Many small business owners focus on creating the best products and services based on their skills, knowledge and abilities. Then they go out and find people who need or want what they have to offer. Sometimes it works and you build a successful business around it.

But more often, especially, it seems, with small business owners in either service-based business or who are just starting out, it doesn’t work. They create services, for instance, that they would want or that they believe other people would need. They build some structure around their ideas, create a marketing message, build a website and off they go – feeling like they’re going to change the world.

Then reality sets in. Few people visit their website. Fewer, yet, contact them about their offerings. If they don’t get discouraged and give up, they often go looking for either a business coach, or take courses in marketing and copy writing. In turn they get sold the idea that if they were just clearer in their marketing message, people would flock to their business.

Now that’s true, to some degree. The the clearer your messaging and the better your copy writing, the better your overall marketing can be. So it’s not a poor plan to use a business coach (some consider me one, so I can’t knock it), or focus on your copy writing. But that doesn’t always relate to selling more of your services and making more money.

What’s missing is your audience.

Now when you take a good marketing or copy writing course you should get plenty about identifying the demographics and psychographics of your audience – and that’s good. You likely get as well a hefty dose of customer-focused writing – and that’s certainly helpful. It’s just both are premature.

The question so few small business owners ask themselves is – what do the people in my target audience know they need? Let me repeat that – what do they know they need? That’s the key to marketing – finding out what they know they need. Not just what they need, but what they know they need (I’m repeating this on purpose).

So is there any reason not to develop your services and products around what your audience knows they need?

How would meeting your audience where they are change your business?

Let’s talk about it!

(note: image from Sidereal on Flickr)

Marketing your business is a really good idea, don’t get me wrong. However you choose to do it, marketing is a vital part of your business. As a matter of fact, marketing your services is something I teach my clients to do more effectively every day.

Yet I find that there’s a hole in the thinking that “all you need to do is effectively market your business.”

You also need to sell!

Now I know that for some marketing covers selling just as it covers distribution and delivery. Yet I so often see marketing gurus focusing all their time on the preliminary aspects of marketing – clarity of message, target audience, demographics, psychographics, methodology, etc. Seldom do I see marketing coaches get into the specifics of selling.

But more importantly, so seldom does the average business owner see selling as a part of marketing. More often than not, they believe that if they communicate their offer effectively that people will just buy their service. For instance, the majority of the service providers I’ve run into – either as prospects and clients or through a large network of friends, associates and partners I offer help or advice too – see the importance in communicating their offer. And they understand what systems they want in place once the prospects enters their funnel.

But what they seldom focus on is the conversion process – when the prospective client becomes an actual, paying client. That’s where selling comes in.

What many don’t consider is that while there’s a process for marketing, there’s also a process for converting; for selling. And while there’s numerous, effective processes and methods for both marketing and for sales, neither make a successful business on their own. It’s hard to sell your services if you don’t draw prospective clients in through your marketing. Just as you’re not guaranteed a large number of prospects converting to clients without clearly knowing how you sell to them.

To drive the point home consider if I told you, “An effective marketing campaign should lead to increased sales and more clients.” Without a hitch, you’d agree, right? I mean, that’s the whole point, isn’t it – the better your marketing the more you sell and the more clients you have.

Well, effective marketing is like having a bus drop off thirsty people in your driveway. They’ve searched, they’ve found you and they’ve journeyed to your home because they trust you can satisfy their thirst. But just because they’re standing in your driveway doesn’t mean they’ll get to drink. Some will, sure. But many will just stand there waiting for some guidance. Selling is guiding those thirsty people to the well in your backyard, hoisting the bucket from the well, pouring them a cup of fresh water and handing to them to drink.

In other words, selling is a process as well. It’s the process of guiding the people your marketing brings to your business into becoming clients. So how you sell your business, how you convert your prospects, is something you need to consider in order to get more client, increase your business and generate more money.

So, how does your marketing process differ from your sales process? Does it? And if you’re getting people to engage your business, how could you more effectively sell to them?

Let’s hear your thoughts!

(note: image from Ward_ on Flickr, some rights reserved)

But just knowing about the term niche marketing doesn’t mean you know what niche marketing really is. Or how it applies to your business.

