Marketing Turbo-Charge » Ideal Clients

Resources on the Web: Ideal Clients

Carma Spence — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:18:19 +0000

It looks like I might be teaching a version of Turbo-Charge Your Marketing this February at a local community college as part of their continuing education program. I’m working on the class handout now and found these resources I thought I would share with you, as well.

Identify Your Ideal Client Profile by Nancy Michaels

Profile Your Ideal Client First by John Bowen

How to Identify Your Ideal Client Profile to Generate More Revenue by John Assaraf

Resources on the Web: Ideal Clients is a post from Marketing Turbo-Charge

The Business Foundation Trinity

Carma Spence — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:37:31 +0000

With each successive call in the Turbo-Charge Your Marketing teleseminar series, I realize how much everything in the program builds on and depends on everything else.

Of course I planned it that way — but I’m still realizing that the layers are greater than I had planned.

Anyway, I was thinking about the first three calls this weekend, and reading Michael Port’s Book Yourself Solid and came to the realization that the foundation of every truly amazing business is based on three interconnected concepts: Passion, Niche and Ideal Clients.

Take a look at the graphic here. Each one of these concepts are represented by a circle. Where these three circles intersect … that’s where your most optimized business resides.

Passion is what drives you. It is what motivates you to get up in the morning and keep plugging away at your business. Passion helps you discover your niche and identify your ideal clients.

Niche is what brings your prospects together … it how they self-group, making it easier for you to determine what kinds of products and services will serve their needs best.

Ideal clients are the kinds of people you like to hang around. They energize you and inspire you to do your best work.

Passion helps you find the right niche for you and it is your biggest clue when you are serving your ideal clients. You need to be passionate about your niche and your ideal clients. Your niche must be where you find your ideal clients and be of interest to you. Your ideal clients must energize you and be interested in your niche. You see? They all interconnect … loose one piece of the trinity and your business will start to falter.

Now, when I use the term passion in this context, it doesn’t necessarily have have to be your top passion … that might be for something that is not profitable. But, you do have to have at least a spark or two of interest.

Once you have found your business sweet spot — the business that can be found in the intersection of your interests, the interests of your target market and your ideal clientele — you can build your marketing much more easily.

You’ll have the information you need to choose your words wisely, make use the best media to convey your message, and know that you are doing your best work in the service of individuals you truly like and respect. That is where business nirvana lies.

The Business Foundation Trinity is a post from Marketing Turbo-Charge

Carma’s Kismet

Carma Spence — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 15:35:10 +0000

I just started reading Michael Port’s Book Yourself Solid this weekend. Now, I purchased the book back in May and its been sitting on my bookshelf ever since. What struck me, however was something he wrote in the beginning of the book:

“To be booked solid requires that you have a solid foundation. That formula begins like this:

Choose your ideal clients so you work only with people who inspire and energize you.

Understand why people buy what you are selling.

Develop a personal brand so you’re memorable and unique.

Talk about what you do without sounding confusing or bland.

Does this sound familiar? It should. For the Turbo-Charge Your Marketing (TCYM) program follows this process in so many ways. Of course, TCYM starts a little earlier — discovering what drives you — because I think it would difficult to identify ideal clients if you don’t know who you are and what you want.

So, the first week of TCYM covered basically that first point. This coming week covers the second. The next two series in the Fall and Spring will cover the final two points.

O.K. What am I getting to here? Just that when an idea has reached it’s time to be birthed into the world, it will find a way to be birthed in as many ways as possible.

I think that concept of basing your business on what drives you and makes you happy, energized and inspired, has reached critical mass and you’re going to be seeing this idea talked about in many different ways from many different sources more and more often.

Take heed … for this is the way of business’ future. You need to pay attention to this trend and ride its wave. It’s Kismet, baby!

Carma’s Kismet is a post from Marketing Turbo-Charge

Business to Business Copy Should Be Conversational

Carma Spence — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 15:22:49 +0000

I once attended a networking meeting where the topic of the day was copywriting. One of the attendees raised her hand and said something to the effect that she understood why you would use conversational copy for consumers, but why business owners?

The speaker, in reply, asked her a series of questions. Do you brush your teeth in the morning? Eat breakfast? Put your pants on one leg at a time?

