John Jantsch on his popular, “Duct Tape Marketing Blog” has a great post called, How Many Prospects Do you Really Need? which essentially addresses the issue of having a specific, narrowly defined target market and how this makes it easier to attract clients.
I spend a lot of time with many of my new clients addressing this issue educating them on why you will actually get more, as opposed to less, clients if you have a clearly defined target market or niche. Sometimes it takes a while, as most counsellors and healing professionals want to include everyone in their target market largely because they fear they will exclude potential clients if they don’t.
John suggests that you figure out how many customers/clients you need a month and then calculate the number of qualified prospects you would need to get your message in front of to acquire the customers/clients you need. His point being that you may not need that many prospects in order to get the required number of customers/clients.
Once you have determined who your qualified prospects are (those that fit your defined target market) you can then focus your attention only on them, sending them information/newsletters and following up with them via phone on a regular basis. John states:
My experience is that when you can get your arms around this very qualified suspect list they become more real, more manageable. When you can start to put names and addresses to your potential clients you can actually begin to see them as clients. You can identify others who could refer you to members of this list. You can afford to start building marketing profiles on each to better personalize your marketing efforts.
If you are still afraid to target your market, by narrowing in a specific population, I suggest you re-think your stance.