Most service-based business professionals I work with and talk to have some idea of niche market. Often, they think of it as the group of people their business serves or the market they target their services for. And while it’s true that your market is who you sell your products and services too, it doesn’t mean you’re selling to a niche market.

There’s a number of ways to define niche marketing or niche marketing. Wikipedia defines it as a focused, targetable portion (or subset) of a larger market. The New Oxford Dictionary defines niche as a specialized but profitable corner of the market. Personally (and professionally) I think of niche market from a point of problem/solution. So for me, I find my niche market in identifying a highly specific problem or set of problems that my service solves in a highly specific way.

A comment in a recent blog post gives me an interesting example to play with here. On my recent post, Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid of The Econimic Crisis, I spoke to how highly niched small businesses will be affected much less during turbulent economic times. One commenter, who identified themselves as CSS Gallery (obviously not their name), made the comment that “One niche market that is growing considerably is SEO.”

As with all comments, I deeply appreciate the thought and sharing. And it’s true that SEO is a growing market. But SEO, in and of itself, is not a niche. SEO is a market. And being a market, you can find all types of focused, targetable portions of the SEO market. So if you’re in SEO, your working in a highly unspecific market and with a little effort you could discover the niche market you best serve within the overall SEO market.

For instance, let’s say you’re an SEO specialist. You’ve worked with a lot of different types of companies in a number of different markets. But you have a perpensity toward graphic designers. You’ve worked with a number of graphic designers and understand the market a bit. You’ve even had some success at getting rankings for the graphic designers you’ve worked with. You could decide that your niche is in SEO for graphics designers. That would be a subset (niche) within a market (SEO).

But you can go further – and I recommend it. You can look at SEO for graphic designers as a market itself. Now I’ve said it’s a niche – and it is a niche of the seach engine optimization market. But you can also find niches within doing SEO for graphic designers. Let’s say, for instance, your SEO track record showed that you got great results working with graphic designers who create logos. You could further niche yourself by providing SEO services for logo designers. And you can go even further with this (and I suggest you do) by defining what type of logo designers you specialize in working with.

You see, the goal is to find the most specific niche you can and market to it. That’s how you can dominate a market. The more specific you are in your defining your niche, the more your marketing message (and SEO, by the way) can target that niche’s specific needs. That way when the logo designer is looking for SEO and finds you, they’ll feel as though you’re speaking right to their needs. And when they see that you specialize at working with their type of business, wouldn’t it only make sense that they’d contact you?

The key to niche marketing is to find a real niche. By real niche, I mean the subset of the market you serve. Sometimes it’ll be the subset of the subset of the market you serve – and so on. The goal here, though, is that you’re speaking only to the specific people whose specific problems your services can solve. Find them and you’ve found your niche.

Are you marketing to a specific niche within a market? Or are you still marketing to everyone?

And if you do have a niche, how have you defined it? And in defining it, how has it changed your business.

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from The Jamoker on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Walk through any supermarket here in the U.S and you’ll find tons of choices. Want a simple can of soup, you have to wade through 15 different brands of chicken noodle. Or toothpaste, or cereal, or ice cream. Heck, we even have to make a choice between ketchup brands.

Now choice may be good. I know I appreciate having a choice of certain things I need, use or enjoy. And I know I’d be upset if someone took away Breyer’s ice cream and made me buy from only one brand.

Yet, according to Barry Schwartz, choice is a paradox. While it’s great to have options, he’s observed that options often lead to bad decisions, dissatisfaction in what’s been chosen or a paralysis to taking action. As Barry observes:

“…maximizers want the best. The problem that needs to be solved is what’s the best jeans, the best restaurant, the best place to go on vacation, the best marital partner – everything. Yet that requires a search of all possibilities which is…impossible.”

“satisficers aren’t looking for the best, they’re looking for good enough and good enough can be very good, it doesn’t mean people have no standards. But it means they don’t feel the need to do an exhaustive search. They just keep looking until they find one thing that meets their criteria and then they choose it.”

Consider that’s been said here: that while choice may be a good thing, it’s not always the best thing. It’s being suggested that people are tired of so many choices and that it can even paralyze them from making decisions.