She answered yes to all.

So, the speaker said, does all this change once you get into the office?

She was stumped. It had not occurred to her that business people are people, too.

“In an age of social media and social networking, conversations are more valued than commanding corporate pronouncements,” an article in BtoB magazine once started out. It continued to say that “it’s vital to converse with communities rather than lecture to a target audience.”

And this is so true. If you’re reading this, you probably own a business or are looking at owning one. Is there any reason to believe that when you read something aimed at you the person and something else aimed at you the business owner that you are somehow a different person?

This is why, whether you are marketing to consumer or to businesses, you always keep in mind that you are marketing to people first. And people do business with people they know, like and trust. They buy benefits before they buy features. Even if they say they are buying features, they are still buying the benefits they believe those features will give them.

So, the next time you post something to Facebook … the next time you put together a marketing piece … keep in mind who you are communicating with … not what.

Business to Business Copy Should Be Conversational is a post from Marketing Turbo-Charge

iTunes and Your Business — What You Can Learn From iTunes to Succeed in Your Business

Michele PW — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:16:42 +0000

I love my iPod.

It’s funny because I didn’t think I’d be an iPod person. I got an iPod a few years ago because I wanted to put all those educational audios on it rather than carting around a million CDs. I didn’t think I’d be that interested in the music part.

Why? Because I never could get the hang of the whole music thing. I have such eclectic taste that radio never worked well for me — I found myself picking stations not because they played more of what I liked but less of what I didn’t like. I almost never bought records because for the most part I would like one song from a band and that’s it.

But that all changed when I started to get ready for my first marathon. I decided maybe I better bring some tunes to keep me motivated. I started going through the CDs my husband had (my hubby has about 400 CDs, the complete opposite of me) and loading songs. And I started downloading those 1 or 2 songs from other bands from iTunes.

And now I finally get it. iTunes has allowed me to finally create the mix I want. I mean, I can’t stand country (although I have 3 songs from Faith Hill) and I got a lot of 80s and hair bands (but there’s a lot of bands I can’t stand in those categories who will never be MPW iPod-worthy). My taste ranges from Boomtown Rats to Queen (lots and lots of Queen, they were an exception to the no-album-buying rule, but no “Another Bites the Dust” or “You’re My Best Friend”) to Def Leppard to The Guess Who to George Michaels (gotta love him) to even a Ted Nugent song. (My husband couldn’t believe I put that Ted Nugent song on the iPod. I’ve often thought someone should have a contest, can you guess which Ted Nugent song I have on my iPod? In fact, I think I will have that contest. If you email me the correct answer I’ll send you a digital download of one of my info products. But I digress.)

Anyway, so where am I going with all of this? Well, I read an article about how the music industry is having a heck of a time making money now — for a variety of reasons, but one of the main ones is because they can no longer make money the way they used to.

You see, as I learned in this article, the music industry is financially based on selling albums, not individual songs. In other words, they make money by cramming albums down buyers’ throats, even if those buyers only wanted 1 or 2 songs. Now with iTunes, buyers buy the songs they want, they’re not forced to buy everything.

And the music industry is having some problems adjusting. So that means I’m actually in the majority of music buyers rather than the minority. And that’s why iTunes is making money hand over fist (because they’re allowing buyers to buy how they want, rather than forcing buyers to buy how they want to sell to them) and the record companies still haven’t figure out what hit them.

So what does this have to do with you? Well a couple of things. First off, is your business based on a way of doing business that makes more sense for you (the business owner) or your customers? If you aren’t selling your products or services in a way your customers want to buy, you ARE vulnerable. Even if this is the “way it’s done” in your industry, you’re a sitting duck for an Apple to burst on the scene and take it over. (Note, if this is you, there’s a big opportunity here for YOU to be the Apple in your industry.)

Second, are there ways you can restructure your products or services to make it a no-brainer to do business with you? Is there an opportunity to sell to your customers the way they want to buy?

Remember, buyers always have the power. They can choose to do business with you or not. It’s up to you to decide if you want to make it easy for them or not.

iTunes and Your Business — What You Can Learn From iTunes to Succeed in Your Business is a post from Marketing Turbo-Charge