If your goal is to create a brand that attracts fantastic, loyal clients, then answering this question is important, “Who will consume what I provide?” Who will buy what I sell and who will buy the most of it? Here’s an analogy, If I sell Kobe Beef, I’ll want to find the people who will eat it.  Even more so, I’ll want to find the people who will eat a lot of it.

Focused marketing efforts on narrower, more capable, target audience reduces the cost of operating and increases profits.  Keeping the choices of where to search for new clients focused, and removing excess headcount from direct marketing campaigns decreases cost. Loading the sales funnel with clients who not only want the product, but also have the resources to buy it, improves the amount of revenue per dollar spent.

Back to the Kobe beef analogy, I’m not trying to convert vegetarians.  I’m not looking for people who can only afford chicken, pork or even the common masses who eat beef. I’m looking for people with the resources and desire to buy high end Japanese beef!  Correctly identifying the target audience creates a company with faster client acquisition and increased profitability.

It’s my belief that Entrepreneurs and small business owners get the concept and implement it in most of their important decisions, except when it comes to marketing. Here’s my hypothesis. When looking at buying into a company, if there’s too much friction to closing, or too much work with too little profit Entrepreneurs won’t buy in.

Conversely, if it looks like a profitable scenario then they’ll sign on and start to work hard.  They’ll dedicate time, blood, sweat and tears to build something from nothing.  Pride grows around what has been built.  It’s the best, our customer service is better than the next, our prices are set just right, and an all too common creep of scope begins.

I believe it grows from a desire to sell the product or service to everyone that we can.  A sales thought process wrapped around quotas and validated by the fear that a group that “could” or “should” buy will be excluded from our reach. Yes, everyone who eats meat “should” be able to enjoy Kobe, but not everyone has the resources to buy, and this is the distinction.

Yes they should. Perhaps they could, but how hard does the company have to work to get the sale.  Why waste the money trying to talk the masses into buying, when we can simply refine the target to include only those with the resources and desire to act.  Remove the friction. Remove the work. Hand hot leads off to closers and increase conversions.

So, you relate to this analogy.  You want to speed up customer acquisition and decrease costs.  Address this one fantastic concept, internalize it and answer the question, “Who will eat the most of my beef” or, how do I identify my target audience? No matter how you slice this question up, the answer comes through marketing research.

It can range from simple conversations and brainstorming to intricate surveys and focus groups.  It can be low budget or high, but the more you put in to this part of your strategic planning, the more you will profit later.  Whether you’re starting a business in Michigan and creating a new business marketing strategy, whether you’re a longstanding company in Jackson County expanding market penetration, or whether you’re a regional organization looking to expand nationally, the process starts by looking internally to define yourself and your audience.