Hitting Your Marketing Bullseye

Whether you are a small business owner without much experience in marketing or you’re looking for some nuggets of wisdom regarding marketing, this blog post is for you! Let me tell you about one aspect of marketing your business to get new clients and ultimately grow it. This is what I refer to as the marketing bullseye!

Small businesses may find it difficult to spread the word due to limited visibility, budget, or time. But if you use this key strategy, you can improve the way your small business markets itself. In my opinion, as an experienced business coach with over 15 years in the coaching industry, the most effective way to approach your growth marketing as a startup founder or a small business owner is to define your marketing bullseye and how to hit it. 

If you’ve ever played darts before, think about that for a moment. I’m certainly not an expert on darts, but when I have a dart in my hand, I’m trying to hit the bullseye. That is the goal! 

I aim for the bullseye, and to be quite honest, I hit the actual bullseye on a pretty infrequent basis. I miss the actual target. When I shoot for the target, I sometimes hit other points that are close to the bullseye, and on occasion, I hit the bullseye itself.

The idea with marketing as it relates to the term “target market” is that we need to go after a target, or a bullseye, with marketing. I like to call it the “Marketing Bullseye.” 

So, we need to go after a marketing bullseye. We need to be very specific (extremely specific, actually), and to be almost neurotically specific with what kind of client we would like to work with. Also, we need to be very detailed, almost to the point of ridiculousness. And that’s what we shoot for in regards to marketing.

Oftentimes, we may not hit that target; we’ll fall a little bit to the left or a little bit to the right, but we’ll still do very well. We’ll be able to work with clients who work for us even if they aren’t an exact replica of our ideal client. 

I want you to consider the following five factors when defining your marketing bullseye. Actually, there are many more than five things, but I broke it down into just five things to make this more concise and easier to discuss.

1. Pick a Niche:

The most common mistake is to think that “anyone” is your buyer. It is true that larger companies may be able to attract a larger target market, but this is not true for small businesses and startups. A niche is where a small business has the best opportunity to attract new customers.

There could be more than one niche in your business. You might focus on two different areas or have two different services that focus on different areas. But for right now, just identify one niche to concentrate on. It’s a good start to specify your marketing bullseye.

2. Choose between commercial or consumer for your marketing bullseye

Once you decide what your niche is, you could focus on a sub-niche, either commercial or consumer. You’ll need to decide on one of the two. 

As an example for this post, we’re going to look at the commercial sub-niche.

3. Specify the geographical location of your marketing bullseye

This is important because many times when we talk to people, they say, “Well, I’ll work with anyone in my city,”  or “I’ll work with anyone in my state,”  or “I’ll work with everybody.” Again, this may be true to some degree, but this is very bad from a marketing standpoint. You’ll end up losing a lot of money and having a smaller ROI on your marketing dollars if you take this approach.

Get very specific about where your ideal client is located. Where is your target? You might get into specific zip codes, like 77057, or you might get into streets, little pockets, or little neighborhoods. Or you could make it even more detailed than that. 

The point is to get very specific geographically, even if you can serve people outside of that sphere. Just narrow it down. Many people we talk to just don’t do this to the level that it needs to be done. They end up wasting their time and efforts.

4. Determine the size of the business you’d like to target

Every experienced business coach will advise you to look at the size of the businesses you want to work with. Maybe you target a business with fewer than 250 employees. Or maybe you target a business with fewer than 10 employees. Be very specific in regards to the size of the company. 

I know a lot of people focus on revenue, and you could certainly say, “I’ll focus on a business with between $2 million and $20 million in revenue.” That’s a fine target as well, but sometimes it’s harder to know that information with private companies. So, it would be better if you figured out the size of the company you’d like to work with.

5. Choose a vertical

Think about another vertical, like maybe you focus on the plumbing business, the insurance business, or attorneys as your vertical. Think of a vertical that you can serve better than anyone and that you know very well. Then, you’ll start marketing to that group.

In conclusion…

There are other targets you can go more in-depth at, but this is a good starter. So to recap: Define your marketing bullseye. Find your niche, decide if you want to sell to a commercial or consumer niche, think about the size and location of your market, and choose a vertical. Another big takeaway from this is to be specific, and I mean CRAZY specific.

Now, I know a lot of you may want to learn more about this topic. If so, please send an email to our team with your questions; you may be able to have a more in-depth conversation with one of our experienced business coaches. You can also look into our services, which were created to help small business owners and startups grow their companies and meet their goals.

Keep the five elements I discussed in mind while planning your marketing strategy. I’d love to hear how using these elements to find your marketing bullseye affects your marketing results, so please share your thoughts in the comments section. 

For now, go out there, hit your marketing bullseye, and have a better than amazing day!