How do I find good customers?

I looked around the room at the earnest faces staring back at me.  I had given the How Should I Market Myself? presentation earlier that morning, and during the afternoon breakout session, the attendees  were starting to “get it,” and their new understanding was bringing up a lot of questions.  One woman decided to speak for the group.  “This is the thing we are all struggling with, and we feel stuck here.  We don’t know how to determine this, and based on what you’ve been teaching us, this is our missing link.  Until we figure this out, we aren’t going to get anywhere in our businesses.”

They were right.  And the elusive missing link?

How do we figure out who our customer is so we can build a list and market to them?

Simple, yet profound.  In my experience, the people sitting around that table are no different that most of the speakers and coaches I talk to on a regular basis who are struggling to get traction in their businesses.   The majority of the time, they don’t know who NEEDS what they offer. Frankly, what good is a flashy website or fabulous marketing materials if you don’t have a pool of prospects you’re marketing to?  If you don’t know who your customer is, you can’t proactively target them, right?  Picking a niche can be scary because you don’t want to “limit” yourself, but it’s not likely that you have the time, energy or money to target the whole world with your offerings.  You need to concentrate your efforts on a specific group to get the most bang and traction for your marketing buck.

Read the full article here.