Identifying your ideal client and your niche market is the basic foundation upon which every successful business is built. Below you will find 7 tips that are guaranteed to improve your business if you apply them.

Tip 1: Understand What Your Ideal Client Really WANTS

One of the biggest delusions that most small business owners make is the belief that everyone is my client. Not true! In fact when you try to market to everyone, you end up marketing to no one.

An additional belief that many small business owners have is that knowing the specific demographic information, such as age, sex, marital status, zip code, etc. is adequate knowledge in knowing who my ideal client or niche market is. This is also not true.

This type of demographic information only tells us the type of client that has a need for your product or service. You don’t want to be selling to a client that needs your product in as much as you want a client who has a want for your product or service. The distinction between needs and wants is huge and one that warrants some additional discussion. Continue reading →

We’re devoting many of our March posts to the importance of playing in a very specific niche market and an ideal client.  This is a great piece to launch our series.  Now more than ever, every small business owner needs to be identifying their niche market.

How To Create a Niche Market for Your Business

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by Gabrielle Melisende

Have you ever wondered how so many beauty salons, web design companies, attorneys Romper Stomper rip or Mexican restaurants can exist in the same geographic area? Especially in small populated areas? Maybe the demand is high. Or, perhaps some of these businesses have set themselves apart by targeting a niche market. Continue reading →

Just this past Wednesday, as many Angelenos were heading home after a long days work, a select group of smart-minded LA small business owners gathered for the monthly O.N.E. (OneCoach Networking Event), which was once again held at the inspiring entrepreneurial work space of BLANKSPACES, designed and owned by Jerome Chang.
Continue reading →

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A bold Statement…well, maybe.  But it’s absolutely possible.

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I was inspired to blog today about an email I received from a client who is in a dark place regarding the state of his business.  He writes: “I’m on the verge of tears alot so I hide.  I haven’t been in this situation before.  I am in uncharted waters, working to figure out how to pull it all together.” Continue reading →

Everything has a start…and everything has a finish.  And sandwiched in between is a process.  When Going from start-up (start) to the first million (finish) it’s the process in between that determines the speed and accuracy.  Of course having the right process helps.  Building a business is a series of steps, flying an airplane…a series of steps, proficiency at a musical instrument, baking a cake and building a community…you guessed it…a series of steps.  No wonder why paint-by-number always looked exactly like what the cover of the box looked like? Following a known process gets me to a predictable result.

When I get in the car and drive from LA to San Francisco, I follow a map–a visual process.  If I were to get in and just drive, I might make it eventually, but not without some real wasted energy.  Those map guys are awesome for having laid out the process for getting from anywhere to anywhere.

Now hear this:  Building a business is a process

I love to use real world –LA World– examples.  Yves Vacherres of Club Gourmet

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is following a process to take his high-end home gourmet delivery service to people who want it at their door, healthy and convenient.  He figured out who he wanted to serve, mapped out how they make decisions, built his uniqueness on what would make them jump up and down, figured out how to communicate with them and roped them in…willingly.  Notice he didn’t do the reverse and build his business around what he wanted.

Every time that I’ve looked back and asked why I haven’t gotten the end result that I wanted, I found that I sidestepped the process.  I skirted around an important or small component.  I let my lack of patience get in the way.

Your business should have a process mapped out from where you are to where you want to be.  This is your map, your paint by number.

Building and following a process also requires time to step out of your business and work on

your business.  It requres planning, review, course correction and reflection.  This is also one of the steps in the process.

Would you build a home without a blueprint? Why would you build a business without one.

And just to show you how serious I am, click the linke below for the seven-secrets-to-turning-your-life and business-around.

Even building the life you want is a process!

Let me guess?

As a small business owner you’ve got 25 things on your ‘to do’ list.  Number 26 is “clean out email inbox”.

If you want to make use of all of the thousands of emails still sitting there and expand your network exponentially RIGHT NOW, check out this application from LinkedIn.

You can download a LinkedIn dashboard that will sift through your inbox, cross check to see if those senders are already in your Outlook Contact list and if not, it will add them.  Then, it will cross check again to see if you have connected with those people on LinkedIn.  I trippled my network in 30 minutes!

Unfortunately, you still have to deal with Number 26…at some point.

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I get so much direct marketing crap online and in my physical mailbox.  Most small business owners use the “spray and pray” approach to promote their wares by throwing a few promotional lines on a postcard and sending it to thousands of people.  No wonder they become frustrated and reinforce the belief that “this stuff doesn’t work”  Duh!

Think of a lamp with diffused light spread throughout a room. It’s nice, soothing and subtly stated, hardly powerful, focused or intense.  At the other extreme is a laser, intensely focused, concentrated, which can cut through anything.  Ok, hold that visual in your mind….yes, like a laser.

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That’s how you want to direct your direct marketing:  When you try and talk to everyone, you’re like a lamp.  And you end up talking to no one.  By focusing laser-like on the emotional needs and wants of your ideal client you can talk to them in a manner that excites them and sends the message that you know how to make their life happier with what you do.  Be laser-like in really understanding why people buy what you do.

Rick Lugash