  Surely, you need to know what your target market is before you can answer this question?

Your Target Market

We shall go into this in more depth later but it cannot be said often enough, this is perhaps the most important question you need to answer: what is your target market?

Obviously, you cannot answer questions about your target market until you have identified it.  Identifying your target market strongly implies reducing the size of your theoretical market.  What do I mean by that?

Most people set out by aiming to market their business or cause to everyone.  It seems, at first glance, this is the best way forward; tell everyone about your offer.  However, the fact is only a small number of people are your prospective customers and it makes much more sense to talk to them!

The people who have the problem your offer solves, who are interested in your cause, are much more likely to listen if they hear you addressing them.

Level of Awareness

Your target market will have a level of awareness, as defined by the awareness ladder.  Ideally, you speak to them at that level of awareness. So, if they know they have the problem, you do not need to persuade them they have the problem!  If they know there are solutions, you need to show them yours.

Find out the level of awareness they are at and take up the narrative from there.  Your aim is to move them to the next level.

Awareness of Their Problem

People aware of their problem are at level 1 or 2 of the awareness ladder.  At level 1, they live with the problem because they are not aware there are solutions.  They may endure the pain or work around the problem.  Work arounds are often not the most cost-effective ways to manage a problem.

At level 2, the prospect will have discovered solutions to the problem and they are deciding which solution to adopt.  This is a transient state because soon they will opt for a solution, will it be yours?

Awareness of Your Proposition

This is level 3 of the awareness ladder and if prospects are aware of your proposition, they are likely to approach you to enquire about your service.  At this stage, you aim to move them to level 4, where they are aware of the details of you and your proposition.

So, to find your target market, you need to ask who is likely to be interested in your proposition.  In general, the further down the awareness ladder you go, the more people there are who could be prospects but they will be harder to move.

You will need less time and money to move people who are higher up the ladder but they can be far and few.  This is why most businesses use several marketing approaches, depending on where their prospects are on the awareness ladder.  It is possible to move to level 5 (sale) online but many coaches, for example, find that at level 3 they are more effective moving from their website to a face-to-face meeting (live or Skype).

We’ll look at this in more detail next time.

How do you use levels of awareness, when you approach prospects?

0 What is a Coach?

Usually, I set aside Fridays for one-off posts on whatever topic appeals each week.  This time I have a special sequence of posts to publish over the next few weeks.  This first post, “What is a Coach?” is the first part of a talk I shall deliver at the end of March.

On 25 March, I shall be speaking at Sheffield’s first business and personal development event: “Change Your Business, Career and Life: Success Summit 2017“.  I am developing my keynote for the event.

I have recorded the first 10 minutes of the keynote and I’ve transcribed it.  The idea is to test the talk, by publishing it and requesting feedback.  I’m already seeing new possibilities and so this is proving to be a worthwhile exercise.

A further reason for these posts is to add to the publicity for the event.  People may be attracted as they catch glimpses of its content.

The Introduction Transcribed

This first part is the introduction to the keynote.  I’ve imagined being present at the event, hence the reference to 200 people.

This is an accurate transcript and one point of interest is to compare my speaking and writing styles.  One problem is punctuation.  I can hear the words but not the punctuation.  Like most people I don’t speak in clear sentences (a few people do!).  I’ve cut out the stumbles and false starts, mainly.  The subheadings are not a part of the talk.

Introduction: What is a Coach?

How many people here are coaches or consultants?  There’s about 200 in the room and it looks like there are about 30 or 40.  That’s a brilliant response!

Don’t switch off if you don’t think of yourself as a coach or consultant.  Just listen to what I have to say.  I want to tell you a story about my father and his work.  He was a sheet metal worker, self-employed, for thirty years between 1956 and 1986.  And he provided the side of the market that was bespoke to the industry.  He would go into a factory and he would be looking for solutions in terms of balustrading, machine guards, ducting.  They called him in if they had a problem and there was no off-the-peg solution.  He would discuss the problem and agree an approach.  They would gather data, design the solution – sorry he would gather data, he would design the solution, make it and fit it.  So, in effect he was a coach or consultant, providing solutions in bended metal.

And this is actually true of most businesses.  Most businesses solve problems.  They are selling a solution to a problem.  Even if you are selling a product and it’s an off-the-peg product, it’s much better if your customers buy the right thing.  They still need a bit of education and some help in making the right choice.

So, I’m going to ask you again, how many of you are coaches or consultants, even if it’s just in part?  Because everyone can be a coach, everyone can use coaching to support their business and for some businesses it might even become an alternative income stream.

Finding Your Vision

What I want to do today is to invite you to step back from your business and to look at it in ways that perhaps you normally don’t.  Whether your business is a great success or whether you are contemplating failure, it is always helpful to take time to do this.

Perhaps, you have lost sight of your original vision.  You had a vision about your personal lifestyle, your freedom, your contribution that others would value and simply the pressure of the work that you’re doing means that you’ve just lost track of them.

So, I’m going to walk you through your business, looking at 4 foundations in this first part that every business needs to have in place.  This is a chance for you to review your business and to try to work out where you need to pay attention.

Reflections

Notice I start the talk with a question and then ask it a second time after providing more information.  The aim is to get the audience thinking about their response and hopefully seeing that coaching is not necessarily the preserve of a few.

The story is perhaps not brilliant as stories go but it will hold attention for several reasons.  First, it has local relevance and perhaps I should emphasise that more.  It is also the story of a successful business.  I’m not sure my father would agree with that but his business lasted 30 years and paid for a house and university education for two children.

I’m positioning myself as an expert in assisting coaches with local marketing.  The aim is not to persuade all the businesses present that they are coaching, so much as establishing the talk’s relevance, so that all present will listen and not dismiss me as not for them.  I need to establish my market is coaches or consultants but I don’t want a large section of the audience impatiently waiting for the next speaker!

Your thoughts about this introduction are welcome.  Next time I’ll say more about the shape of the talk .