So think about it from the point of marketing your specific products and services to your specific target audience. When they visit your website, what do they see? What choices do they have to make? Are there too many? Could it be that in an effort to show people everything we do that we paralyze them from taking action on something they need?

Further, how could you offer your prospects fewer choices and still grow your business?

What are you thoughts? Let’s talk about it.

And if you have a story about being overwhelmed by choice, please toss it in the coversation.

(note: image from ::: Billie / PartsnPieces ::: on Flickr, some rights reserved)

But to be successful, you’re ultimately not the decision maker. And if you want to be successful, you shouldn’t be.

I know what you’re thinking (other than this Dawud cat is crazy), “Then who makes the decisions if I don’t?”

Your market does, of course.

You can sit back everyday, all day and make decisions about where to steer your business. Sure you decide what emails to respond too, what phone calls to take, and where to put your marketing efforts. You decide to develop this product or refine that service or to build this relationship or that one.

But there’s one thing about your business that you can’t decide – who buys. You simply don’t get to decide who buys what your products or services. While you can choose who you try to market too, you can’t control who actually spends money on your offerings. Each and every individual in your market decides that for themselves.

So many business owners have this backward. They think that all they need to do is create some product, market it to the right people and they just buy. That can work. But it’s like shooting fish in a fast moving river; the audience rushes by as your marketing tries to catch their attention long enough to slow them down, giving you a better shot.

Wouldn’t it just be easier if you knew what the fish wanted and built your products and services around that? Then you could give them what they’re looking for. Do that and some can be into a still pond (think big barrel). In the still pond you let them slow down, relax and rest a bit – all while listening to what you have to offer them. Effectively, you’re now able to take your shots at the fish who are interested in being there.

Smart business owners understand this so they don’t waste their resources and time shooting at the fish rushing by in the river. Instead, they craft their offerings around what their audience actually wants. This changes marketing from yelling to the mass of people rushing by to having a conversation with a small niche who need what you have to offer.

The successful business owner knows that it’s the people who make up the marketplace that ultimately decide. The audience is the decision maker. The only decision you need to make is whether to listen to them or not.

Are you listening to your target audience? What are they telling you they need? And how can you fill that need?

(note: no fish were harmed or injured in any way during the writing of this post. The author (that’s me) does not specifically advocate shooting fish whether in a river, a pond a barrel or any other locale. And if you select to use a firearm for any purpose, please get proper training.)

(note: image from SubyRex on Flickr, some rights reserved)

Really. Your audience doesn’t care about you, your story, how you got to where you are, who you’ve worked with, or what services you offer. They don’t care that you’re the best widget maker in the midwest. And they could care less if you’ve got some new perspective on their health crisis. They’re simply not going to hear that.

So why do the great majority of businesses still market themselves as though people care? It’s not very effective. It reaches only a small audience. And it’s a huge waste of time, energy and money.

So what do people care about then?

Themselves!

They care about themselves. They care about their pain, their suffering, their issues. They care about the problems they face in their lives, their health or their business. In other words – they care about their own story.

You see, the great majority of people don’t begin looking for help until they need it. That means people mostly buy when they have a need. The need is often a problem they’re facing. And it’s the problem that they’re looking for a solution too.

So contrary to what many business owners believe, people aren’t looking for a product to buy or a service to use. Rather, they’re looking for a solution to their problem. And often, they don’t care whether it’s a product or a service – or even who’s delivering it. They just want their problem solved – they want their pain to be relieved.

Take a second and think about the websites you visited lately or the brochures you’ve picked up. Think about how you felt reading them. Are their any that spoke to you more than others? Think back as to why. I would suggest that the ones that spoke most to you spent less time telling you about them and more time telling you about you.

If you can see this, you’ll see the key to converting views, whether your website, a print ad or your brochures, into contacts. And that’s what you want. Especially if you really can solve their problem.

So how are you telling your audience’s story? Or are you telling your own a bit too much? And as a consumer, what do you respond to – their story or your own?

(note: image from AdriAnny on Flickr)

A few business owners seem to get this. But don’t seem to get it, though. It makes me wonder how business owners see themselves relating to their target audience.

