Selecting the best possible target market is not easy. Your target needs to qualify in the following ways:



- Viability - they must be willing and able to pay for what you are offering and they fit within your life or lifestyle

- Need/want - they must need, or at least want, what you are selling

- Access - you have access to this segment of the market

- Happiness - you need to enjoy working with them

- Fit - your niche (expertise) marries well with them

Once these criteria are met, you need to communicate with this group using emotion. You may have heard about using pain in your marketing, for good reason. It works! By illustrating your target's pain, you are playing on their emotions and getting their attention. Then you can inform them that you are the solution and can take the pain away.

This may sound manipulative because it is. All marketing is manipulative to a point - you are trying to convince a person to take a particular action. This is not negative; you are trying to get your target's attention to help them solve their problem. You do not have to use your power for evil!

By having a target market in mind, you can more easily write effective copy for your website, your 30-second introduction and all other marketing materials. Without a target market, your marketing message comes across bland and diluted. You probably also look and sound just like everyone else. By 'speaking' to one narrow segment of the population, you can really zero in on their specific needs, speaking to him/her as though they are sitting right next to you, making an emotional connection.

If you are in a field that is particularly emotional, like therapy of any kind or anything to do with children, your marketing message would be most effective if you could make the prospect actually tear up or cry. They would feel as though someone finally really understands them and can help them! (Because you DO understand them and you CAN help them.)

Some industries can use pictures to evoke an emotional reaction. Don't you just love looking at before and after pictures? Interior designers, professional organizers and make-up artists are only three fields that benefit greatly from using this technique. Just about anyone in the wedding industry should use pictures to draw in their prospects.

Let your personality and your passion really show through your marketing. This is what your prospective clients want. They want to feel you know them. Sometimes your prospect needs time to make a decision; building a relationship over time helps a great deal in making this emotional connection.

Some ways to create and grow a connection with 'your people' include putting new information on your website regularly, collecting names and sending this list a newsletter and/or a blog and networking.

By really knowing your target market's problems and needs, and your solutions, you can give them exactly what they want. When you demonstrate your expertise, you build credibility in their eyes, and when you regularly remind them of your existence, you will be the only one they think of when they are ready to buy. Of course - you already have a relationship!

Copyright (c) 2008 Audrey Burton