Perhaps that’s the first mistake…target audience. What image do you create when you hear the term target audience? For me, I’m looking off the deck of a boat at an expansive sea whose swells ebb and flow. What I don’t see are the individual drops of water that make up the sea. In other words, I don’t see the individual people in the term target audience. I can’t imagine I’m alone.

Most marketing copy I read today does one of two things: It either tells me all about what ‘you can do for me;’ or it tries to make me identify the problems I face. Both work to some degree. The former by being straight forward in what we offer. The latter perhaps more so by getting me to feel that you understand me and my problems and, thus, can help me solve them. Yet I think they both miss the boat.

Why? Well, neither are really about having a conversation. When you just tell me about your business, there’s no room for me because it’s all about you. And when you make it about me and the problems I face, it’s still from your perspective. You’re not there, in it, with me. And if you were once where I am, it’s difficult to recapture the difficulties I face when you’re no longer in them.

I think that’s what Colleen Wainwright, the Communicatrix (gosh, I can’t help by love that name), was getting too when she wrote this comment on a recent blog post of mine around having the conversation with your niche.

Most of the time, people are thinking about what they want to say, rather than the people they’re going to say it to. You can’t possibly have a conversation with your customers (or anyone else, for that matter) over the sound of the projector running, if you catch my drift.

And that seems to be the crux of most marketing content I see today. Not all, but most. Business owners seem to spend more time being concerned about what they want to get across to people than they do considering what people want to hear. Yet giving them what they want and need is the key to being successful.

So how do you do that? Make it a conversation. Instead of being so concerned with getting all the right content so gingerly placed so perfectly on the page, engage in a conversation. When you write copy, think about it like you’re sitting down with someone referred to you from a friend. First, listen to them. Figure out what they need. Then speak (or write). But do so as you would in a verbal conversation by adding to it, not trying to turn it into something you want.

You may be the expert on your topic and the referral may be coming to you. But they want to feel honored, cared for and listened too. They want their opinions to matter. And they want to know that what they know has value and merit.

Just remember, your target audience is made up of individuals. Engage them as such and you’ll be doing business with people instead of a trying to reach a marketing buzzword.

What do you do to engage individuals in your business? How does your blog serve the conversation and how has it helped build relationships?

P.S. …I just found out that today is Colleen’s Birthday. Stop by and shoot her a b-day wish.Â

If you know what you do, the next step is to know who you do it for. Even better is knowing what problems they face that you can help them solve through your products and services.

But what if your blog audience isn’t your target market

This is exactly what Liz asked me in our latest one2one conversation:

What advice would you give to a friend whose audience wasn’t his niche market group?

Boy, there are a lot of ways to go with this one.

First thing, celebrate that you have audience to begin with. Many web-based business struggle to get people to visit their site in the first place – let alone having an interested audience that interacts with you.

Next, take a look at your blog, website and marketing message. If you’ve been trying to reach your niche market and have ended up with a different audience, there’s a number of things to consider:

1. Perhaps you’ve not been found by your niche yet. It is possible, especially in the blogosphere, that you have a large audience of bloggers who just like you, your writing, your perspectives on things but that don’t need your services. The easy answer to this is you have to hang out where your niche market is hanging out.
2. Perhaps you’re a little off on who your niche is. It’s easy to go off track. As a business owner, you should periodically review your marketing message with who your targeting versus who’s responding. Often, it’s just a few tweaks that can get you back on track.
3. Perhaps you want to write for your niche, but are influenced by your traffic reports. It’s so easy to redirect your blog’s focus a bit because of traffic. It may feel great to write about off-niche topics that get you Dugg, that get large volumes of traffic or that generate lots of comments (I love it too) – just be sure to ask if your business needs are getting met.
4. Perhaps you don’t know your real niche yet. One big advantage to blogging is that you’ll be writing often on topics related to your business. This gives you ample opportunity to explore who it is you want to work with. You may find that what you thought was your niche market really isn’t.
5. Perhaps your niche isn’t your passion. When you blog daily on a topic, it can get old quickly. So watch yourself. See what you really have love for writing about. You may find that your niche market isn’t your true passion. If so, I’d suggest re-evaluating your niche market.
6. You could, simply, be in the wrong business. It does happen. You set out to start a business in a certain area only to find that the it doesn’t fit. Or maybe what you thought you could provide your niche, you really can’t do. Don’t dismay, simply take a look at whether you’re in the right business or not. You can always change what you’re doing.

These are some of the things I’d want to discuss if a friend – or if you – contacted me for help.

There are many facets that go into having a successful business. One is the way your feet are facing when you begin the journey. That’s why it’s often good to stop, pull out the map and take a look around before you end up lost.

So Liz, what would you suggest my friend do if they looked around and found themselves lost with their business?

Of course, the answer I give and the question I pose is not just for Liz.

Why?

Well, people want to be in relationships. They want to feel connected to the people they work with. In some way, at least, the business owner wants to trust that the marketing coach really cares about them, their business and helping them solve their problems.

Sure there are other things business owners look for before they sign a check – like competence, professionalism, knowledge, previous results, etc. But ultimately, the relationship will be one of trust.

The New Oxford American Dictionary lists trust as: firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone.

Think about it…aren’t these the qualities you want in your business relationships? So do your clients. So how can you build greater trust with your target audience?

• David Airey’s 5 Easy Steps to Building Trust Online
• Naive by Design’s How to Build Trust Online
• Susan West’s Building Trust is Key to Business Success
• Greg Balanko-Dickson’s Business Blogging Strategy: Build Trust and Rapport
• Marius Wlassak’s Earning Customer Trust Online
• Paul Sarvadi’s Building Profitability by Building Trust
• Shonnie Lavender’s Building Trust With Your Business Blog
• Beautify’s Building Trust in Your Business Relationships – 10 Steps
• Michelle Howe’s Earning Customer Trust Online

Here’s some examples of how others are building greater trust with their audience. How do you?

One of the most intriguing posts that came out of this was John Wesley’s ‘Blog’ is a Hideous Word. He writes:

Blog is a hideous word. I cringe every time I read it. And I’m a blogger. No wonder regular people don’t take blogs seriously.

Blah, blah, blog.

Blog = irrelevant nonsense to the layman. Why? Because thats what it sounds like.

The worst part — this miserable word diminishes the power of the platform. Weblogs enable individuals to reach a global audience at minimal cost. We haven’t even scratched the surface of this.

I agree with John, but maybe for different reasons. I think that the word blog, for better or worse, has a stigma attached to it of personal diaries and political pandering. Many people outside the blogosphere don’t take blogging serious. Yet, I agree with John that blogs have enourmous potential that we haven’t fully tapped yet.

What do you think? What if we stopped using the word ‘blog?’ What then? And what would we use?

The secret is simply this: you have a much better chance for success when your business model makes what’s good for the users match what’s good for the business, and vice-versa.

I couldn’t agree more.

Just poke around the web and you’ll find a huge number of small businesses and service professionals who are focused on themselves. When you read their website you’ll find out all kinds of information about them. From bios and mission statements to what services they offer and why they’re better than the competition.

But where is their target audience? And more importantly, if I’m their target audience, where am I? Where are they speaking to me and my problems?

And there lies the key…when you write copy for your website do everything you can to focus on your target audience. Write about the problems and challenges they face first. Then, only after clearly identifying their problems and challenges, do you tell them how you can solve their problems in your own, unique way.

When you focus on your target audience you’re doing three things. One, you’re helping them identify themselves in your message, causing them to stop and take notice. Two, you’re telling them that you understand their problem well enough that you can speak directly to it. And Three, you’re you’re letting them know that you care about solving their problems more than turning a fast buck.

Matt Heinz has some examples of writing for your audience not for yourself. Jackson Summerford offers a slightly different approach to audience-focused writing. And Tellman Knudson, in Writing the Irresistable Offer, gets right to it…

Your message should solve some kind of problem that the people in your niche experience sometimes.

Every page of your website, ideally, would be audience-focused. You can even write your bio page so that you’re speaking about a problem you faced in your business and how you overcame it to get to where you are today. “And because I’ve been through it, I can help you overcome your problems and challenges as well.”

Tell me what you’ve done to make your website/marketing copy been successful? Or not?

Of course, currently, I help small and independent professional businesses plan, develop, build and grow their business through the internet. I help my clients refocus their business objectives and marketing strategies to incorporate the web. Ideally, their websites and blogs become a hub for meeting and converting their target audience.

But here, many make a critical mistake. They think of their target audience (or target market) simply as a name for the group of people they’re trying to serve. In other words, they think of target audience as being a noun. If you remember your Schoolhouse Rock, “is a person, place or thing.” It simply names.

What a noun doesn’t do is describe – that would be an adjective. Nor does it speak to action – that would be a verb.

I like to think of the terms target audience or target market less nouns and more a verbs.

I think this way because I know that to create a successful business, you need to do more than just name your target audience. You also need to target your audience. In other words, actively engage in finding them, meeting them and nurturing them. In this way, target(ing) becomes an action…it becomes a verb.

So when you think about your target audience, think also about targeting your audience. This turns your noun into a verb; your naming something into your doing something.

So tell me, how do you see our target audience as a verb?�

Sure, I had watched many blogs over the last year, learning what I could from the links in my feed reader. That education certainly helped me hit the ground running when I finally launched my blog. But it wasn’t until I was actually writing posts, commenting and building relationships that I really began to grok what blogging is all about.

Nowhere have I learned more about blogging than in how I write my posts.

I knew from my marketing background that writing should be interesting. It should speak directly to my target audience, engaging them in what they want to know. I knew that the best writing would add real value to my audience’s life by helping them solve a problem they face. And I knew that the most effective writing establishes me as an expert in my niche.

I’ve found each of these principles still hold true in blogging. Yet blogging has offered me a chance to refine my writing even more. Here’s what I’ve learned:

1. It’s all about the conversation. For me, blogging has been about connecting people and creating conversation. It’s offered me a way to create relationships and community with people who are interested in what I’m interested in. I try to always consider that when I write; keeping it about a conversation and not a monologue or lecture. I feel my best writing makes you feel like we’re sitting in a room together talking.
2. Be an expert. I’ve already said this above. But I even truer in the blogosphere. I know a lot about web development, marketing and creating successful businesses through the web. I’ve had to learn to stand more firmly in that and write about what I know. Someone may know more, sure. And that’s all right. I’m still the expert in what I know.
3. Be willing to learn. I’m an expert in what I know. Yet, I don’t know everything. I know what I know and don’t know what I don’t know. So I try to take every opportunity to learn. If I see/hear/read something that I don’t know, I give myself time to evaluate it and if it holds water for me, I integrate it into my knowledge base and my writing.
4. Voice your opinion. Bloggers move toward conversation and I’ve learned that conversation becomes quite boring without opinion. My first blog posts had me more reporting, making suggestions – not taking a stand. I quickly learned the benefits of voicing what I think, from my expertise. I find I’m more engaged with my readers. And I’ve watched my readership increase ever since.
5. Stay informal. I have to remember that blogging is a conversation. I need to write the way I speak – as though I’m speaking directly to you. One way to do this, I’ve learned, is to stay informal. But more than informal – just be myself, not just a professional in a niche market, but a person communcating to and with other people.
6. Stretch yourself. It’s so easy to stay inside my comfort zone and just play it safe. This means just write about and express what I’m really certain about. But that hasn’t been working for me. I’ve needed to stretch myself beyond what is comfortable by taking stands and sharing opinions on things that I’m a little less sure of. After all, I always have something to learn – see #3.
7. Link away. I had to throw this one in here because it goes against almost everything that’s taught about marketing outside the blogosphere. I’m supposed to guard my precious readers from the clutches of other web business developers. I’ve quickly learned that this way of thought just doesn’t work in the blogosphere where cooperation and competition gets blurred into co-opetition. My blog has grown faster than I can imagine partly because I so freely link out.

This is what I’ve learned about post writing. I’m sure there’s going to be more to learn as I continue to refine my blogging.

I’d love to hear what lessons you’ve gotten from blog writing. So tell what you’ve learned or tips you have about post writing and I’ll include them and a link to your blog in a future post.